Rob Gleave is Professor of Arabic at the University of Exeter, and researches the history of Shiism in Iran, Iraq and India. His interests include Shiite legal and political thought, legal hermeneutics and the wider history of Islamic law.  He was Honorary Library, then Honorary Secretary, and then President of BIPS between 1998 and 2015. His most recent publications are (with Kumail Rajani), Shiite Legal theory (OUP, 2024) and (with Omar Anchassi), Islamic Law in Context (CUP, 2025). He is currently working on an extended study of religion and politics during the reign of Fath Ali Shah Qajar.