Michael Dann is a faculty member at Tayseer Seminary, an Islamic seminary founded in West Knoxville in 2014. He received his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2006 and his PhD in Religion from Princeton University in 2015. He served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from 2015-2020.

Dann’s research and publications focus on the Sunnī-Shīʿite divide in Islam, Imāmī Shīʿism, biographical literature and hadith literature. His research has been funded by the Fulbright Program, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, and the University of Illinois’s Center for Advanced Studies. His work has been published by Oxford University Press, Edinburgh University Press, and Brill’s Encyclopedia of Islam.

In parallel to his academic work, Dann has served Muslim communities around the country in various capacities as a teacher, board member, translator, volunteer and contributor to interfaith dialogue.