He holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from McGill University, Montreal and he specialises in modern and pre-modern Shīʿah intellectual history, covering philosophy, law, and jurisprudence, with a particular focus on the Iraqi city of Ḥillah during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries AD. He is also interested in studying Shīʿah Islam through the lens of the concept of tradition and social network theory. He has contributed to journals including the American Journal of Islamic Social Science, Islamic Studies, and the Journal of the Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University, and to books such as Interpretations of Law and Ethics (Edinburgh, 2010) and Encyclopedias About Muslim Civilizations (Edinburgh, 2009). Professor Aun Hasan Ali has been a Fellow of the Shīʿah Institute since November 2015.