Team
Muhammad Alagil Chair
Sumit Mandal
Sumit Mandal is Muhammad Alagil Chair in Arabia Asia Studies at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He is a historian who researches the outcome of longstanding inter-cultural and inter-religious interaction in the Malay World – understood as a flexible and expansive cultural geography. He worked previously at the National University of Malaysia, Humboldt University in Berlin and University of Nottingham Malaysia. His book Becoming Arab: Creole Histories and Modern Identity in the Malay World (Cambridge, 2018) reconsiders colonial and national understandings of the indigenous and foreign by substantiating what were significantly intermixed societies. He is currently doing research on keramat (Muslims shrines) in the Malay world as inscriptions on the landscape of a sacred history that provoke a reimagination of the Islamic Indian Ocean.
Research Fellow
PKM Abdul Jaleel
PKM Abdul Jaleel is Research Fellow associated with the Muhammad Alagil Distinguished Professorship in Arabia Asia Studies, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. Over the last few years, he has been documenting historical as well as intellectual traditions and cultural expressions of Arab societies across the Indian Ocean. Previously, he taught West Asian Studies at the University of Kerala, India and was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies. Jaleel has completed the manuscript of a book titled "Sacred Sailors: Islam in the Sufi Cosmopolis of the Indian Ocean," which is a transregional study of Sufism and how it shaped the cosmopolitan nature of Islam in the region by examining the case of the ‘Alawī Ṭarīqa.
Program Associate
Haytham Althubaiti
Haytham Althubaiti defended his Ph.D. dissertation in Anthropology at the National University of Singapore (NUS) in May 2026 and is a Lecturer in the Department of Global Studies at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals. His research examines the intersections of religion, economy, and labor in contemporary Saudi Arabia, focusing on how sacred professions—particularly al-Zamazimah, the traditional providers of Zamzam water to pilgrims—have been reconfigured through bureaucratization and market rationalization. He holds a BA in Sociology from Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University (Riyadh) and an MA in Sociocultural Anthropology from the University of Virginia. His broader interests include business anthropology, the anthropology of Islam, ritual practice, and cultural identity in the Middle East.
Former Team Members
Engseng Ho
Engseng Ho is Professor of Anthropology at Duke University and formerly Distinguished Professor in Arabia Asia Studies at ARI, NUS. He is the author of Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean (Berkeley: 2006) and a leading scholar of transnational anthropology, history and Muslim societies, Arab diasporas, and the Indian Ocean. His research expertise is in Arabia, coastal South Asia and maritime Southeast Asia, and he maintains active collaborations with scholars in these regions. He is a co-editor of Asian Connections book series at Cambridge University Press. Ho previously worked as Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University; Senior Scholar, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies; Country and Profile Writer, the Economist Group; International Economist, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation/Monetary Authority of Singapore; and Director, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore.
Nisha Mathew
Nisha Mathew is Professor of Social Sciences at the School of Law, Mahindra University, and formerly Muhammad Alagil Research Fellow at ARI. She is a historian and social scientist whose research focuses on the illicit economies of gold smuggling, money laundering and counterfeiting in the post-imperial Indian Ocean region. She received her PhD in History from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 2014. She co-edited the volume titled Claims on the City: Situated Narratives of the Urban (Rowman and Littlefield, 2024). Her article “Sovereignty on the Move: Gold, Financial Capital and a Neoliberal State in India” was published in 2025 as part of the special issue “Hybrid Sovereignty Assemblages: From Liberal to Illiberal and Beyond” in Territory, Politics, Governance. Besides publishing in leading academic journals, she has also authored articles and opinion pieces for The Straits Times, South China Morning Post, The Wire and The NewsMinute. Mathew is the recipient of a major research award from the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and a visiting faculty member of the National Law School (NLSUI) Bangalore, and the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research (NALSAR), Hyderabad.