Lisa Maria Franke is research assistant professor in Islamic Studies at Ghent University in the Department of Languages and Cultures. Her research and teaching focus on the social and intellectual history of Islam and being Muslim in the modern Middle East.
Before joining Ghent University in 2023, she worked as assistant professor at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Göttingen on individual religiosities and non-conformist perspectives in Alexandria as part of the ERC Advanced Grant "Private Pieties". She received her PhD in Arabic Studies in 2011 from the University of Leipzig. In this project, she conducted research on martyrdom, gender constructions and social discourses in Palestine. Subsequently, at the University of Cologne, she studied colloquial poetry and the religious, social and political content negotiated therein in the course of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, as well as meaningful symbolism in modern interpretations of the afterlife. Her research interests include everyday history, eschatology, faith and identity, discourse analysis and gender studies; individuality, religious transformation processes and social dynamics; language as a form of mediation in various text forms. In 2022, she held the professorship (interim) for Islamic Studies (Arabic) at Heidelberg University.
Thematic Foci
Arabic Studies/Islamic Studies/Anthropology: Cultures and societies of the modern and contemporary Arab-Islamic world (North Africa, Near and Middle East)
alternative (non-)religious movements and transformations of religious ideas; religious conflicts; religious-dynamic developments in Egypt; history of Palestine; (religious) education: Knowledge spaces and knowledge orders; processes of secularism and modernisation; martyrdom in Islam: paradise and ideas of paradise (eschatology); Sufi brotherhoods; Islamism; gender studies: gender and gender constructions, gendered space; concepts and ideas of space and spatial configurations; iconographic representations; oral and visual memory; oral history; resistance and agency; discourse analysis.
Regional Foci
North Africa, Near and Middle East esp. Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Oman, the UAE
