I am a historian of religion in the modern world, with particular reference to Islam, and to the region of South Asia (the Indian subcontinent). My research focuses in various ways upon religious revitalisation and the remaking of religious authority within modern Islam. Currently, much of my work centres in different ways upon Islamic family law as it is interpreted and practiced in South Asia; in recent years, I have been involved in a variety of projects around Muslim marriage and divorce law, state- and non-state approaches to the implementation of Islamic laws, Muslim women’s rights, and legal age of Muslim marriage. I have worked with a number of women’s and children’s rights-focused NGOs which have sought to use academic knowledge to enact societal change. 

As well as being a tutorial fellow in Theology at Pembroke College, I am Associate Professor in the Study of Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion. I teach across undergraduate and postgraduate courses in contemporary Islam, the methodological study of religion, and the sociology and politics of religion in the contemporary world. Since 2019, I have also been the coordinator of Pembroke’s ‘Religion and the Frontier Challenges’ programme, which has fostered a cluster of postdoctoral fellows at Pembroke working on projects concerning the applications of theology to the resolution of contemporary global problems. I also contribute to teaching in other university faculties, and have long been on the teaching committee for the MSc and MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies, run through the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and the School of Global and Area Studies.