Current
Dr. Mujtaba Farooq is currently a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Study and Research (CSR) New Delhi. He holds Two-year diploma in Comparative Religions, B.Ed., Masters and PhD (Islamic Studies) from the Indian Institute of Islamic Studies and Research (IIIRS), University of Kashmir Srinagar, Maulana Azad National Urdu University Hyderabad, respectively. His special areas of interest are: Orientalism and Quran; Women Scholarship in Islam and Islamization of Knowledge. He is the author of Maryam Jameelah: Magrbi fiker-o-tehzeib ki bebak naqid; Uloom Islami ki Tadween Jadeed and Contemporary Issues of Muslim Youth: Analysis and Solutions. Also, he has published a large number of articles in reputed journals and magazines.
Khushhal Ahmed is a Research Associate at the Centre for Study and Research (CSR), New Delhi, and a doctoral scholar in the Department of Psychology at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). His doctoral research examines media violence and its impact on youth social behavior and well-being, engaging with questions at the intersection of social and political psychology. His broader interests encompass religion, decolonial psychology, anthropology, and philosophy, with a particular focus on the revolutionary and liberating potential of Islam in the Indian subcontinent.
Having completed his BSc with Zoology majors, Khushhal pursued a Master’s in Psychology from AMU, where he received the University Merit Financial Award for two consecutive sessions (2021–2022 and 2022–2023). Since 2022, he has also been serving as an Editor at The Companion, where he curates and oversees critical engagements with themes related to students, society, politics, and culture. At CSR, he contributes to the Centre’s research, writing, and editorial initiatives, advancing its vision of intellectually grounded and socially conscious scholarship.
Jabir K holds a master’s in Psychology from Aligarh Muslim University and is currently a research assistant at the Centre for Study and Research (CSR India), New Delhi. He has research experience in various interdisciplinary domains encompassing social identity theory, affect theory and the study of emotions. His primary research interest includes the ethical and affective aspects of performative traditions of Mappila Muslims, which include the emotionality, spirituality, and religious sensoriums related to their practices. In CSR Jabir’s research centres on the formation of political subjectivity and the articulations of religiosity among Indian Muslim youth.
Throughout his academic trajectory, Jabir has delivered 8 research papers at national and international conferences. He also authored numerous articles on various topics such as religion, cinema, sports, and history. These articles have been published in esteemed magazines such as Madhyamam, Deshabhimani, Drishyathalam, and Peoples Dispatch.
Obaidur Rahman Naufal was a Research Assistant at the Center for Study and Research (CSR) and a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at Ibn Haldun University, Turkey. He completed his M.A. in Political Science and B.A. in History from Aligarh Muslim University, India.
His research interests include Islam and Islamic movements, anthropology of the state, sociology of religion, modernity and postmodernity, power & knowledge, political violence, and contemporary India.
Syed Ahmed Muzakkir hails from Chennai, Tamil Nadu. He is currently doing a PhD in Philanthropic Studies at Indiana University, USA. His graduation was in Economics from the University of Madras, Chennai, and his post-graduation was in Economics from the International Islamic University Malaysia. His areas of interest include civil society, social movements and the application of Islamic thought to contemporary society. He is also a Hafiz of the Quran.
He has participated in numerous academic conferences and published over half a dozen research papers in various academic journals. Apart from that, he has contributed opinions pieces for various magazines.
He is a member of JIH, Idara e Adab e Islami, and All India Markazi Majlis e Mushawarat. He previously served as Director, Centre for Educational Research and Training (CERT) (2019-20), and as Secretary General of SIO India (2021-22). He also served as Research Associate at the Center for Study and Research (CSR India).
Dr Waseem Naser completed his doctorate in anthropology in 2023 at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany. His research was based within the Emmy Noether Project “Bureaucratisation of Islam in Southeast Asia and its Socio-Legal Dimensions” and examined the notions of emotions, senses and personhood. Prior to his doctorate, he obtained his postgraduate degree in Economics at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM), with a research dissertation on the Moral philosophy of Adam Smith. This work was recently expanded into a monograph entitled “Adam Smith and Islam: Reconsidering the Moral Foundations of Economics”, published by the Other Press- Kuala Lumpur. Before his stint with CSR in New Delhi in 2024, he was a research fellow at the International Islamic University Indonesia (UIII).
Owais Manzoor Dar is currently serving as Guest Faculty in the Department of Islamic Studies, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi. Owais earned his PhD in Islamic Studies from the same department, where his dissertation focused on the question of ulū al-amr (authority) in South Asian Muslim intellectual history. Broadly, his research engages with the Muslim intellectual tradition in South Asia from the late nineteenth century to the present.
More specifically, he examines how Muslim intellectuals and ʿUlamāʾ have conceptualised and interpreted authority and how these interpretations continue to shape intra-Muslim debates and tensions. His work includes a few research articles, book chapters, essays, and reviews published in reputed academic journals such as the Australian Journal of Islamic Studies, Analisa: Journal of Social Science and Religion, and the American Journal of Islam and Society. He has also contributed to international platforms, including The Maydan (George Mason University, USA).