Gade’s early work, including Perfection Makes Practice: Learning, Emotion, and the Recited Qur’an in Indonesia (2004), explored the emotional and spiritual power of Qur’anic recitation as a driver for religious revitalization movements, setting the stage for her later focus on ethics in religious practice and society. Her widely-used book, The Qur’an: An Introduction (2010), remains a go-to resource for students and scholars. But it’s her shift to environmental studies that has made her a global voice in the conversation about faith and ecology.

Indonesia, where Gade has conducted fieldwork since the 1990s, is a key part of her story. The country’s rich biodiversity and vulnerability to climate change make it a living classroom for her ideas. During a July 2024 lecture at UIII’s Climate Talk Series #5, Gade shared insights from her book with students and faculty, describing how Muslim communities use scripture and law, art, and activism to tackle ecological challenges. She spoke of Islamic teachings that emphasize caring for the Earth not just for today but for the afterlife, offering a perspective that broadens secular ideas about environmentalism. Her fieldwork in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, brought these ideas to life with stories of communities weaving Islamic ethics into issues such as conservation and disaster response.

Outside UIII, Gade’s engagement with academic communities across Indonesia and across Asia to Pakistan has continued this past year, most recently when she spoke at a seminar hosted by Universitas Gadjah Mada’s American Studies Program in the Faculty of Cultural Sciences. On May 9, 2025, she delivered a talk titled “American Nature: Ecology, Environment, Sustainability” as part of the a seminar on “Contemporary American Issues.” Gade first taught a ground-breaking seminar on Religion and Ecology at UGM in 2011. Her presentation last week explored how the intersection of ecology and sustainability in an American context affects the Global North and Global South alike. complementing her work on Islamic environmentalism by showing how diverse cultural frameworks address global challenges.

Gade’s commitment to education and experience building programs in sustainability will take center stage in the coming weeks at UIII’s Faculty of Education’s Lunch Talk #41 on Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Speaking on “Environment & Sustainability in Higher Education: Theory and Practice,” she will share insights from her decade-long leadership in environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where Earth Day was born. Drawing on her deep academic roots in Islamic education, Gade will highlight the unique role Islamically-oriented universities can play in shaping environmental education.

At UIII’s Faculty of Social Sciences, Gade’s role as a visiting professor has been a major boost for the Master of Public Policy Program Specializing in Climate Change, launched in 2023. The program trains future policymakers and researchers to address climate issues with creativity and depth, and Gade’s expertise in climate ethics fits perfectly. Her ability to connect Islamic studies, environmental ethics, and policy analysis gives students a fresh way to approach global challenges. “Her work shows that environmentalism isn’t just about science or policy—it’s about culture, faith, and values,” says Elis Nurhayati, an MPP student in Climate Change, who covered Gade’s visit for UIII’s news.

Gade’s impact reaches beyond the classroom. Her research has supported international efforts, including her work on The Cham Rebellion (2004), which documented Muslim survivors’ stories that later proved to be instrumental in the international Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Her expertise in blending personal narratives with big-picture ethical and environmental questions makes her scholarship both approachable and profound. At UIII, she’s poised to inspire a new generation of climate leaders, helping them craft policies that respect diverse cultural and religious perspectives.

As Indonesia faces rising sea levels, deforestation, and urban pollution, Gade’s work offers hope. She sees Islamic environmentalism as a global movement that unites communities in a shared commitment to the planet.

“Here in Indonesia, Islamic frameworks [such as law and finance] now appear increasingly in environmental contexts,” she said during her keynote speech at a UIII conference on the theme of “Decolonization” recently, .

In UIII’s lecture halls, seminar rooms from West Sumatra to Central Java, and in engaging Indonesian communities both large and small, Anna Gade is more than a scholar—she’s a storyteller, a connector, and a force for change. Her work reminds us that the fight for a sustainable future is not just scientific or political but deeply human, grounded in the values that tie us to the Earth and to one another. []