Faisal Devji

{{Infobox academic

|honorific_prefix = Professor

|honorific_suffix = {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FRHistS}}

|image = 250px

|caption = Devji in 2013

|birth_date = {{birth year and age|1964}}

|birth_place = Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

|occupation = Historian and academic

|title = Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History

|alma_mater = University of British Columbia
University of Chicago

|thesis_title = Muslim Nationalism: Founding Identity in Colonial India

|workplaces = Harvard University
Institute of Ismaili Studies
University of Chicago
The New School
Yale University
St Antony's College, Oxford
Balliol College, Oxford

|discipline = History

|sub_discipline = {{hlist|History of India|History of Islam|Global history|History of violence}}

|doctoral_advisor = Fazlur Rahman Malik

}}

Faisal Devji {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|FRHistS}}{{cite web |title=List of Fellows (February 2024) |url=https://files.royalhistsoc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/22170322/Fellows_February-2024.xlsb.pdf |website=Royal Historical Society |access-date=21 February 2025}} (born 1964) is a historian who specializes in studies of Islam, globalization, violence and ethics. He is Professor of Indian History at the University of Oxford and Director of the Asian Studies Centre at St Antony's College.{{cite web |title=Professor Faisal Devji |url=https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/dr-faisal-devji |website=Faculty of History, University of Oxford |access-date=21 February 2025}}

Life and career

Devji was born in Dar es Salaam in 1964 to a family of western Indian origin. His undergraduate education was at the University of British Columbia, where he received double honors in history and anthropology. He received his PhD from the University of Chicago with his dissertation Muslim Nationalism: Founding Identity in Colonial India and was chosen to be a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. His doctoral supervisor was Fazlur Rahman Malik.{{cite book |last1=Devji |first1=Faisal |title=Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity |date=2005 |publisher=Cornell University Press |location=Ithaca, NY |isbn=1850657750 |page=vii}}

After leaving Harvard he became head of graduate studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London. Devji returned to academic life in 2003, holding faculty positions at the University of Chicago, Yale University and The New School before joining the University of Oxford in 2009.{{cite web |title=Faisal Devji |url=https://quincyinst.org/author/faisal-devji/ |website=Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft |access-date=21 February 2025}} Initially appointed a Reader in South Asian History, he was awarded the Title of Distinction of Professor of Indian History by the university in September 2018.{{cite journal |title=Recognition of Distinction 2018 |journal=Oxford University Gazette |date=27 September 2018 |volume=149 |issue=5315 |page=14 |url=https://gazette.web.ox.ac.uk/files/27september2018-no5215redactedpdf |accessdate=30 September 2018 |publisher=University of Oxford |format=pdf}} In Michaelmas term 2025 he will take up the newly-renamed position of Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History at Balliol College, Oxford.{{cite web |title=Faisal Devji appointed as Beit Professor of Global and Imperial History |url=https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/article/beit-professor-of-global-and-imperial-history-announcement |website=Faculty of History, University of Oxford|date=10 April 2025}}

Devji is Zanzibari, and is now a Canadian citizen. In addition to his Oxford professorship, he is a senior fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge (New York University) and Yves Oltramar Chair at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.{{cite web|url=http://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/people/devji.html|title=People – St Antony's College|website=www.sant.ox.ac.uk|accessdate=15 August 2017}}

Research

Devji's multidisciplinary work grounds empirical historical issues in philosophical questions.{{cite news|title=The ideas interview: Faisal Devji|work=The Guardian|date=9 May 2006|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/17/alqaida.academicexperts}}

In 2005, Cornell University Press published his Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity, exploring the ethical content of jihad as opposed to its more widely studied purported political content. The book draws a distinction between the majority of Islamic fundamentalist organizations concerned with the establishing of states and al-Qaeda with its decentralized structure and emphasis on moral rather than political action. His next book was The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics, published by Columbia University Press in October 2008.

Bibliography

Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005)
The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)
The Impossible Indian: Gandhi and the Temptations of Violence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012)
Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013)
Political Thought in Action: The Bhagavad Gita and Modern India (co-editor with Shruti Kapila; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
Islam After Liberalism (co-editor with Zaheer Kazmi; New York: Oxford University Press, 2017)

References

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080219064718/http://www.newschool.edu/lang/faculty.aspx?id=1686 Faisal Devji's homepage] at the New School
[http://www.opendemocracy.net/author/Faisal_Devji.jsp Online essays by Faisal Devji] at openDemocracy.net

Category:1964 births

Category:Living people

Category:Zanzibari people of Indian descent

Category:21st-century Canadian historians

Category:Canadian male non-fiction writers

Category:University of British Columbia alumni

Category:University of Chicago alumni

Category:University of Chicago faculty

Category:Yale University faculty

Category:Harvard University faculty

Category:The New School faculty

Category:Academic staff of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies