Syed Farid Alatas

Syed Farid Alatas is Professor of Sociology at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also appointed to the Department of Malay Studies at NUS and headed that department from 2007 to 2013. He lectured at the University of Malaya in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies prior to joining NUS. In the early 1990s, he was a Research Associate at the Women and Human Resources Studies Unit, Science University of Malaysia. Alatas has authored numerous books and articles, including Ibn Khaldun (Oxford University Press, 2013); Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology (Routledge, 2014); and with Vineeta Sinha, Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon (Palgrave, 2017). Additionally, he published “The State of Feminist Theory in Malaysia,” in Feminism: Malaysian Reflections and Experience (1994). His areas of interest are the sociology of Islam, social theory, religion and reform, intra- and inter-religious dialogue, and the study of Orientalism.