Khalid's research focuses on the history of Central Asian Islam since the Russian conquests in the 1860s - he pays special attention to cultural transformation, identity as a result of historical changes and the fate of Islam under Imperial Russian and Soviet rule.
His first, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform (1998), is a standard work on Jadidism in Central Asia; the second, Islam after Communism (2007), was awarded the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
The third work published in 2015 was Making Uzbekistan, which deals with the history of Central Asia in the early Soviet period (1917-1932).
A New History from the Imperial Conquests to the Present published by Princeton University Press.
[1][3] Kalid has received a number of honors and awards some of which are listed here:[3] A listing of Khalid's edited works, his articles in scholarly anthologies and journals, and works he has translated can be found in his Carleton College profile online.