• The social scientific study of religion
• The social scientific study of popular and youth culture
• The social scientific study of multiculturalism and social identities
• The social scientific study of contemporary Africa (esp. South Africa)

Ibrahim joined the ANU in late 2018 as the Hans Mol Research Fellow in Religion and the Social Sciences, based in the Humanities Research Centre. He is also currently the Convenor of the Herbert & Valmae Freilich Project for the Study of Bigotry.

A graduate of Monash University and the University of Bristol, he was previously a research fellow in the discipline of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Helsinki, a research assistant in La Trobe University’s Centre for Dialogue, and a part-time lecturer at the University of the West of England and Deakin University.

His research has abidingly focused on the role of religion in nominally secular social spheres, including popular music and sport, the focus of his book Evangelical Youth Culture: Alternative Music and Extreme Sports Subcultures, published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2017, and his edited book Christian Punk: Identity and Performance,  published by Bloomsbury Academic in February 2020.

Ibrahim is currently working on his second monograph, Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa, under contract with Routledge, facilitating a small research project on the status of African studies at ANU and in the ACT more broadly, developing the public program of the Freilich Project, and co-editing the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, the publication of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion.