Hasher Nisar

I’m a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Michigan. Broadly speaking, I work at the intersection of comparative politics, religion and politics, and state building, with a regional focus on the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

My primary research agenda examines how the institutionalization of religion has evolved from the early period of Islam to the era of the modern nation-state. In particular, I focus on ulama-state relations. Instead of treating the ulama as an undifferentiated collective, I examine how their relationship with the state has evolved across time, varied across empires, and been impacted as a result of colonialism and the modern nation-state. I offer better conceptualization of this relationship, create micro-level datasets of ulama across time, and specify the mechanisms that could explain the variation in the relationship.

My secondary research agenda focuses on Muslim mosques and educational institutions in the United States. On mosques, I investigate how their placement affects the political and economic development at the local level. On Muslim educational institutions, I work as a Research Associate for Professor Nancy Khalil’s US Muslims & Higher Ed Research Lab to study the challenges and opportunities facing Muslim students and seminaries in US higher education.

My work has been published in Politics and Religion, Comparative Migration Studies, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. I’m grateful to have my doctoral studies and research be supported by the Harry S. Truman Foundation, Rackham Graduate School, Global Islamic Studies Center, and the Islamic Scholarship Fund.

I hold B.A. in Political Science from Middlebury College and M.Phil. in Islamic Studies & History from the University of Oxford. Prior to starting my doctoral studies, I was a management consultant in the Middle East and spent a year improving my Arabic at the Qasid Institute in Jordan.