M Abdul Fathah

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M Abdul Fathah hails from the coastal Malabar region of South India and embodies the rich socio-cultural imageries of Islam in the region. He spent a considerable period of his school years with his immigrant parents in Riyadh and was drawn to frequent faith-based gatherings of the Malabari expatriate community. Fathah identifies himself as a product of migrant and transnational Islam, a subject that has captivated his academic pursuits in recent years. During his undergraduate studies at Jamia Madeenathunnoor in Calicut, he received rigorous training in Shāfi’ī and Asha’rī texts, alongside classical Arabic. Before joining the dual degree, he completed an MA in Political Science at the University of Hyderabad. His master's thesis explored how class and religion intervene in narratives of emigration within the Indian state and its subnational entities. He currently serves as an editor at Katib webmag (katib.in), where he curates articles and podcasts exploring the Islamicate religiopolitical imagination across the Indian Ocean world. As an MA candidate for the Columbia/Aga Khan dual degree in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures, he seeks to explore the academic field of Islam and particularly understand the religiopolitical discourses produced by South Asian Muslim immigrant organizations and itinerary Ulamā within the hierarchical space of the Arab Gulf states.

Liliana Bollinger

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Liliana Bollinger graduated from UCLA with a BA in Political Science and a minor in Arabic and Islamic Studies. After studying in Morocco during her undergrad, she became interested in the ways communities have and continue to combat colonial power and influence, particularly how the Muslim and Arab worlds resist European/American imperialization and violence. Her specific areas of interest are the Maghreb, Iraq, and Palestine. She is also curious about the ways academia has and continues to aid and support violent colonial pursuits in this region, specifically the question: What role do academics, scholars, and academic institutions play in imperial wars? As a FLAS award recipient, Liliana is prioritizing the study of Arabic during her Masters, and is excited about the opportunity to deepen her understanding of Islam and Muslim cultures around the world. She is ecstatic to be working with such an inspiring faculty and incredible cohort.

Andrew Bielecki

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Andrew Bielecki's research focuses on the development of Islamic thought in medieval and other pre-modern Islamic societies, particularly that of the Ottoman Empire and its contemporaries from around 1300-1600 CE. He is interested in Ottoman and other Eastern Mediterranean eschatological traditions, messianic movements, and other visionary and experiential approaches to end-of-times-related religious thought. He intends to study the role of İstanbul as a nexus for Ottoman eschatological thought, especially during and after the 1509 CE earthquake, the Kıyamet-i Suğra, the Şahkulu Rebellion of 1511 CE, and incursions into Ottoman territories by the Ṣafavids and their Kızılbaş allies. 

Noor Jabeen Bhaghani

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Noor Jabeen Bhaghani is an incoming dual degree master’s student in Islamic Studies originally from San Diego, California. Recently, she graduated from McGill University in Montreal, Canada where she conducted self-directed research on pain and affect in Islamic thought and culture. As a third generation Pakistani and Muslim American growing up influenced by Sufism, her interests are shaped by her own experiences and those of her community. In her masters, Noor desires to conduct ethnographic research on the Muslim diaspora, focusing on the subject's relationship with God, the embodiment of religious ethics, and conceptions of healing and transformation found within and through Islam. She is curious about how these questions affect Muslim humanitarian efforts, global ethics of care and dialogue about the umma. As an artist and entrepreneur in her free time, she is an interdisciplinary individual who is passionate about creating community-oriented spaces which encourage enhanced spiritual and creative accessibility. 

Sundus Al Ameen

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Sundus Al Ameen is from Beirut, Lebanon. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in History and Comparative Literature, and a BEd in Secondary Education. In her undergraduate thesis, she examined the roles of women within subaltern resistance movements through a comparative analysis of the Lebanese Civil War and the Nicaraguan Revolution. Her research interests are inspired by her own ancestral history and connection to her homeland. As an incoming MA candidate in Islamic Studies and Muslim Cultures, her primary aim in research is to elaborate on and challenge the image of Shi’a women given the distinct characteristics of their ordinary lives, whether spiritual, secular, or somewhere in between. Outside of academia, Sundus enjoys traveling, cooking, and spending time with her cat, Leo.

Muhammed Khaleel

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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.

Herman Lim Bin Adam Lim

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.