Robert Gleave is Professor of Arabic Studies, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. His areas of research focus are Islamic law and legal theory, with a particular emphasis on the role of messianism in the history of Shi'i Jurisprudence. He is director of the Islamic Reformulations project, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, which aims to map and understand the transition from classical to contemporary Islamic thought. He is author of Islam and Literalism: Literal Meaning and Interpretation in Islamic Legal Theory (Edinburgh, 2012) and co-editor of Violence in Islamic Thought: from the Qur'an to the Mongols (Edinburgh, 2014).