Max-Weber-Kolleg (Steinplatz 2) / Raum 307c (2. OG)
nach Vereinbarung
Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien
Steinplatz 2
99085 Erfurt
Universität Erfurt
Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien
Postfach 90 02 21
99105 Erfurt
I am a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent, UK. Prior to joining the University of Kent in 2012, I taught Sociology and Anthropology at Brunel and Roehampton universities (London). As a researcher at CRONEM (Centre for Research on Nationalism, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism, University of Surrey) I also worked on several international research projects including ‘The religious lives of migrants and minorities: a transnational perspective’ (coordinated by Josh de Wind, Jose Casanova and Peggy Levitt, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14710374/14/3)
I studied in Tours, Dublin and London and my doctoral work focused on the Bengali Muslim diaspora, exploring the relationship between place, identities and transnational politics, with ethnographic fieldwork in London (Tower Hamlets) and Bangladesh (Sylhet).
My current research focuses on the connection between urbanization, religion and development in African contexts as part of the ‘RUA project’ (https://rua-project.ac.uk) funded by the British Academy and which I coordinated as the Principal Investigator. This project, on the moral economies of religious urbanization in Kinshasa (DRC) and Lagos (Nigeria), is a large international partnership between the Universities of Kent, York, Toronto, Lagos and Kinshasa and involved sociologists, anthropologists, geographers, urban planners and demographers. The project explores how religious urban spaces, models and ideals engage with challenges of infrastructural development, urban social cohesion and inclusion, safety and sustainability, in two of the most populated and fastest growing cities in sub-Saharan Africa. As part of my fellowship at the Max-Weber-Kolleg, I want to draw upon some of the RUA project data to explore the links between time and space through a focus on visions of the urban future embodied in the discourses of urban planners and religious actors in mega-city context. Here I pay particular attention to urban change and the infrastructural dynamics of religious urbanization. In parallel I examine the impact of transnational Afro-Christian groups and networks on these urban and territorial processes in Africa but also in diaspora settings.
Books
Articles and book chapters
Max-Weber-Kolleg für kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien
Universität Erfurt
Postfach 90 02 21
99105 Erfurt
Universität Erfurt (Campus)
Nordhäuser Str. 63
99089 Erfurt