Iqbal Singh Sevea

Introduction

Associate Professor Iqbal Singh Sevea is Director of the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is an internationally recognised scholar of contemporary and modern South Asia whose core research focuses on South Asian politics, social and political thought, governance and Islamic thought.

Associate Professor Sevea has held academic appointments in leading institutions globally and is the author of several publications. Before joining ISAS, he was an Associate Professor with the Department of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill where he was a faculty member from 2012 to 2021. Prior to this, he was an Assistant Professor and the Coordinator of the Contemporary Islam Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. His publications include The Political Philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal: Islam and Nationalism in Late Colonial India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), India and the Future of G20: Shaping Policies for a Better World (New Delhi: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2023) and Islamic Political Thought in Modern South Asia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming, 2024). He has also published articles and chapters on ethnonationalism in South Asia, the Partition and its aftermath, culture and state ideology in Pakistan, modern Islamic thought, the spread of transnational Islamic movements across the Indian Ocean, conceptions of bodily piety in South Asia and Muslim education in South Asia.

Associate Professor Sevea holds a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from NUS and a master’s degree from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Areas of Interest and Expertise

• South Asian Politics
• Religion and Society in South Asia
• Political Islam
• Modern and Contemporary History of South Asia
• Islam in South Asia