Sasan Aghlani completed his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His thesis explores expediency and pragmatism in different Islamic traditions, particularly in the context of the laws of warfare, and the relevance of these traditions in guiding Iran’s policies towards nuclear weapons today. His research interests include political thought, theology, and philosophy within Shīʿah Islam, as well as international security and international relations. He was a researcher at Chatham House in the International Security Department. He was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute since June 2015 until December 2016.
Emann Allebban is an Assistant Professor at Providence College in Rhode Island. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from McGill University, Montreal, specialising in the history of philosophy and theology in Islam. She was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Syria to study classical Arabic and Islamic philosophy. She received her BA in Liberal Studies and Philosophy from the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and is currently a Visiting Student Researcher in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from September 2015 until the completion of her PhD thesis and since then she has been a Fellow of the Shīʿah Institute.
Yasmin Amin holds a PhD on Islamic Studies from Exeter University. Her research focused on issues such as humour in both Sunni and Shīʿah ḥadīth corpora. She obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Islamic Studies in 2009 and an MA in Islamic Studies in 2011, researching the narrations of Umm Salamah in both Sunni and Shīʿah ḥadīth corpora. She was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from September 2016 until completing her PhD thesis.
Chand Basha M holds a PhD from the Department of English Literature at the English and Foreign Languages University (EFL), Hyderabad, India. His ongoing research focuses on narrative historiography, and the myriad uses of autobiography in literary and oral narratives. He has presented his research papers at various international conferences and has contributed articles to volumes including Tales from His Father’s Suitcase: A Collection of Essays on Orhan Pamuk (Stuttgart, 2016) and Moharram Among the Shiʿah of South Asia: Vernacularisation or Globalization? (Berlin). He was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from September 2016 till December 2017.
Hassan Jamal Beloushi holds a PhD from the University of Exeter. He was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from October 2012 till December 2015.
Mohammad Amir Hasan Khan was reading for a PhD in South Asian History at the University of Cambridge on the subject of ‘The Evolution of Muslim Politics and Ideologies in Independent India, 1947–1970s’. He has also worked on modern South Asia and the debates in India’s Constituent Assembly regarding safeguards for Muslims. He was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from December 2015 till December 2016.
Rabia Latif Khan holds a PhD in languages and cultures of South Asia from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, where she also completed her LLM in Human Rights, Conflict & Justice, examining transitional justice in Afghanistan for her thesis. Her current doctoral research focuses on diasporic identity among Hazaras (a minority Shīʿah community from Afghanistan), in London and the Midlands, as well as how social networks of the community impact ethnic consciousness and ethnic solidarity. Rabia was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from November 2017 until December 2021.
Vinay Khetia holds a PhD from the department of Religious Studies at McMaster University, Ontario, on the intellectual history of Shīʿah Islam, with a particular focus on Shīʿī liturgy. He was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from November 2015 until December 2022.
Ali Rida Rizek holds a PhD from the Seminar für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. His thesis, entitled ‘Early Imāmī Legal Thought and its Perception among Later Scholars: The Case of Ibn Abī ʿAqīl and Ibn al-Junayd’, examines the early stages of Imāmī fiqh and its impact on later developments. He was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from December 2015 until December 2021.
Fatima Siwaju is currently an Assistant Professor of African-American and AFrican Studies at the University of Virginia. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Princeton University. She earned her BA(Hons) in Modern and Medieval Languages and an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, before going on to study an MA in Religion at Syracuse University. Fatima’s research engages with the intersections of religion, race and identity, particularly as they relate to Afro-descendant Muslim communities in the Americas. Her theoretical interests include the anthropology of religion, Caribbean intellectual traditions, modern Islamic thought, and postcolonial and diaspora studies. She was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from January 2017 till August 2023 and since then she has been a Fellow of the Shīʿah Institute.
George Warner holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. George Warner was an employed member of staff as an office administrator at the Shīʿah Institute from August 2013 until August 2014. He was also a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from October 2012 until August 2018.
Stefan Willimason Fa is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from University College London. His research interests focus on the role of sound in Islamic ritual and religious expression, particularly in Anatolia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. His PhD research focuses on genres of religious recitation and mourning in the Azeri Shīʾah community in North-eastern Turkey for which he has recently completed a year of fieldwork in the city of Kars. Stefan Williamson Fa was a Research Associate of the Shīʿah Institute from September 2016 until August 2018 and since then he has been a Fellow of the Shīʿah Institute.