Professor of Islamic History at McGill University, with a focus on Safavid Iran and Twelver Shiʿism. Her scholarship deals with Twelver Shiʿa doctrinal, legal and juristic developments during the late medieval period, and their historical contexts. Her works also cover the relationship between Islam and postcolonial Marxist thought in Lebanon and Iraq. Her writings on the postcolonial Arabic novel complement her growing poetic and literary output, which won her critical acclaim. Abisaab authored Converting Persia: Religion and Power in the Safavid Empire, 1501-1736, and numerous articles, chapters, and Encyclopedic entries on Safavid intellectual and socio-political history, as well as, Twelver Shiʿa law and juristic thought. She received several fellowships and awards including Early Career Outstanding Achievement. She also co-authored with Malek Abisaab, The Shiʿites of Lebanon: Modernism, Communism, and Hizbullah’s Islamists. Her new monograph is titled, God’s Law, the Mujtahids, and the Safavid State in the akhbārī (Traditionist) Thought of Muammad Amīn Astarabādī (d. 1036/1626-7) (With a brief history of Shiʿa jurisprudence, 10th-16th). It examines the origins of the akhbāriyya movement, its juristic and theological foundations in the shadow of the Safavid state, and its implications for the Shiʿa clerics across the Muslim World.