Blain Auer is Professor of the Study of Islam in South Asia at the University of Lausanne in the Department of Slavic and South Asian Languages and Civilizations. He specializes in Islam in the context of premodern South Asia. In particular, he studies the representations of Islamic authority exhibited through the use of the Qur’an, Hadith, exegesis, and history writing produced during the Delhi Sultanate. A second area of research focuses on the modern ritual, pilgrimage, and relics connected with the burial places of the special dead in Islam. His book titled Symbols of Authority in Medieval Islam: History, Religion, and Muslim Legitimacy in the Delhi Sultanate, was published by I.B. Tauris in 2012. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations in 2009.