My work focuses on the social, cultural, and intellectual history of Islam, with expertise in the connected worlds of South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. I am broadly interested in questions of critical historiography, philosophy of history, rebellion, and thaumaturgy.
My present book project explores popular uprisings against the Mongol Empire. The book investigates how medieval stories of haunted tyrants and rebellious saints help us understand the lives, deaths, and dreams of the dispossessed. I am also at work on a second project, on the idea of Afghanistan across the middle ages.
My published work engages matters such as the graveyards of medieval Herat (History & Theory), diluvian history in Laghman (Viator), the cosmic horrors of Winston Churchill in Malakand (Afghanistan), and more. I have also published works of fiction, cultural criticism, and translation. Previously, I was based out of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. I earned my Ph.D. from Brown University’s Department of Religious Studies in 2021.
Ph.D. Religious Studies (Islam, Society and Culture), Brown University, 2021
M.A. Religious Studies (Islamic Studies), Stanford University, 2016
B.A. International Affairs (Middle East Studies), The George Washington University, 2014
“When the Mountains Were Islands: Landing Noah’s Ark on the Shores of Afghan History,” Viator vol. 55 no. 1 (2025): 23–34.
“Churchill’s Heresiography: On the Epistemological Anarchies of 19th-Century Malakand,” Afghanistan vol. 7 no. 2 (2024): 134–9.
(co-authored with Shahzad Bashir) “Abū l-Majd Tabrīzī (d. after 736/1336) on the debate between the ear and the eye,” in Islamic Sensory History, Volume 2: 600–1500, eds. Adam Bursi and Christian Lange (Brill: Leiden, 2024): 159–69.
“Demonic Descents: Contests in Islamic Tribal Etiology,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, vol. 67, no. 3-4 (2024): 401–424.
““All the world at the palm of the hand”: imagining history through the life of an early Afghan saint,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies vol. 87, no. 1 (2024): 151–67.
“Miraculous Edges of Rebellion: On the Strange History of Ḥājjī Mīr Khān,” Afghanistan, vol. 6 no. 2 (2023): 107–124.
“Green Boughs on the Graves: Unmooring Herat from Imperial Time,” History & Theory, vol. 62, issue 3 (2023): 367–385.
“The Unyielding Dead: Interring Conquest in the Graves of God’s Friends,” Study of Islam in Central Eurasia, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 20 March 2023.
Courses
2026 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| REL 111 | Introduction to Asia |
| HST 111 | Introduction to Asia |
| HST 495 | Methods of Historical Inquiry |
2026 Spring
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| HST 303 | Studies in Asian History |
| HST 303 | Studies in Asian History |
| HST 598 | Special Topics |
| HST 590 | Reading and Conference |
| HST 598 | Special Topics |
2025 Fall
| Course Number | Course Title |
|---|---|
| HST 100 | Global History to 1500 |
| HST 590 | Reading and Conference |
2024 Research Grant, Humanities Institute, Arizona State University
2021 Honorable Mention, Best Ph.D. Dissertation on a Topic of Iranian Studies, Foundation for Iranian Studies
2020–2021 Graduate Fellowship at the Cogut Institute for the Humanities, Brown University
2019 Joukowsky Summer Research Travel Award, Brown University
2016 The Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies Graduate Research Grant, Stanford University