Fayaz is currently a Research Associate at The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) where he co-ordinates the Ismaili Heritage Project, a tripartite collaboration between IIS (London), the Aga Khan
Trust for Culture (Geneva), and institutions of the Ismaili community (Aiglemont). The project aims to document, protect, and conserve the built and other tangible heritage of the global Shia Ismaili Muslims.
Originally from Kenya, Fayaz pursued a BSc in Psychology and a BA in Religion at the University of Florida, where he graduated with Honours. He undertook the IIS’s graduate programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities before going on to University College London (UCL) where he completed an MSc in Social Anthropology.
Having worked for over a decade in publishing, he was awarded a PhD scholarship from the University of Edinburgh. His dissertation, ‘People, Places, and Texts: Re/presenting Islam in Edinburgh, Scotland’, employed ethnographic fieldwork as well as visual and textual analysis from a variety of primary sources to meld elements from human geography and Islamic studies.
Recent publications:
- "Twelver Shia in Edinburgh: Marking Muharram, Mourning Husayn"Contemporary Islam 13 (Springer, 2019)
- "Representing Islam at the Edinburgh International Book Festival"in Scotland's Muslims: Society, Politics and Identity , ed. Peter Hopkins (Edinburgh University Press, 2017)