Farid Panjwani is the Dean of the Institute for Educational Development, Aga Khan University. He is also a faculty at the UCL Institute of Education in London where he was working full time as the founding director of a research centre on Education in Muslim Contexts prior to moving to Pakistan in 2021. The Centre was first of its kind in any British University, dedicated to the promotion of sound and critical research and scholarship in Muslim contexts.

An academician with nearly three decades of experience in Pakistan and the United Kingdom, Farid holds a DPhil in Philosophy of Education from the University of Oxford and an MA in Educational and International Development from the Institute of Education, University College London, before which he completed his MBA and BBA from Institute of Business Administration, Karachi. 

He is driven to improve the quality of education, particularly in developing countries and in Muslim contexts. He has an interdisciplinary approach and has published widely in the areas of philosophy of education, citizenship, teacher education, imagination, religious education, hermeneutics and Islamic Studies. His recent publications have explored the role of imagination in fostering care, compassion and criticality amongst students. 

He has worked on several educational projects around the world and has acted as a consultant to many research projects and organisations, including the International Baccalaureate, the Adyan Foundation in Lebanon, the Islamic Religious Council in Singapore, the Aga Khan Academies, and the government of Punjab, Pakistan. In 2016, Farid was appointed on the Commission on Religious Education, UK​ which was tasked to come up with policy recommendations for the future of religious education in the UK. 

He is also extensively involved in voluntary work, where he serves both at the grassroots level as well as by being on the governing bodies of various organisations.​