Academic partner
Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala, India
Prof. M.H. Ilias
M.H. Ilias is currently a Professor at the School of Gandhian Thought and Development Studies (SGTDS) at Mahatma Gandhi University. Before joining MGU, he held professorial positions at the Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies at the University of Southern Denmark, and served as both Professor and Director at the India-Arab Cultural Centre and the Centre for the Study of Comparative Religions and Civilizations at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. He earned his PhD in International Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
His research interests span a wide range of interdisciplinary areas, including: the sociology of conflict, comparative theology, Islamic movements in South Asia, the Jewish diaspora in the Indian subcontinent, religion and governance in the Gulf region, Arab world politics, Hadrami migration to the Malabar Coast, as well as intersections between religion and visual culture, cinema and popular culture in West Asia, and Muslim engagement with digital media.
His recent scholarly works include the co-edited volumes Society and Change in the Contemporary Gulf, Off-Campus Orientalism: Western University Branch Campuses in the Gulf, and India–West Asia Relations: Understanding Cultural Interplays. He is also the author of the monograph Contesting Genealogies of Divinity: Arab-Versus-Persian Sufism in Malabar, and Space, Memory, and Jewish National Identity.
VCUarts Qatar – Virginia Commonwealth University, School of the Arts in Doha, Qatar
