2025- Associate processor in Arabic, Department of Foreign Languages

2020-2024: Project leader of the CanCode project, financed by the Trond Mohn Foundation and HF, UiB. In addition to the the general project leadership I focus on the historical development of code-like legal texts from pre-modern Zaydi Yemen.

2018-2020: I started a post-doctoral project at the Department of Foreign Languages at UiB. The project was aobut exploring understadings of secularity in Yemen and the Arab world. I taught at the Arabic bachelor program as part of my duty work.

2016-2018: I worked at AHKR, UiB as a researcher in a HERA-project together with Knut Vikør. The overall project was led by Robert Gleave in Exeter, UK, and was about how the past was and is used in Islamic law. My specific focus was on how the Zaydi law school theorize sovereignty and public management.

2012-2016: I worked at a researcher at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften in a large project on comparative medieval history called Visions of Community. I worked in Institut für Sozialanthropologie in a team with other Yemen-experts and my focus was on religoius movements in the Zaydi-areas of Yemen in the medieval period, especially a branch of Zaydi-Islam called al-Muṭarrifiyya.

2007-2012: I did research for my PhD at AHKR, UiB with Anne K. Bang and Knut Vikør as supervisors. I did fieldwork in Yemen where I first focused on waqf and water supply and turned to focusing on the development of the waqf-laws in a historical and comtemporary context. Waqf means charitable Islamic foundations and is regulated in its own chapter in traditional Islamic law. This was in older times one of the most used modes of organizing public infrastructure as well as a vehicle for managing private wealth in the Islamic world, until the begunning of the 20th century. I had to relate to the classical texts of the Zaydi legal school, on which there had been little in-depth research before.

2006-2007: I worked as an assistant at the Nile Basin Programme (Unifob global) and aided Terje Tvedt in collected data for the bibliographies on usage of the Nile, which we co-authored.

1999-2006: I studied environmental geography, social anthropology and Arabic at UiB. I have an interdisciplinary MA degree from UiB on water studies and coastal management. I did fieldwork in Yemen and wrote my thesis on traditional rainwater harvesting structures in rural mountains of North-west Yemen.

In May 2022 I got a pormotion from researcher to research professor, meaning professor level in reseaerch.

I'm currently teaching in the BA program in Arabic. I have supervised and co-supervised three MA students and two PhD students and been mentor for a Posdoc.

2025

• Eirik Hovden; Mahmood Kooria (2025). The Muhtasar and Its Role in the Islamic Legal Schools. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2025). Canonising the Code: the Authorisation and Authorship of šurūh and hawāšī on the Kitāb al-Azhār under the Early Qāsimī Dynasty in Zaydī Yemen (ca. 1600-1700 CE). (external link)
• Eirik Hovden; Dominik Krell (2025). Reassessing the Family Waqf: New Insights on the Relation Between Family, Wealth, and Islamic Doctrine. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2025). Backdating the Criticism and Abolition of Family Waqf: Examples from Zaydī Yemen. (external link)

2023

• Eirik Hovden; Ebrahim Mohammed Abdulwahid Mansoor (2023). The Kitāb al-azhār by Ibn al-Murtaḍā (d. 840/1436-37), its method of standardization and reception.. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2023). Introduction: The study of agency of jurists and judges. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2023). Transregionality, local communities, and manuscript culture in Zaydi law. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2023). How to understand change in pre-modern Islamic law. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2023). Processes of Canonization and Codification in Transmission of Islamic Legal Knowledge: A Theoretical Perspective beyond the Premodern/Modern Binary. (external link)

2024

• Eirik Hovden (2024). Understanding and Framing Change in Islamic Law: Potentials and Possible Pitfalls of the Concepts of Canonization and Codification. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2024). Syv viktige punkt om houthiene, Rødehavet og Jemen: Hvem er houthiene, og hvorfor angriper de skip?. (external link)

2012

• Eirik Hovden (2012). Tribal Relations and Social Order in Modern Yemen.. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2012). Flowers in Fiqh and Constructions of Validity: Practices and Norms in Yemeni Foundations of Forever Flowing Charity. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2012). Pre-modern Sharia codification? Examples from Zaydi Yemeni family waqf/inheritance law. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2012). The political significance of the Muṭarrifiyya network: Zaydi Yemen from the 11th to the 13th century AD. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2012). Rural Rainwater Collection in Yemen. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2012). Zaydi endowment fiqh between doctrines and legal practice. (external link)

2013

• Eirik Hovden (2013). Managers of Knowledge: Hijras in Medieval South Arabia. (external link)

2010

• Eirik Hovden (2010). The role of the awqaf in water management in Yemen. (external link)

2008

• Eirik Hovden (2008). PhD project presentation. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2008). Noen utfordringer ved feltarbeid og kildeinnsamling i Jemen. (external link)

2018

• Eirik Hovden (2018). Svekker troen på menneskerettighetene. (external link)

2011

• Eirik Hovden; Marianne Bøe (2011). Sharia mellom staten og det sivile samfunnet: Iran og Jemen. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2011). Waqf in Yemen; in Zaydi fiqh and in practices today. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2011). Intervju om protestene i Jemen. (external link)

2009

• Eirik Hovden (2009). Uroligheter i Jemen. (external link)
• Eirik Hovden (2009). Uroligheter i Jemen. (external link)

2022

• Eirik Hovden (2022). Nye lag av loven kommer til: Eksempler fra Zaydi-tradisjonen, ca 1400-1800. (external link)

2015

• Eirik Hovden (2015). Yemen's water scarcity problem. (external link)

2007

• Eirik Hovden (2007). Vannforvaltning i Egypt og Jemen. (external link)

See a complete overview of publications in NVA.

Selected publications:

Eirik Hovden, «Canonising the Code: the Authorisation and Authorship of šurūḥ and ḥawāšī on the Kitāb al-Azhār under the Early Qāsimī Dynasty in Zaydī Yemen (ca. 1600-1700 CE)», Arabica, (2025)(Open Access)

Eirik Hovden, “Backdating the Criticism and Abolition of Family Waqf: Examples from Zaydī Yemen,» Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient (JESHO)( 2025)(Open access)

Eirik Hovden, Understanding and Framing Change in Islamic Law: Potentials and Possible Pitfalls of the Concepts of Canonization and Codification, Oxford Journal of Law and Religion, Volume 12, Issue 3, 2023, 283–288. (Open access)

Eirik Hovden, Waqf in Zaydī Yemen. Legal theory, Codification and Local Practice, in the series “Studies in Islamic Law and Society”, Leiden: Brill, 2019. (Open access)

Meanings of Community Across Medieval Eurasia. Editors: Eirik Hovden, Christina Lutter and Walter Pohl Online, Brill Series on the Early Middle Ages, vol 25. Leiden: Brill, 2016. (Open access: brill.com/view/title/32570)

 

Currently I'm the principle investgator of the CanCode-project (2020-2024). The project focuses on processes of canonization and codification of Islamic law.

Project website: uib.no/cancode