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Gastwissenschaftler/innen

Prof. Dr. Manja Stephan-Emmrich (09/2016 - 01/2017)

Prof. Dr. Manja Stephan-Emmrich is Junior Professor for the cross-section “Islam in Asian and African Societies” at the Institute for Asian and African Studies (IAAW) at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle / Wittenberg and was a doctoral researcher at the Max-Planck-Insitute for Social Anthropology in Halle an der Saale. Manja Stephan-Emmrich is also a principal investigator at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies and had been heading the VolkswagenFoundation-funded research project “Translocal Goods. Education, Work, and Commodities between Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, China, and the Arab Emirates” (2013-2016). She was a research fellow at the IGK re:work “Work and Human Lifecycle in Global History” at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (March to July 2016).

Manja Stephan-Emmrich’s research interests cover the anthropology of Islam, education, migration and youth, Muslim entrepreneurship, global and urban religion. She is particularly interested in transregional Muslim educational and business ties spanning between Central Asia, the Middle East and Eurasia. She is doing fieldwork in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and the United Arab Emirates.

In her current book project she traces the versatile travel trajectories of Tajik alumni from Islamic universities in the Middle East who live and work in the Arab Emirates. Taking the complex intersection of education, work and piety in the alumni’s life-course as a point of departure, the book explores how mobile Tajiks engage in Muslim reformist discourses and lifestyles ‘abroad’. This reformism combines spiritual progress and economic success with the making of an ‘entrepreneural self’ and a religious self-fashioning as ‘Dubai business(wo)men’ that entails cosmopolitan habits, value-driven economic activities and new forms of transnational and transcultural Muslim (be-)longing.

For more see:
https://www.iaaw.hu-berlin.de/en/transregion/islam/about
Dr. Ayşe Çavdar (06/2016 - 12/2016)

Ayşe Çavdar graduated with a doctoral degree in cultural anthropology with her dissertation entitled "the Loss of Modesty: The Adventure of Muslim Family from Neighborhood to Gated Community" from the European University of Viadrina. She is currently working as a researcher and field reporter for the "Human Security" project run by Citizens Assembly in Turkey and Western Balkans. In the frame of this project, she participates in field research, mainly in two topics: "Violence in white collar working environment" and “Community displacement". She spent two months at the ZMO in Berlin as visiting fellow in 2015.

Her academic interests include urban and religious studies with a particular focus on middle-class living spaces and religiosity. She gave courses at several Turkish universities on journalism, writing, and research methodologies.
Prior to her academic career, she worked as a journalist covering political and social issues.

She co-edited two books: With Volkan Aytar, Media and Security Sector Oversight, Limits and Possibilities, TESEV, 2009; With Pelin Tan, The State of Exception in an Exceptional City, Sel Yayınlari, 2013.

In 2010, her interview with sociologist Nilufer Gole was published as a book by Hayy Kitap. In 2011, she edited the Neo-Islamism issue of Express magazine. During her fellowship with the Reconfigurations -June-July 2016-she will work on a research project on how the legal ambiguities related to the built environment reflect on the citizen's relationship with the social and physical landscape of the city.
Dr. Radwan Ziadeh (12/2016)

Ziadeh is a senior analyst at the Arab Center – Washington D.C. Also he is the founder and director of the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies in Syria (www.dchrs.org); and co-founder and executive director of the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C (www.scpss.org). He is a Fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) in Washington D.C.

He was the managing editor of the Transitional Justice Project in the Arab World, and the Head of the Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice, which was established on November 14, 2013 by the Syrian Opposition Interim Government. The Commission tasked to work on the transitional justice file, including investigating crimes, considering means for prosecution, and building a national reconciliation program, among other items.

Since the Syrian uprising started in March 15, 2011 he was involved in documenting the ongoing human rights violations in Syria and testified at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva twice and in front of the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the U.S Congress. He was also involved in the Syrian political opposition. He was elected in October 2011 as director of the Foreign Relations Office of the Syrian National Council until he resigned from the position in November 2012.
Dr. Hania Sobhy (04/2016 - 07/2016)

Dr. Hania Sobhy completed her PhD in Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 2012. Her thesis looked at secondary schools in Cairo as institutions where citizens encounter the state and are disciplined into gendered and classed subjects through relations of marketization, violence and humiliation. It examined the nationally unified textbooks and the schools themselves as spaces where national identity and citizenship were constructed and contested within the authoritarian, neoliberal and Islamist projects of the late Mubarak era. She has taught Middle East Politics, International Relations and Comparative Politics at SOAS, Exeter, and McGill Universities and presented and published on Islamist and post-Islamist discourses and different aspects of education policy and practice in Egypt. She has worked in development policy research and project evaluation in Egypt since 2004.

For more see: http://uni-marburg.academia.edu/HaniaSobhy
Dr. Perrine Lachenal (10/2015 - 01/2016)

Perrine Lachenal graduated from the “École des hautes études en sciences sociales” (EHESS) in Paris, where she majored in Political and Social Science. In 2015, she completed her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology (Aix-Marseille University, France). Her topic was the transformations of the representations and uses of violence and the reconfigurations of gender and class relations in contemporary Egypt.

Her doctoral thesis is the result of an ethnographic study conducted between 2011 and 2012, primarily through participant observation, Lachenal analyzed certain defense practices that have emerged in recent years in Egypt and contributed to a "revolutionary" security market. Self-defense classes (see cover photo), the popularity of which has continued to grow since 2011 in socially affluent districts of Cairo, are at the heart of this research. Her dissertation conceives of self-defense trainings as not only revealing, but also producing "revolutionary" physical and technical repertoires in which emotional, gendered, social and moral dimensions of the period's political upheavals are embodied. Women, and even some men, come to the self-defense classes to acquire combat skills such as throwing kicks and punches, learning to face aggressors using specific objects, and implementing body techniques. The notion of "play" is used as a theoretical tool for drawing together and analyzing the different levels of meaning of the paradoxical experiences observed in these classes. The ethnography allows for a better understanding of the evolution of urban sociability, the transformation of representations and uses of violence, and the reconfiguration of gender and class relations in contemporary Egyptian society. Lachenal argues that self-defense constitutes a valuable vantage point from which to analyze the anthropology of the Egyptian revolution. Her thesis elicits the technical dimension of how individuals deal with power and the socially and sexually situated modalities by which categories such as "legitimacy" and "illegitimacy" are produced with respect to violence.
Dr. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab (09/2015 - 03/2016)

Dr. Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is a scholar of philosophy of culture, both Western and postcolonial. She is the author of Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010). In this book, she examines post-independence Arab debates on cultural malaise and cultural critique and compares them to similar debates in Africa and Latin America. The Arabic version of the book won the 2013 Sheikh Zayed Book Award in the category “Development of Nations”. Dr. Kassab is currently working on a new book entitled Critique, Enlightenment, and Revolution: Arab Intellectuals and the Uprisings. Columbia University Press will publish it. The book analyzes critical intellectual debates regarding enlightenment and revolution with a special focus on Egypt and Syria.

During her stay at the Re-Configuration Network of the CNMS, she hopes to complete the Egyptian part of the book. Her research for the book started in Berlin. Here, she was a research fellow in the spring and fall of 2011 at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies of the Freie Universität. Further work as a research fellow was done during the academic year 2013-1014 at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg.

For more see: http://independent.academia.edu/SuzanneKassab
Dr. Nina Studer (04/2015 - 08/2015)

Dr. Nina Salouȃ Studer wrote her Ph.D. in general history at the University of Zürich on the descriptions of Muslim North African women in the publications of French colonial psychiatrists. Her dissertation will be published by Böhlau Verlag in autumn 2015. She was awarded a two-year SNF (Schweizerischer Nationalfond) scholarship for the Advancement of Scientific Research (Scholarship for Prospective Researchers) in order for her to study for her doctoral degree at St Cross College, Oxford. Her current research is on the medicalization of drinking habits in the colonial Maghreb. She conceptualises the descriptions of drinking habits in medical and psychiatric sources as a new perspective on lived, everyday colonialism, which will allow her to study such diverse topics as assimilation and civilisation, the pathologisation of North African customs, the supposed threat posed by North Africans, as well as questions of gender and class. Her fellowship at the research network Re-Configurations from April to August 2015 allowed her to focus on the question of the use of coffee (both practically and metaphorically) in the conquest of Algeria, and will result in an article as well as furthering her research project.

For more see: http://independent.academia.edu/NinaStuder
Dr. Mohamed Wildan (04/2015 - 07/2015)

Dr. Muhammad Wildan is a lecturer at the State Islamic University (UIN) Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta. Having finished his undergraduate at UIN Sunan Kalijaga Yogyakarta in 1995, he obtained his master degree at Leiden University in the Netherlands in 1999 and then completed his Ph.D. at National University of Malaysia (UKM) in 2009. Amidst completing his PhD, he experienced as research fellow at International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) the Netherland (2007) and also Asian Research Institut (ARI) at National University of Singapore (2007). His expertise is on modern Islam Indonesia is proved by several works on political and radical Islam, and popular culture. His concerned with radical Islamism brought him to be involved in some projects on mainstreaming moderate Islam among some conservative and radical pesantrens (religious schools) in Java, Indonesia. Besides teaching at a university, he is also involved in Muhammadiyah, one of the biggest NGOs in Indonesia.

For more see: http://uinsuka.academia.edu/MuhammadWildan
Dr. Sigall Horovitz (03/2015 - 07/2015)

Dr. Sigall Horovitz is a post-doctoral fellow at the Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions. Her research areas include transitional justice and international criminal law, with a special focus on Africa and Israel-Palestine. Dr. Horovitz holds a Master of Laws from Columbia University (LL.M.2003,with honors), and a Doctor of Laws from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (LL.D. 2014). Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the impact of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) on national reconciliation in Rwanda. It forms part of the larger ERC-funded research on the Effectiveness of International Courts. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Horovitz worked for the UN as a legal advisor at the ICTR (in Tanzania) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (in Sierra Leone and The Hague).

Dr. Horovitz directs university projects on transitional justice, and she initiated the transitional justice programs at both Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She also develops and teaches courses on transitional justice and on election and party law. Dr. Horovitz is a recipient of the Arthur Helton Fellowship of the American Society of International Law (2013), the Rabin Scholarship of the Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2013-2014), and the Vodoz Prize of the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2012). She is a member of the New York and Israeli Bar Associations, and a founding member of ALMA - the Association for the Promotion of International Humanitarian Law.

For more see: http://kesala.academia.edu/SigallHorovitz
Dr. Noga Efrati (03/2015 - 06/2015)

Dr. Noga Efrati is a historian of the Middle East. Her research focuses on the social, legal, and political history of Iraq. She is the author of Women in Iraq: Past Meets Present, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012 - A social and political history of Iraqi women during the periods of British occupation and the British-backed Hashimite monarchy (1917 - 1958). Between 2006 and 2011 she headed the Post-Saddam Iraq Research Group at the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is now a Senior Lecturer at the Department of History, Philosophy, and Judaic Studies, The Open University of Israel. During her stay at the CNMS, Philipps-Universität Marburg she will research her next work titled "Law and Society in Iraq: Family Law Contested and Reconstructed, 1914-2014".

For more see: http://huji.academia.edu/NogaEfrati
Dr. Pooya Alaedini (02/2015 - 03/2015)

Dr. Pooya Alaedini is an associate professor of social planning at the University of Tehran. His areas of focus include socioeconomic development, urban and regional planning. He has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the UN, the International Labor Organization, and the International Organization for Migration. His publications, including a dozen peer-reviewed articles, two books and several published reports, have focused on high-impact development issues as well as evaluation of major development programs. Dr. Alaedini holds an undergraduate degree in mathematical sciences from Ohio State University and master’s degrees in civil/transportation engineering and economics from Ohio State University and University of Delaware. He wrote a noted dissertation on oil-based industrialization in Iran for his Ph.D. in urban planning and policy development at Rutgers University, and conducted research on urban development and industrialization in the Middle East and East Asia at the United Nations University/Institute of Advanced Studies in Tokyo as a post-doctoral fellow.

For more see: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Pooya_Alaedini
Dr. Jonathan Kriener (09/2014 - 03/2015)

Jonathan Kriener graduated with a doctoral degree in Oriental Studies about the Lebanese school system from Ruhr University of Bochum, where he is working as the coordinator of the research project ‘Local, Regional and International “Borrowing and Lending” in Social Sciences at Arab Universities’. He has been a research fellow at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research and at the Orient Institute Beirut, and taught courses about the 20th century histories of Lebanon, Israel, and the Palestinians, as well as recent Arab educational thought and reform at Ruhr University and Tübingen University. His publications deal comparatively with history, civics, and religious instruction at Lebanese, Palestinian and Israeli schools, and higher education in Egypt and Lebanon.

For more see: http://www.jonathankriener.net/
Dr. Abdelkarim Daoud (01/2015)

Abdelkarim Daoud is a Professor at the Department of Geography at University of Sfax-Tunisia. He earned his masters and PhD degrees from the University of Bordeaux III specializing in “Territorial planning and analysis”. He currently teaches master students of “Geographic information and territorial planning” at the Faculty of Letters and Humanities of Sfax, as well as “Environment and planning engineering” at the Engineering school of Sfax. Throughout his career, Dr. Daoud earned extensive experience in the fields of Urban geography, Climatology, Biogeography, Water resources planning, Territorial planning, and Natural hazards in urban areas.
Dr. Natalia Ribas-Mateos (06/2014 - 12/2014)

Natalia Ribas-Mateos is currently a researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. She joined the research network “Re-Configurations. History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa” as a visiting scholar in June 2014 and stayed for period of 7 months.

She has taught in different Spanish Universities and has been twice a Marie Curie Fellow (UK-US and France) and once a Ramon y Cajal Fellow (Spain). Her latest scholarly work includes the books: Movilidades Adolescentes (Bellaterra 2014 ed. with S. Laiz), Mobilités au Féminin (Karthala 2014 ed. with V. Manry), Rutas Damascenas (Mellen Press 2014), The International Handbook on Gender, Migration and Transnationalism (Edward Elgar, 2013, ed. with L. Oso) and How Filipino Immigrants in Italy Send Money Back Home (Mellen Press 2013, written with C. Basa).

She has published extensively in different languages, including Spanish, French and Arabic. In English she is the author of the “The Mediterranean in the Age of Globalization” and “Border Shifts. New Mobilities in Europe and beyond”, and more recently of various collections of works related to age, gender and mobilities (see ribasmateos.wordpress.com). Through her work she has been able to manage a new perspective on international social sciences linking grounded empirical engagement at multiple levels, introducing new theoretical challenges and approaching a close dialogue with activists.

Her project at the Reconfiguration network involves first, a critical analysis of globalization overcoming Western-Eastern cleavages. Secondly, at the empirical level it is focused on two brief fieldworks in the neighborhood of Balat (Istanbul) and in the medina of Tangier, concerning memory, mobilities and mobilization. She is the coordinator of the conference “Guests and Aliens. Re-configuring mobilities in the East Mediterranean post-2011” (9-10 Dec. 14).

For more see: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Natalia_Ribas-Mateos
Dr. Souhail Belhadj (12/2014)

Souhaïl Belhadj holds a PhD in Political Science, at Sciences Po Paris. His current research concentrates on the political transition process in Syria and Tunisia, with a focus on the recomposition of political institutions. He previously worked on Syria's political leadership, on which he published the book La Syrie de Bashar al-Asad. Anatomie d'un régime autoritaire (Belin 2013). Other areas of his research include the structures of authoritarian states in the Middle East and North Africa as well as the question of rules in the political and procedural context of Baathi Syria, in particular the Syrian Parliament. During his Master's studies in History, he wrote on the mobilisation of clerics by Tunisian nationalist leaders during the time of the French protectorate. See more: http://graduateinstitute.ch/home/research/centresandprogrammes/ccdp/who-we-are/staff/souhail-belhadj.html

For more see: http://graduateinstitute.academia.edu/SouhailBELHADJ