Prof. Dr. Shahbaz Manj is the Founding Chairperson of the Department of Islamic Studies, Division of Islamic and Oriental Learning, University of Education, Lahore, Pakistan. He is currently serving as a Visiting Professor at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany.

He has over 30 years of experience in teaching, research, and academic administration at universities and within the Higher Education Department, Government of Punjab, Pakistan. Throughout his academic career, he has made significant contributions to institutional development, curriculum design, and postgraduate education in the field of Islamic Studies.

Prof. Manj is the author of fifteen books and has published more than one hundred research articles in national and international peer-reviewed journals. His scholarly work has been widely recognized and has contributed to contemporary academic debates in Islamic studies and related disciplines.

He has supervised a large number of MPhil and PhD scholars over the past sixteen years, with more than one hundred postgraduate research theses completed under his supervision. He has also actively participated in and presented research at numerous national and international conferences and academic seminars.

In addition to his academic responsibilities, Prof. Manj serves as the founding editor of several reputed academic journals and is a member of advisory and editorial boards of various national and international research journals. He has also served as an evaluator of postgraduate theses and academic appointments at universities across different regions.

His research interests include Qur’anic studies, Islamic intellectual history, Orientalism, Islamic modernism in the Arab world and the Indo-Pak subcontinent, Muslim and Western approaches to modernity, interfaith and intra-faith dialogue, mysticism, jihad and extremism, and contemporary legal and social issues including blasphemy laws in Pakistan.

Prof. Manj’s academic work is dedicated to promoting interfaith harmony, global peace, and constructive intellectual engagement across religious and cultural traditions. His research emphasizes a balanced and contextual understanding of Islam in the modern world, with special attention to religious interpretation, social transformation, and ideological diversity.

He has lectured internationally and continues to contribute to global academic discussions on religion, modernity, and coexistence. His work is widely recognized for fostering scholarly dialogue and contributing to a nuanced understanding of Islam in contemporary global contexts.