Dr Irfan Ahmad

Irfan Ahmad is an anthropologist and a senior lecturer in politics at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Before he joined Monash University in 2009, he taught at Utrecht University and University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) from where he earned his doctorate (cum laude) in Anthropology. Irfan won the Rubicon Grant from Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research(NWO) to work as a Rubicon postdoctoral fellow at Leiden University. He is the author of Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of the Jamaat-e-Islami (Princeton University Press, 2009) which was short-listed for the 2011 International Convention of Asian Scholars(ICAS) Book Prize for the best study in the field of Social Sciences. Widely reviewed in leading journals as well as in the media, the Turkish translation of Islamism and Democracy in India will appear in 2013. 

Irfan Ahmad’s numerous research articles have appeared in leading international/global journals: Anthropological Theory, Citizenship Studies, Economic and Political Weekly, Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute, Modern Asian Studies, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Seminar and The Annual of Urdu Studies. He is a contributor to The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought. Irfan is on the Editorial Committee of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies; previously he served as its Reviews Editor during 2010–2012. Currently, he is an Associate Editor of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (both from Routledge). He has held visiting fellowship at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany and in various roles has been a visiting academic to institutions such as The Graduate Center, The City University of New York. He actively contributes to important debates in such media as Al-Jazeera (English), The Times of India, and The Hindu. His interviews have appeared in Dutch, English, Hindi, Malayalam, Turkish and Urdu (BBC) media.

Irfan Ahmad teaches a variety of courses at Monash. At Bachelor’s leveal he teaches Fanatics and Fundamentalists: The Global Politics of Violence;  and Political Anthropology; at Master’s level  Islam and Modernity and Political Islam (with Greg Barton). His supervision interests are broad. He is keen on supervising research projects on culture and politics of modern (south) Asia (in particular, India) and Islam in modern times, including in the West and the Middle East. Thematically, Irfan’s intrerests are: Secularism, Identity, Democracy, Culture & Power, The Media, Muslim Social Formations, Arab Spring, Terrorism, Social Movements, Globalization, Nation, Social Theories, and Liberalism. For more, visit http://irfanahmad.org/.

Updated 5 Feb 2013