• Anthropology of Citizenship, State and Bureaucracy
• Ethnic Conflict
• Internally Displaced People

Adil is a political anthropologist who is interested in exploring the link between citizenship and development. In 2020, he was awarded with DPhil in International Development from the Merton College, University of Oxford. 

At Oxford, he was the Merton-QEH scholar whose thesis looked at the politics of citizenship among the survivors of 2002 riots in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. During his DPhil, he was trained in areas of citizenship, biopolitics, conflict, urban anthropology and political activism. 

His academic background is multidisciplinary, having received his undergraduate degree in Geography and then an MA in Mass Communication from Aligarh Muslim University (AMU). Thereafter, he secured a Commonwealth Scholarship to study another MA in Development and Rights at Goldsmiths, University of London.

Apart from academics, he had a background in journalism before starting his research at Oxford. He had previously published political and developmental pieces with many media organisations including Guardian, Scroll, The Wire, The Quint, Discover Society, Fair Observer, Sunday Guardian, Catch News, DNA, etc. 

In the past, he was involved in Right to Information (RTI) activism in India, and Outlook magazine, in 2010, profiled him as one of the top five youth RTI activists in the country.