IIW sponsors a workshop—the only one of its kind—for graduate students at Harvard who are working on topics related to Islam in the West. Faculty from around the country are brought to Harvard offering students an opportunity to have their research responded to by the top academics in their field.

The workshop serves as a student-focused complement to an interdisciplinary research program focusing on Islam in the West. One of the primary objectives of the student workshop on Islam in the West is to bring students together from a number of departments ad schools to examine issues of common interest from a genuinely interdisciplinary perspective. Meetings have attracted students from five departments of GSAS (including Government, Anthropology, Sociology and Social Policy, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the Center for Middle Eastern Studies) and four schools (including GSAS, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Law School and the Kennedy School of Government).