- Email:
- abdomran@iu.edu
Research interests:
Digital Anthropology of the Middle East, Algorithmic Justice and Legal Reasoning Frameworks, Ethical Regimes in Data-Driven Environments, Digital Ethnography of Egyptian Social Media
Digital Anthropologist
Abdullah Omran is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at Indiana University Bloomington and a digital anthropologist whose work bridges anthropology, Islamic studies, and AI. He studies how digital platforms and computational systems reshape religious authority, ethical reasoning, and everyday life in Arab and Islamic contexts, with a particular focus on how Islamic legal and ethical debates are reconfigured in data-driven environments.
As a digital anthropologist, Abdullah approaches digital media as a lived space and uses ethnographic methods to trace how people negotiate public morals, authority, and intimacy online, and how these practices intersect with infrastructures of AI and content moderation. His research follows everyday interactions on social media, streaming platforms, and other digital environments to show how expertise, labor, and religious practice are reworked through algorithms, recommendation systems, and data-driven governance.
Abdullah’s work appears in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. He has published in venues such as the Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization, the Journal of Digital Islamicate Research, and CyberOrient, as well as in major edited collections and reference works. His research has been accepted and presented at leading conferences, including the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA), and the American Anthropological Association (AAA).
Education
- Ph.D. student, Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University Bloomington
- M.A., Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana University Bloomington
- B.A., School of Languages and Translation (English Islamic Studies), Al-Azhar University
Selected publications
- “Artificial Reasoning and Islamic Law: Mapping LLM Capabilities Across Juristic Ranks and Reasoning Frameworks” (with Said Hassan and Wesam M. Hassan), Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization 16, no. 1, 2026. Open Access.
- “Thus Spoke a Couple: A Corpus-Based Content Analysis of Spousal Duties Fatwas” (with Muhammad S. Abdo and Said F. Hassan), Journal of Digital Islamicate Research 1, 2024. Article.
- “Food Waste and the Contest of Incentives: Egypt as a Case Study,” in Food Security and Islamic Ethics: Rights, Policies and Vulnerable Groups, 2025. Open Access.
- “Knowledge Disembodied: From Paper to Digital Media,” CyberOrient 14, no. 1, 2020. Open Access.