Dr. Muhammed Volkan Yildiran Stodolsky was born and raised in Istanbul, Türkiye. He received his undergraduate education at Bates College, graduating Summa Cum Laude with honors in History. As a Beinecke fellow, he completed his M.Phil. degree in Classical and Medieval Islamic History at Oxford University. At the University of Chicago, he studied in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, completing an M.A. degree and his Ph.D. dissertation, which was accepted with honors. In 2008, he traveled to Syria as a Fulbright fellow to conduct research concerning the Ḥanafi school of Islamic law.

Dr. Muhammed had the opportunity to study classical Islamic texts with Arab, Turkish, and Indian ʿUlamāʾ. Dr. Muhammed’s research interests include Islamic law and legal history, historiography, the instrumental Islamic sciences (syntax, semantics, logic, and rhetoric), Hadith and its methodology, Islamic theology (especially the Māturīdī school), Sufism, and Islamic bioethics. He teaches courses on Arabic, Islamic Law, and Islamic Theology.