I am Visiting Professor at the Department of Languages and Cultures, affiliated to the Centre for Research on Culture and Gender (CRCG) and at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, affiliated to the Middle East and North Africa Research Group (MENARG). I am social anthropologist and Arabist with extensive fieldwork experience in the Middle East and Belgium. My current research interests include the racialisation of Muslims; Islam in Europe and religion/secularism. I hold a PhD in Comparative Science of Cultures from Ghent University, Belgium (2016) and was guest professor at the Department of Middle East Studies of Ghent University (2017-2018). As postdoc researcher at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, VU University Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2017-2020), I worked in a collaborative anthropological research project on the shifting meanings and contexts of early marriage among Syrian refugees in Jordan. My latest research project investigates Islamic ethics and conviviality in Western superdiverse urban contexts.
I am at home in several disciplinary fields and literatures including contemporary Islam, Muslim societies and the Middle East; critical development and postcolonial/decolonial theory; minority politics, migrant and refugee studies; gender & sexuality; and critical religion studies and (post)secularism. I previously served as editor of Religion and Gender, and currently serve as convenor of the Islam, Ethics and Diversity Network; as co-editor-in-chief of DiGeSt Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies, and am a member of CESSMIR.
Teaching in several courses of the interuniversity MA program Gender and Diversity, I am open to supervise MA and PhD students.
