Francis Robinson has been Professor of the History of South Asia at Royal Holloway, University of London, since 1990.  In 2008-11 he was also Sultan of Oman Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and Visiting Professor in the History of Islamic World, Oxford.  In 2016 He was the Mellon Visiting Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Chicago.  In 1996-99 and 2006-09 he was President of the Royal Asiatic Society. 

His interests are primarily in religious change in the Islamic world since the seventeenth century and more specifically in ulama and Sufis in South Asia.  Amongst his recent publications are: Islam and Muslim History in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Pres, 2000); The Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001); Islam, South Asia and the West (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007); The Mughal Emperors and the Islamic Dynasties of India, Iran and Central Asia (London: Thames & Hudson, 2007); Islam in the Age of Western Dominance ed., Vol. 5 New Cambridge History of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Jamal Mian: The Life of Maulana Jamaluddin Abdul Wahab of Farangi Mahall, 1919-2011  (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2017; Delhi: Primus books, 2018 forthcoming).