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2025- Associate processor in Arabic, Department of Foreign Languages

2020-2024: Project leader of the project, financed by the Trond Mohn Foundation and HF, ���ϳԹ���Դ. 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 ���ϳԹ���Դ. 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, ���ϳԹ���Դ as a researcher in a 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 . 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, ���ϳԹ���Դ 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 ���ϳԹ���Դ. I have an interdisciplinary MA degree from ���ϳԹ���Դ 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.

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: