I'm an intellectual historian who is interested in the course of philosophy in the Islamic world both past and present. Increasingly I am interested in how that study and category of philosophy coincides with the emergent category of global philosophy. In terms of method, my research is informed by the need for a decolonial and reparative study of Islam.

I supervise graduate students broadly in Islamic intellectual history, especially in philosophy, theology and Quranic exegesis. I am the director of the Centre for the Study of Islam.  

I work on Islamic intellectual history in the wider Persianate world. My particular interests which grew from my PhD at Cambridge on the philosophy of Mullā Ṣadrā Shīrāzī (d. c. 1636) lie in post-Avicennan philosophical, theological and mystical traditions. My second main area of interest is Qurʾanic exegesis and textual hermeneutics.

I am currently interested in three projects: completing an intellectual history of philosophical traditions in Iran and North India in the 18th century, a diachronic study of the philosophy of time in Islamic thought, and the reception of some European philosophies in the postcolonial Muslim context. On this last project, I have embarked on a seed project with case studies of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan supported by the European Network Fund. 

With a former student and colleague Ahab Bdaiwi, I am editing the Oxford Handbook of Shiʿi Islam, as well as an exciting new series of translations of Islamic intellectual traditions for Hackett Publishing. 

I have advised various government departments and private sector concerns on Iraq, Iran, Shiʿi Islam in the Gulf, and Islam in Britain and Europe. 

I also run a blog that has my various musings on philosophy both Islamic and otherwise as well as notes on manuscript research and related critical editions. The blog entitled Hikmat is available here.

I tweet under the name @mullasadra

For office hours and research leave go here.