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Professor Irfan Ahmad was previously Associate Professor of Political Anthropology at Australian Catholic University (ACU), Melbourne. Before joining ACU, he was a senior lecturer in politics at Monash University (2009-2013). Earlier he taught at Utrecht University and University of Amsterdam. Author of Islamism and Democracy in India (Princeton University Press), short-listed for the 2011 ICAS Book Prize for the best study in the field of Social Sciences, his latest monograph is Religion As Critique (University of North Carolina Press, 2017). With Natalie Doyle, he co-edited (IL)Liberal Europe: Islamophobia, Modernity and Radicalization. His numerous articles and contributions have appeared in leading journals like Anthropological Theory, JRAI, Modern Asian Studies, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Public Culture and Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory. He contributed to Princeton Encyclopaedia of Islamic Political Thought. He has held visiting fellowship and other positions at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Gottingen, Germany, Brown University, (USA) and CUNY, New York. Irfan contributes to debates in such media as AL-Jazeera, BBC, Times of India, OpenDemocracy and his interviews have appeared in Dutch, English, Hindi, Malayalam, Turkish and Urdu media.

Experience

  • 2017–present
    Senior research fellow, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany
  • 2013–2017
    Associate professor, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne
  • 2009–2013
    Lecturer and Senior Lecturer, Monash University, Melbourne

Publications

  • 2017
    Religion as Critique Islamic Critical Thinking from Mecca to the Marketplace, University of North Carolina Press
  • 2017
    (Il)liberal Europe: Islamophobia, Modernity and Radicalization (Co-edited with Natalie Doyle), Routledge
  • 2009
    Islamism and Democracy in India: The Transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami, Princeton University Press

Professional Memberships

  • American Anthropological Association
  • American Academy of Religion
  • South Asian Studies Association of Australia