Faisal Devji is a historian who specializes in studies of Islam, globalization, violence and ethics. He is

currently Oxford University Reader in Modern South Asian History. He has held faculty positions at the

New School in New York, Yale University and the University of Chicago, from where he also received

his PhD in Intellectual History. Devji was Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University,

and Head of Graduate Studies at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, from where he directed

post-graduate courses in the Near East and Central Asia. He sits on the editorial board of the journal

Public Culture. Devji is the author of two books, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality,

Modernity (2005), and The Terrorist in Search of Humanity: Militant Islam and Global Politics (2009),

and is currently writing a book on the emergence of Muslim politics and the founding of Pakistan. He is

interested in the political thought of modern Islam as well as in the transformation of liberal categories

and democratic practice in South Asia. Devji’s broader concerns are with ethics and violence in a

globalized world, particularly with the thought and practices of Mahatma Gandhi, who was among the

earliest and perhaps most perceptive commentator on this predicament of our times.