Fawaz Abdul Salam holds a Ph.D. in Religious Studies from McGill University, Montreal. His research broadly focuses on religion and urbanism, with particular emphasis on urban materiality, including architecture, built environments, and the cultural heritage of the Muslim world. His doctoral thesis examined the role of Ottoman architectural and built heritage in shaping the reconfiguration of Muslim urban life in the historical Fatih district of Istanbul. His book project, based on this doctoral research, investigates how built heritage can be explored as a key site of material mediation between the religious and the social, and how Islam, and religion more broadly, continues to inform and shape urban culture in contemporary cities.

Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the Fonds de recherche du Québec at the Department of Religions and Cultures, Concordia University. His postdoctoral project examines the formation of Sufi heritage in Quebec, with a specific focus on the artistic and aesthetic representations of the Naqshbandi Sufi tradition and questions of community belonging. This project also addresses broader questions surrounding the politics of religious heritage in Quebec, particularly in a context where the secular state promotes the “patrimonialization” of Catholic and Protestant architectural heritage on cultural grounds, while Indigenous and minority religious communities often lack institutional recognition and underrepresentation of their heritage.

Before joining McGill, he was a graduate student in Istanbul, where he studied the Turkish language at Istanbul University and pursued doctoral studies in the Department of Sociology at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University. He holds an M.A. in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Delhi.