Ahmad Najib Burhani is research professor and Chairman of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities (ISSH) at the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN). Previously, he was the director of the Research Center for Society and Culture (PMB) at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta. He received his PhD in Religious Studies from the University of California-Santa Barbara, USA in 2013. During the last year of his study, he won the Professor Charles Wendell Memorial Award from UCSB for the academic achievement in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies. He received his Master degrees from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom (MSc in Social Research Methods & Statistics) and Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands (MA in Islamic Studies). Not long after returning to Indonesia, Najib Burhani was selected as a member of the elite group Indonesian Young Scientists (ALMI) of the Indonesian Academy of Sciences (AIPI).
Burhani has been active in publishing articles in top academic journals such as Asian Journal of Social Science (NUS/Brill), Indonesia and the Malay World (SOAS/Roudledge), Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations (Birmingham/ Roudledge), Sojourn (ISEAS), Contemporary Islam (Springer), TRaNS (Cambridge), Asian Politics & Policy (Wiley-Blackwell), and Muslim World (Wiley-Blackwell). He also contributed articles for edited volumes published by Palgrave Macmillan Press, Amsterdam University Press, ISEAS, Roudledge, and so on. His monograph includes Sufisme Kota [Urban Sufism] (2001), Islam Dinamis [Dynamics of Islam] (2001), Tarekat Tanpa Tarekat [Non-Conventional Sufi Orders] (2002), Muhammadiyah Jawa [Javanese Muhammadiyah] (2010), Muhammadiyah Berkemajuan [Progressive Muhammadiyah] (2016), Menemani Minoritas [Becoming a Friend of Minorities] (2019), Dilema Minoritas di Indonesia [Dilemma of Minorities in Indonesia] (2020), Heresy and Politics (2020), and The New Santri: Fragmentation of Religious Authority in Indonesia (2020). Burhani previously served as the editor-in-chief of the Journalof Masyarakat dan Budaya [Society and Culture] (jmb.lipi.go.id) and currently serves as an editorial board of the journal of Contemporary Islam (Springer) and International Journal of Islamic Thought (IJIT), the National University of Malaysia (UKM).
Burhani was a fellow at the Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict (CRCC), Drew University, New Jersey, USA; IIIT (International Institute of Islamic Thought) Virginia, USA; ISIM (International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World) Leiden, the Netherlands; and The Center for Southeast Asian Studies (CSEAS) Kyoto University, Japan. From June 2017 to Dec 2020, he was a visiting fellow at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Singapore.
In addition to the Professor Charles Wendell Memorial Award from UCSB, Najib was selected as the 100 Notable Alumni of UIN Syarif Hidayatullah Jakarta (2020) and the Best Researcher at LIPI in the Field of Social Sciences and Humanities (2020). He then becomes an Icon of Pancasila in the Field of Science and Innovation (2020) and received Muhammadiyah Award for his contribution in science and technology (2021). He can be reached at: ahma045@brin.go.id or najib27@yahoo.com, facebook.com/najibburhani, Instagram @najib.burhani, and twitter @najib_lipi
