Maria is a postdoctoral fellow in the project "The Populism of the Precarious: Marginalization, Mobilization, and Mediatization of South Asia's Religious Minorities", directed by Jürgen Schaflechner.

From 2020 until 2024, she was a research fellow at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in the same city. Maria received her PhD from the Department of Religion at Princeton University in 2019. In addition, she holds an M. St. in Global and Imperial History with a focus on South Asia from the University of Oxford, and a B. A. in Near Eastern Studies from the Freie Universität Berlin.

Her research interests focus on Islam in South Asia, both in the colonial and postcolonial periods, including modern Islamic thought, religious reform, knowledge production and scholarly networks, the history of Orientalism, welfare and charity in Islam, Muslim-Christian encounters and interreligious dialogue, as well as religious minorities in South Asia, particularly the Ahmadiyya.

Monograph

Islamic Modernism and Religious Identity in Colonial Punjab: The Anjuman-i Himayat-i Islam Lahore, McGill-Queen’s University Press. (forthcoming in spring 2025)

Editorship

2020: (As Maria-Magdalena Fuchs) Co-editor of special section “Religious Minorities in Pakistan”, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 43:1.

Peer-Reviewed Articles

2022: The ‘Church of Islam’: Esotericism, Orientalism, and Religious Origin Myths in Colonial South Asia, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 24:1.

2020: (As Maria-Magdalena Fuchs) With Simon Wolfgang Fuchs, “Religious Minorities in Pakistan: Identities, Citizenship and Social Belonging”, Introduction for a special section of South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 43:1, 52-67.

2016: (As Maria-Magdalena Fuchs) “The Public Sphere in South Asia: A Review Essay”, Suedasien-Chronik.

2016: (As Maria-Magdalena Fuchs) “Walking a Tightrope: The Jesuit Robert Bütler and Muslim-Christian Dialogue in Pakistan”, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations.

Encyclopedia Entries

2025: “Barakat Ullah, 1891-1972”, Encyclopedia on Christian-Muslim Relations, 1500-1900 (Brill)(accepted for publication)

2025: “The Anjuman-i Himayat-i Islam Lahore and Christian Missionaries”, Encyclopedia on Christian-Muslim Relations, 1500-1900 (Brill) (accepted for publication)

Book Reviews

2025: Megan Eaton Robb, Print and the Urdu Public: Muslims, Newspapers, and Urban Life in Colonial India, Comparative Islamic Studies (forthcoming)

2020: M. Raisur Rahman, Locale, Everyday Islam and Modernity: Qasbah Towns and Muslim Life in Colonial India, Studia Islamica, 115, pp. 149-301.

2020: Deanna Ferree Womack, Protestants, Gender and the Arab Renaissance in Late Ottoman Syria, American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

2017: Ian Talbot/Tahir Kamran, Colonial Lahore: A History of the City and Beyond, Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies.