Max is a religious studies scholar who specializes in modern Islamic material and visual culture, embodiment, and emotions. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania and, in 2026, will also serve as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bryn Mawr College. Max is preparing a book manuscript, tentatively entitled Urban Halal Consumption: The Materiality of Islam and Power in a Gentrifying Philadelphia, about the ways that Muslims in Philadelphia enact Islamic tradition through halal consumption. This monograph examines halal consumption in Philadelphia using a combination of ethnographic and digital humanistic methods in order to understand how Islamic tradition, embodiment, and urban life give halal goods their purchase. 

Additionally, Max collaborates on several ongoing research projects. He is preparing an article (with Jamal J. Elias) on the transmission of Islam through popular Islamic art in the United States, which grew from research supported by the Templeton Religious Trust. With Heather Jaber, Max leads Comparing Affects, a biannual affect theory workshop centered around critical approaches to affect theory, especially those related to the Global South, coloniality, and race. Max has previously published peer-reviewed articles and chapters about how Muslim women negotiate Islamic traditions through tattooing, popular Islamic wall art producers stratify the Islamic wall art market, and a South Asian Muslim community navigates intergenerational tensions through the construction of a basketball court. 

Max is passionate about knowledge-making in classroom and community spaces. From 2023 to 2025, he was a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Kenyon College, where his courses focused on Islam and material religion by covering subjects such as “Islam’s Diverse Paths,” “Islam in North America,” “Islam & Modernity,” “Encountering Religion in its Global Context,” “Religious Bodies, Objects, and Affects,” and “Religion & Film.” He has given numerous guest lectures at institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Texas at Austin, and Brooklyn College. Max also has robust experience in community-based educational spaces, having led interfaith youth dialogue with Interfaith Philadelphia (where he is currently a Fellow) and coordinated educational programming with Al-Bustan Seeds of Culture.

He is also a digital humanities practitioner and project manager. Max currently serves as the technical lead of Re/member Black Philadelphia, the Black Resistance Tour of Philadelphia, and Unstable Archives, as well as Co-PI of IRSAAL-Urdu, a tool for cleaning Urdu datasets. As a Mellon Mid-Doctoral Fellow in the Digital Humanities at the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, he trained in the sensibilities and skills of digital humanities, including web development, data management, text analysis, GIS, and project management.

Effective project management has been foundational to his labor in education, research, and digital humanities. From sequencing project deliverables for multi-year projects to building administrative templates that streamline conference planning to on-boarding new team members to project workflows, he has guided projects at various scales to successfully deliver digital archives, grant-funded projects, conferences, and published reports. He approaches project management as an opportunity to accomplish ambitious goals through collaboration that maximizes the autonomy, creativity, and accountability of team members.