About me

Before coming to Jerusalem, I taught at the University of Freiburg in Germany from 2017 until 2023 and was a Junior Research Fellow in Islamic Studies at Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge from 2015 until 2017. I completed my PhD in September 2015 at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies. My dissertation “Relocating the Centers of Shīʿī Islam: Religious Authority, Reform, and the Limits of the Transnational in Colonial India and Pakistan” was advised by Prof. Muhammad Qasim Zaman. In May 2019, I was elected a member of the German Young Academy.  

Currently, I am working on two new projects. The first is a global history of the Iranian Revolution and its intellectual impact. The second is a comparative study of the diverging fate of the Sunni Islamic schools of law during the 19th and 20th century in South Asia and the Middle East.

 

Academic Positions and Education 

• THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY OF JERUSALEM, Israel 

Associate Professor of Islam in South Asia and the Middle East, since 09/2023 

• UNIVERSITY OF FREIBURG, Germany 

Lecturer in Islamic and Middle East Studies, 10/2017 – 09/2023 

On paternal leave from 10/2022  02/2023  

• UNIVERSITY OF FRANKFURT, Germany 

Visiting Professor, Institute for the Study of Islam in Culture and Religion, 10/2021  09/2022  

• UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, UK 

Research Fellow in Islamic Studies at Gonville & Caius College, 10/2015  09/2017 

• PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, USA 

PhD in Near Eastern Studies, September 2015 

Title of the Dissertation: “Relocating the Centers of Shīʿī Islam: Religious Authority, Sectarianism, and the Limits of the Transnational in Colonial India and Pakistan” 

Adviser: Prof. Muhammad Qasim Zaman 

Winner of the 2016 S. S. Pirzada Dissertation Prize on Pakistan, awarded by the Institute for South Asia Studies, University of California, Berkeley 

• PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, USA 

M.A. in Near Eastern Studies, September 2011 

• UNIVERSITY OF TÜBINGEN, Germany 

Magister Artium, Islamic Studies and Political Science, graduation January 2010 

• UNIVERSITY OF TEHRAN, Iran 

International Center for Persian Studies, 09/2007 – 03/2008 

• DUKE UNIVERSITY, USA 

Exchange Student, Department of Political Science, 08/2005 – 05/2006 

• INSTITUT FRANÇAIS D’ÉTUDES ARABES DE DAMAS (IFEAD), Syria 

Arabic language training for research purposes, 10/2004 – 07/2005  

• UNIVERSITY OF ERLANGEN, Germany 

Magister Artium, Political Science, Islamic Studies, and Economics, 10/2002 – 07/2004