Ruslan Yusupov was born in USSR, grew up in Russia, lived in China, stayed in USA and studied in Hong Kong. Sociocultural Anthropologist by training, he is especially interested in the problematics of secularism and religion. For his PhD Degree which was completed in the Chinese University’s Anthropology Department, Ruslan did two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a Chinese Hui Muslim minority town in China’s Yunnan province, investigating how local Muslim men and women go about responding to the pressures and predicaments of living Islam in contemporary China. Taking their effort at its focus, his dissertation explores practices of mediation and ideas of collective living that have implications for how we think about religion, secularism and coexistence in the modern world. While at CRS, he will be teaching a range of courses in Islamic Studies at the undergraduate level, and also contribute to the development of Arab Studies minor.