Most of our residents traveled during the interim between semesters, some for very long distances, others by short trips to the suburbs, or down to New York, etc. Some largely stayed home at the Center and got caught up, or a head start, on one or another project. Here are some brief reports which residents passed along to us.
In December, Hadel Jarada attended the FIKR 14 ("Thought 14") conference organized by The Arab Thought Foundation in Cairo, Egypt. The conference was held at the Arab League Headquarters in Tahrir Square, and brought together a group of intellectuals, decision-makers, thinkers, researchers, and representatives of the private sector; as well as civil society, media, and youth along with their international counterparts to discuss the most pressing issues facing the Arab world today as well as the future of Arab integration. Through a series of workshops, participants narrowed their concerns to a list of five pressing questions. These questions will be the basis of ongoing research on the economic, political, and social plight of Arabs today by The Arab Thought Foundation in Beirut, Lebanon. Hadel was responsible for leading and facilitating discussions in the workshops over the weeklong conference. 
Munjed Murad spent the winter break in the company of his family in Amman, Jordan. In this time, he also translated a chapter of a book of the 12th century mystic, Ibn Arabi, particularly the entry on the Prophet Joseph in his Ringstones of Wisdom. Munjed also wrote an essay on the irreality of life as a dream and the ability to interpret the natural forms within it, in a way analogous to dream interpretation, according to the works of Ibn Arabi.
Nariman Aavani for the most part stayed home, working on a paper about the significance of the "principle of the unification of the knower and the known"(ittiḥād al-'āqil wa'l-ma'qūl) in Afḍal al-Dīn Kāshānī's (d. 1213) account of philosophy as a way of self-knowledge, a paper that he is going to present in a conference at Bonn University (Germany) in February. In addition, he travelled to Turkey and Iran where he enjoyed some happy moments with his family.
Naohito Miura had a restful break at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, and enjoyed spending time with his parents and two brothers. He came back to Cambridge early, though, for the J-term course "Introduction to Chaplaincy in Higher Education," in which he learned about the theory and practice of ministry in settings of higher education in the United States, through lectures, open discussions, site visits, chaplaincy narratives and personal reflection.
Seth Powell and Kalpana Jain spent part of the winter break in India on a field trip with Prof. Jinah Kim's art history seminar, HAA 285M: South Asian Temple: Theory and Practice. The group, comprised of three HAA faculty and a mix of graduate and college students, spent two weeks traversing through the rich Deccan Plateau exploring ancient Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain rock-cut caves and temples. 
In December, Axel Oaks Takács traveled to Oxford for the Symposium on Religious Studies at the Old Library of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. He presented a paper entitled "Theophanic Perception: Christic Vision from Text to World," in which he offered an interpretation of Eriugena's Periphyseon, a 9th-century Latin text within the Christian theological tradition. The paper is related to his dissertation, which is an exercise in comparative theology wherein he is endeavoring to elaborate how engaging in theology through apophasis, kataphasis, and metaphor is constructive and prescriptive of a certain perception of the world, and thus a theological ethics of engagement with alterity.
Happily, Axel also had time for another kind of travel — his honeymoon. He and Kim Oaks Takács, who met each other at the Center, celebrated their summer wedding with a belated honeymoon to Brazil over winter break. They were in Rio de Janeiro for four days, and in Búzios, Brazil, for 10 days. They enjoyed snorkeling, marvelous beaches, excellent food (fish!), boat rides, and a gorgeous bed and breakfast with eight waterfalls and four pools. They were delighted to spend some quality time together away from work to celebrate their marriage. On a weekend, they visited the lovely Igreja Sant'Anna church (on the coast in Brazil), where an overflowing crowd of local residents and tourists gathered for Sunday Mass.