Dr. Razak Khan is a Research Fellow in Global History at the Department of History, Free University, Berlin.He was awarded a DPhil from the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies (BGSMCS), Freie Universität Berlin in 2014. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin (2014-2015), and at The Erlangen Centre for Islam and Law in Europe (EZIRE) at Friedrich–Alexander University Erlangen–Nürnberg (2019). He has been affiliated with The Centre for Modern Indian Studies, Goettingen University (2015-2024) where he is finishing his Habilitation project “Minor Cosmopolitanism: Islam, Urdu, and Emotional Integration in the Life and Writings of Syed Abid Husain (1896-1978).”

Razak Khan is postdoctoral research fellow in the ERC consolidator grant project “Democratising the Family? Gender Equality, Parental Rights, and Child Welfare in Contemporary Global History” (DEMFAM) His project is entitled “Unfamiliar: Family, Law, and Democracy in South Asia.” The project explores colonial genealogies and postcolonial trajectories of debates around minorities and family law in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. It looks at the intersection of religion, gender and sexual minorities and family law on the issues of marriage, adoption and inheritance. His wider research interests include early modern and modern Indian history, South Asian Islam and Muslim cultures, Urdu public cultures, affect and archives, comparative Indo-German histories, history of emotions and experience, global intellectual and legal history.

Monograph

Minority Pasts: Locality, Emotions, and Belonging in Rampur. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2022.

Edited Volumes

The Incomparable Festival. Penguin Black Classics,2021

Nodes of Translation: Intellectual History between Modern India and Germany. De Gruyter, 2024.

Peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and other writings

“Muslim Household, Nation and Urdu in Television Dramas in Pakistan.” South Asia (June 2023).

“Entanglements in the Colony: Jewish-Muslim connected histories in Colonial India.” Modern Asian Studies (March 2022).

“Place of Knowledge: Education and Urban History in Rampur.” Max Weber Stiftung India Branch Office and GHI London Education and the Urban in India | Working Paper Series 2021/8.

“Minor Cosmopolitanisms: Institutions, Intellectuals and Ideas between India and Germany.” Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (2020) 40 (2): 291–294.

“Entanglements of Translation: Psychology, Pedagogy and Youth Reform in German and Urdu.” Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (2020) 40 (2): 295–308.

“Iqbal, German Orientalism and Making of Modern Mysticism.” Schirin Amir-Moazami eds. Orientalism at 50. TRAFO, Series, Berlin. 3 August 2020.

“Knowledge in Transit: Global Encounters and Transformation in Magnus Hirschfeld ́s Travelogue.” History of Knowledge Blog, 6 November 2019.

“A Festival Extraordinaire: An Indo-Islamic Poem.” Poetry in the Indo-Islamic Millennium Blog Post, 24 February 2019.

“Travelers: Transformative Journeys and Emotional Contacts”. In Benno Gammerl, Philipp Nielsen, and Margit Pernau eds. Encounters with Emotions: Negotiating Cultural Differences since Early Modernity. Berghahn Books, July 2019.

"Entangled Institutional and Affective Archives of South Asian Muslim Students in Germany." MIDA Online Post, 2019.

"Entangled Ideas: K. M Ashraf and New Indology in the German Democratic Republic." MIDA Online Post, 2018.

"Princely Architectural Cosmopolitanism and Urbanity in Rampur." Global Urban History Blog, 5 August, 2017.

"Poetic Sovereignty" Biblio: A Review of Books, Oct-Dec, 2017.

"Rethinking "National Culture" of India: An Entangled Indo-German Intellectual History." TRAFO - Blog for Transregional Research, 16.01.2017.

"The Social Production of Space and Emotions in South Asia." Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, Volume 58, Issue 5, 2015, 611-633.”

"Local Pasts: Space, Emotions and Identities in Vernacular Histories of Princely Rampur." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Volume 58, Issue 5, 2015. 693-731.

"The Case of Falling Walls: Politics of Demolition and Preservation in Rampur," Economic and Political Weekly, Vol - XLIX No. 12, March 22, 2014, Web exclusive. Republished in EPW, Vol. 49, Issue No.20, May 17, 2014, 25-28.

“Recovering Minority Pasts: New Writings on Muslims in South Asia,” South Asia Chronicle, 2, 2012, 375-397.

"Rethinking Muslim Politics: The Rampuri Experience," Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 44, No. 25, 20 June 2009, 16-18.