• DPhil in Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
• MSt in Oriental Studies, University of Oxford
• BA (Hons) in Arabic with Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, Durham University

I have taught Islamic thought and culture, and Arabic language and literature, at Durham University and the University of Edinburgh. In 2013-14 I was Visiting Assistant Professor at the American University of Sharjah.

• Introduction to Islam
• Sufism: Belief and Practice
• Understanding Religion

I would be interested in supervising the following areas of research:

• Islamic philosophy, especially Ibn Sīnā and the Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ
• Islamic theology
• Sufism (especially the school of Ibn ʿArabī) and Sufi literature in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Urdu
• Qur’anic Exegesis
• Islamic medicine and alchemy
• Christian Scholasticism and its reception of Jewish and Islamic philosophy

The Arabic influence on Renaissance and Reformation Europe

• Medieval philosophy, especially Arabic Aristotelianism and critiques of Avicennan thought
• Ashʿari and Muʿtazili theology
• Sufism and its interaction with philosophy: I am working on two new projects in this connection: ‘Levels of being in Sufi thought’ in A Handbook of Sufi Cosmology, edited by Alexander Knysh and Christian Lange, (Brill, Handbooks of Sufi Studies), commissioned June 2016; and ‘Philosophical Sufism? Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s Miftāḥ al-ghayb’ in A Guide to Sufi Literature, edited by Mohammed Rustom and Joseph Lumbard, (University of California Press), commissioned July 2016
• Arabic medicine and science, especially post-Jābirian alchemy and its influence on Renaissance and Reformation Europe: I am currently preparing a new monograph on this topic – A History of Arabic Alchemy: from Abbasid Iraq to Ottoman Istanbul
• Medieval scriptural commentaries, in particular philosophical, theological and mystical hermeneutics
• Classical Arabic wine songs, Sufi poetry, and didactic verse
• Islamic codicology

• Member of the British Association for Islamic Studies
• External Examiner for the University of Aberdeen
• Outreach: Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2015: ‘Treasures from the East: A Guided Tour to the University of Edinburgh’s Special Manuscript Collection’

• Book Review. The Popularisation of Sufism in Ayyubid and Mamluk Egypt, 1173-1325, in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 28.1 (2017). (3 pages) published online 26 Oct 2016.
• Book Review. Ibn Al-‘Arabī’s Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam: An Annotated Translation of ‘The Bezels of Wisdom’ by Binyamin Abrahamov, in Journal of Sufi Studies, 5.2 (2016), pp. 199-205. (7 pages) published 1 Dec 2016.
• Book Review. Universality in Islamic thought: Rationalism, Science and Religious Belief, in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 27.4 (2016), pp. 535-538. (3 pages) published 21 Sep 2016. 
• ‘Qūnawī’s Scriptural Hermeneutics’ in The Spirit and the Letter: Approaches to the Esoteric Interpretation of the Qur’an, edited by Annabel Keeler and Sajjad Rizvi, Qur’anic Studies Series (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), pp. 299-324. (26 pages) published 15 Sep 2016.
• ‘Alchemical Poetry in Almohad Morocco: the Shudhūr al-dhahab of Ibn Arfaʿ Raʾs’, in Oriens: Journal of Philosophy, Theology and Science in Islamic Societies 44.1-2 (2016), pp. 116-144. (29 pages) published June 2016. 
• The Sufi Doctrine of Man: Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī’s Metaphysical Anthropology, Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science, vol. 90 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014) (228 pages) published May 2014.