TwitterSimon is a Lecturer in Islamic and Middle East Studies at the University of Freiburg in Germany. He is interested in transnational Islam and how the Islamic scholarly tradition is debated and negotiated in modern and contemporary Muslim societies, in particular in the Middle East and South Asia. Fieldwork over the last couple of years has led him to Lebanon, Tunisia, Egypt, Pakistan, India, Iran, and Iraq. His work draws on materials in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu.
Before coming to Freiburg in October 2017, Simon was a Research Fellow in Islamic Studies at Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD in September 2015 at Princeton University's Department of Near Eastern Studies. His second book, In a Pure Muslim Land. Shiʿism between Pakistan and the Middle East, was published in April 2019 with University of North Carolina Press. A future project on the global history and impact of the Iranian Revolution is under contract with Princeton University Press. Simon’s work has been published in Modern Asian Studies, the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Welt des Islams, and Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, among others.