In this presentation, Peyman Ünügür Tekin combines classical rijāl criticism with computational analysis to trace narrations transmitted by ghulāt-affiliated narrators in al-Kulaynī's al-Kāfī. She asks whether their presence reflects incidental infiltration or a deliberate transmission strategy concentrated on particular doctrinal themes.

In this presentation, Hossein Barati and Sobhan Ranjbarzadeh trace how various ghulāt sects appropriated Jesus's ascension and extraordinary attributes to legitimize claims about ʿAlī, Ḥusayn, and the Hidden Imam. They show how Shi'i Imams and later Qom theologians responded directly to these Christological analogies in shaping mainstream doctrine.

In this presentation, Mohamed Enab shifts the study of ghulāt currents from hadith and polemic to material culture, reading Yemeni mosques and inscriptions from the Ṣulayḥīd and Qāsimī periods as a visual archive of Shi'i esoteric authority. He shows how architecture became a site where reverence, legitimacy, and accusations of religious excess were negotiated.

In this presentation, Wissam H. Halawi situates Druze doctrine within the long-running tension between esoteric knowledge and legal normativity in early Shi'ism. Rather than a radical break, he argues the Druze intensify existing ghulāt dynamics — hierarchical knowledge, a divinized guiding figure, and the suspension of exoteric law — reframing them as a distinct legal school.

In this presentation, Mohsen Kadivar distinguishes rubūbī ghuluww (attributing lordship to the Imams) from tafwīḍī ghuluww (attributing supra-human but non-divine status), tracing how the latter — though initially contested by the Imams' own companions — gradually became mainstream Imami theology from the fourth century onward, sidelining its early opponents.

In this presentation, Ayşe Uzun traces how the term ghulāt functioned in Sunni tafsīr — originally a broad marker of "excessiveness" applied well beyond Shi'ism, before narrowing and intensifying in 20th-century works like Tafsīr al-Manār. She shows how this shift reflects changing sectarian, political, and ethical concerns rather than a purely doctrinal one.

In this presentation, Mushegh Asatryan examines Kitāb al-Ṣirāṭ, a rare ghulāt text that engages directly with the surrounding world rather than staying purely cosmological. He unpacks its polemics against the Caliphate, mainstream Imami Shi'ism, and Abbasid "exoteric" scholarship, situating the ghulāt's esoteric epistemology within the wider intellectual landscape of their time.

In this presentation, Seyed Amir Asghari treats ghuluww not as a doctrine but as a historically produced accusation, tracing its use in 14th-century Mamluk Syria through Ibn Taymiyya's writings and the Damascus execution narratives. Set against an Ilkhanid-Iranian Shi'i Sufi network, he shows how a juridical apparatus converted esoteric Shi'i-Sufi thought into a criminal offence.