My area of research lies in understanding the diversity within Muslim communities in South Asia by contextualizing their lives and communities in the multiple terrains of everyday life. Keeping the post-colonial South Asian context in the background, I am interested in exploring the interface between the construction of piety, religious reformation, social and sectarian divisions and the socio-political forces at play that constantly reshapes the idea of being a ‘Muslim’. I seek to comprehend how Muslim subjectivities are shaped by intersecting multiple identities like of regional, religious, sectarian and national frames, and how this diverse idea of being a Muslim interacts with the global reformist currents towards a quest for global ‘Islamic’ community. Towards this end I seek to supplement ethnography with social biographies, personal historical accounts, archival materials, official history and creative use of literature and artistic expressions to understand the complexities to being a ‘Muslim’.

Apart from this, I am also interested in understanding the diverse trajectories of social theories and methodologies in varied contexts of geographies, domains of power, ideologies, and inter-sectionalities of everyday life. My interest in this area goes along with the recent trends in doing sociology that problematises the given and taken for granted concepts, theories, perspectives and ways of practicing social sciences by contextualizing and historicizing them in social and intellectual traditions. 2 Some of the courses offered by me at Central University of Punjab are: Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Muslim Communities, Research Methodology, Research Methods and Rural & Agrarian Society.