As an award-winning sociologist, I locate immigrants, particularly South Asian Muslims in the West, at the crux of globalization processes. I study: 1) how migration and globalization shape immigrants’ identities, behavior, and interactions; and 2) how geopolitics intersects with racialization and global religious structures to impinge upon immigrants’ everyday lives and intimate relationships.

 

My first book, Here, There, and Elsewhere: The Making of Immigrant Identities in a Globalized World, won multiple prestigious awards from the American Sociological Association: the Thomas and Znaniecki International Migration Book Award, the Sociology of Religion Distinguished Book Award, and the Asian America Book Award. It also won the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the Pacific Sociological Association and the Early Career Investigator Award from the Canadian Sociological Association. 

 

My articles are also widely taught in graduate and undergraduate courses on international migration, race/ethnicity, and religion. I am frequently invited to speak about my research and have given invited talks in over 30 academic venues in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. My work has generated interest also beyond academia, and has been featured in avenues directly informing policy.

 

My next book The World Between You and Me: Race, Religion, and Geopolitics in the Pursuit of Romance, under advance contract from Stanford University Press, examines South Asian Muslim Canadians' perceptions and experiences of interracial and interfatih relationships.