Muhammed Khaleel

Muhammed Khaleel, from Calicut, South India, is an MA candidate for the Columbia/Aga Khan dual degree in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures. He holds a BA in Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Calicut. He has also completed an undergraduate degree in Islamic Studies from Jamia Madeenathunnoor, Calicut, where he was trained in the Shāfi’ī and Asha’rī Islamic texts. He has also worked as a research assistant at Malaibar Foundation for Research and Development, Calicut, where he gained hands-on experience in Muslim manuscripts from Malabar, further deepening his knowledge and expertise in the field. His areas of interest include Occult sciences, Manuscript cultures, history of science, food history, and Cultural Anthropology.

Elizabeth Harris

Ellie Harris is from New Palestine, Indiana. Before coming to Columbia, Ellie studied philosophy at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Ellie is particularly interested in Sufism and Islamic philosophy, especially in South Asia.

Herman Lim Bin Adam Lim

Herman Lim Bin Adam Lim is the recipient of the Aga Khan Fellowship for the Columbia/Aga Khan Dual MA Program in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures. He is particularly interested in the multiple expressions of Muslimness across the Indian Ocean, and the connections engendered between its littoral regions throughout time. He focuses primarily on Southeast Asia, stressing its importance as an integral (rather than peripheral) region in the wider conversation on the Muslim World.

Prior to this program, Herman received his MA in Asian Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, where he studied the construction of Muslim identity in Malaya and Singapore in the realm of film, literature, and ephemera in the twentieth century, under his advisor Dr. Barbara Watson Andaya. He intends to explore pre-modern and early modern expressions of Muslimness, especially in relation to Sufism and the occult sciences, during his time at Columbia and the Aga Khan University.

Margaret Sawyer

Margaret Sawyer graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in Spanish and International Affairs and a minor in Arabic. During her time at UNH, she interned for the Department of State, where she co-managed an interactive platform for the US Embassy in Libya’s External Office. In her undergraduate thesis, Margaret explored how the Spanish tourism industry frames the country’s Islamic heritage, focusing particularly on Andalusia. As an MA candidate for the Columbia/Aga Khan dual degree in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures, she seeks to understand how politics and religion shape cultural and heritage preservation in the Middle East.

Safiyyah El-Gamal

Safi is from Weddington, NC and recently graduated from Davidson College. She spent many memorable hours with the Religious and Arab Studies departments, discussing pre-modern mysticism interacting with modern consciousness. Her undergraduate thesis thus utilized Ibn Arabi’s Futuhat al-Makiyya as a method of identifying the spiritual flattening in Osama bin Laden’s transcripts. 

Safi has studied Arabic with Qasid, Middlebury, and HDS. Further, her travels to Morocco taught the art of not only calligraphy but also daarija and old medina bartering. Returning to Rabat with the Pulitzer Center, she reported on the story of youth’s mystic and social culture in a new lingual age. In the next couple years, Safi hopes to continue research on mystic thought in a modern political context as a FLAS fellow in the dual MA program.

Usman Khan

Usman Khan is a Queer, Muslim, Pakistani-Canadian graduate from York University, Toronto. His undergraduate degree was a Specialized Honours BA in History where he focused on the intersection between the Middle East, religion, and gender and sexuality studies.

Motivated by his own experiences and observations of Queer Muslims and South Asian youth, Usman aspires to become a historical scholar, contributing to and expanding youth access to research in these areas. He combines rigorous research and theoretical background with his personal perspective as both an outsider and insider to the cultures he explores. With a northern Pakistani background and Canadian upbringing, Usman brings a unique skill set in languages such as English, Hindi, Urdu, and Punjabi, while further intending to soon include Farsi.

Usman's focus is on the region between Kabul and Delhi, specifically examining how Islam influenced gender and sexual norms during the later Delhi Sultanate and early Mughal Empire from the 14th to the 17th centuries.

Sofie Leathers

Sofie Leathers, from Delray Beach, Florida, is pursuing a career in Arabic language education with a research focus in Islamic science and philosophy. She is an MA candidate for the Columbia/Aga Khan dual degree in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures. In her undergraduate thesis at Middlebury College, Sofie produced an original translation of a sample of a 10th-century, occult-scientific agronomical text. In her current position as a scholar-intern at Roots Academy in Rabat, Sofie designs educational programming, including a Sufism-themed trip around Morocco and a workshop series on higher education in the U.S. For two years, she has facilitated virtual English classes for students in rural Morocco with Yallah Al-Quds, an English-Arabic linguistic and cultural exchange platform she helped launch.