Professor Talib’s research in the anthropology of Islam focuses on Sufi groups, and madrasas. His current research work; Madrasas in the recent history: an alternative view between anthropology and international relations, is a critical examination of the state of social science scholarship on Islam in the contemporary world after 9/11.

Professor Mohammad Talib taught sociology at Jamia Millia Islamia University (Delhi) from 1979 to 2001. In 2002, he came to Oxford as the Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz fellow in the Anthropology of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. He is also Islamic Centre Lecturer at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford.