Scholars in Residence and Research Associates

Dr. Kamran Bashir

Dr. Kamran Bashir is a historian of modern Islam, whose research focuses on the history of the interpretations of the Qur’an in South Asia and the allied question of how modern Muslim views of the life and person of the Prophet Muhammad evolved in the historical contexts of colonial and post-colonial India and Pakistan. He did his MA in Muslim Cultures from the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (London, United Kingdom) and earned his PhD in History in 2018 from the University of Victoria (British Columbia, Canada). Dr. Bashir published his book The Qur’an in South Asia with the Routledge Studies in the Qur’an Series (September 2021) and contributed a chapter to Religious Imaginations: How Narratives of Faith are Shaping Today’s World (ed. James Walters, Gingko Library, London, 2018). His research work has appeared in the Journal of Qur’anic Studies on Qur’anic hermeneutics, and Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation, and Culture on the ethnohistory of marginalized communities in modern South Asia. He has taught courses in liberal arts at the University of Victoria, Camosun College, and Beaconhouse National University (Lahore, Pakistan).

Dr. Brandon Marriott

Dr. Brandon Marriott completed his doctorate at the University of Oxford. He has taught history as a sessional instructor at S.F.U. and held a variety of research positions around the world. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the University of London, a scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library, and a visiting scholar at the University of Oslo. His first book, Transnational Networks and Cross-Religious Exchange in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean and Atlantic Worlds, explores the ties between Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the early-modern period. Academically, he is currently exploring representations of Gog and Magog in the Islamic world as part of a broader project on this apocalyptic motif across the Abrahamic faiths.

Dr. Kamran Rabiei

Kamran Rabiei is a sociologist and researcher specializing in comparative Middle Eastern studies, with a focus on social movements, revolutions, social change, and development. Through interdisciplinary studies, he seeks to analyze the social dynamics of Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) societies in relation to political transformations. His current project, "Political Stability in the Middle East and North Africa: The Power of Coalition and Identity," aims to explain political stability and change in the region.

Through his research and teaching of courses such as Sociology of Islamic Societies, Social Movements, Sociology of Revolutions, and Cultural Anthropology, Rabiei has explored the interplay between social change, cultural foundations, and political transformations in the MENA region. His work examines how shifting social dynamics and cultural frameworks shape power structures and influence political developments. One of his key research interests is the evolving role and position of Islam in social conflicts and political transformations in the region in recent decades.

Rabiei has served as an Assistant Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at Tarbiat Modares University in Iran and has taught at several other institutions. He is the author of the book "Modernization and the Iranian World," in which he explores the formation of a dual rationality shaped by the dialectical relationship between tradition and modernity in Iran. Rabiei has also paid special attention to other countries, including Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey. His research has been published in prestigious journals such as Sociology Compass, International Studies, Critical Research on Religion, and Contemporary Review of the Middle East.

Dr. Amyn B. Sajoo

Amyn Sajoo lectures on Middle East politics, human rights/civic culture, and international law in the departments of Political Science, International Studies, and History.  His research is at the interface of citizenship, identity & public religion.

Dr. Sajoo served as the Canada-ASEAN Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, with fieldwork in Indonesia and Malaysia — followed by academic affiliations at Cambridge and McGill universities, and the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), London. His early career was with the Canadian departments of Justice and Global Affairs, and he was the latter’s Visiting Academic in the Middle East in 2010.  

He is contributing editor of the Muslim Heritage Series, in which the fifth volume, The Shari'a: History, Ethics, and Law, was selected as a 2019 Choice Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association. Dr. Sajoo is currently working on the sixth volume in this series, Muslim Belonging in the West: The Ethics of Citizenship.

His earlier books, Muslim Ethics: Emerging Vistas, and the edited collection, A Companion to Muslim Ethics, are open access from Bloomsbury UK. 

Since 2018, Dr. Sajoo has hosted a series of public conversations on “Identity & Citizenship,” co-sponsored by this Centre.  His onstage guests have included former chief justice Beverley McLachlin, John Ralston Saul, Anver Emon, Ulrike al-Khamis, Monia Mazigh, Kamal al-Solaylee, Saeed Teebi, Catherine Dauvergne, and Wenona Hall.