M H Ilias is Professor and Director at the School of Gandhian Thought & Development Studies, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala. He was a Visiting Professor at Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies, University of Southern Denmark in 2017-18. He has previously been Professor and Director at the India Arab Cultural Centre Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi and Honorary Director at the Centre for the Studies of Comparative Religions and Civilizations, Jamia Millia Islamia. Before joining Jamia Millia Islamia as Reader in 2008, he was a Ford Foundation Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, University of Oxford, UK. In 2008, he was a Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Modern Orient (ZMO), Berlin, Germany. In 2006-07 he served as Assistant Professor at the Kunjali Marakkar Centre for West Asian Studies, University of Calicut in Kerala. He was also associated with the Gulf Research Centre, Dubai, UAE as part-time Research Fellow in 2006.

Professor Ilias holds Ph.D., from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and has a Masters of Arts in Politics and International Relations from School of International Relations, Mahatma Gandhi University. He is recipient of a number of research awards and grants including the SUSI Scholar at the Temple University, United States; Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR)-funded Major Research Project on A Study of Muslim Question in Malayalam and Bengali Cinema of the Sub-Continent; Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) Travel Grant for a trip to Russia in 2009; Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts (IGNCA) Major Research Grant in 2009 for a project on Documentation of Arabi-Malayalam and the Linguistic-Cultural Linguistic Traditions of Mappila Muslims of Kerala; Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) Fellowship for a study visit in Egypt in 2006. He is member of a number of academic societies, academic journals and of university research centres.

Professor Ilias is the author of Travel and Transformation: The Life History of Saiyyid Fadl bin Alawi (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming), Arabi-Malayalam: Linguistic-Cultural Traditions of Mappila Muslims of Kerala (New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for Arts, 2017), Off-Campus Orientalism: Western University Branch Campuses in the Gulf (New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2015), Re-conceptualizing ‘Political’: Translocal Malayalee Organizations in the Gulf (New Delhi: Gulf Studies Programme, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2011) and Space, Memory and Jewish National Identity, (New Delhi: New Centaury Publications, 2007). He has co-edited two volume Society and Change in Contemporary Gulf (New Delhi: New Century Publications, 2011) and India-West Asia Relations: Understanding Cultural Interplays (New Delhi: New Century Publications, 2007). He has published several research articles in reputed international journals and contributed chapters for several edited volumes published and presented research papers in several conferences in India and outside and regularly contributes opinion articles for newspapers, magazines and websites in India.