Md. Muddassir Quamar is an Associate Fellow in Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi. He holds a Ph.D. in Middle East studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University and his doctoral thesis focused on social dynamics in Saudi Arabia in the context of the tensions between two seemingly non-harmonious trends; Islamization and modernization. He has a broader interest in Gulf societies, political Islam, Middle East geopolitics and India’s relations with the Middle East. He has co-authored two books India’s Saudi Policy: Bridge to the Gulf (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) and Persian Gulf 2019: India’s Relations with the Region (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). He is currently working on a manuscript on education reforms in Saudi Arabia. He has co-edited four anthologies, including Changing Security Paradigm in West Asia: Regional and International Responses (Knowledge World, 2020), Political Violence in MENA (Knowledge World, 2020), Islamic Movements in the Middle East: Ideologies, Practices and Political Participation (Knowledge World, 2019) and Contemporary Persian Gulf: Essays in Honour of Gulshan Dietl, Girijesh Pant and Prakash C. Jain (Knowledge World, 2015). His research papers have appeared in leading international journals such as Asian Affairs, Strategic Analysis, India Quarterly, Contemporary Arab Affairs, Digest of Middle East Studies, Journal of Arabian Studies and Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

As part of his project in MP-IDSA, Dr. Quamar authored a monograph on Erdogan’s Turkey: Politics, Populism and Democratisation Dilemmas. Since 2018, he has served as the Book Review Editor for Strategic Analysis, the flagship journal of MP-IDSA published in association with Taylor & Francis. In May 2020, he edited an MEI Monograph Middle East Fights Covid-19: A Fact Sheet with contributions from students pursuing Masters in IR in JNU. He regularly contributes Op-Ed articles on developments in the Persian Gulf, Middle East and India’s relations with the region for Indian and international forums. In 2014-15, he was a Visiting Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, Riyadh. Dr. Quamar has been associated with the Middle East Institute, New Delhi, in various capacities since its foundation and serves as Associate Editor of its flagship journal, the Contemporary Review of the Middle East published by Sage, India.