Rearticulating Islam: A New Generation of Muslim Religious Leaders

Danish Muslim Religious Oratory (Senior project, Simon Stjernholm)

New types of Muslim religious leaders are emerging that combine social and religious functions as well as develop new modes of oratory. This subproject will contribute the first detailed analysis of selected Muslim preaching and teaching activities in Danish. It will be carried out in dialogue with research on Islamic preaching, media and religion, multimodality, and rhetorical criticism. Its primary data are preachers’ and teachers’ own media productions, researcher-produced video and audio recordings, as well as interview material. 

Accommodation of Islam in the Danish Public Sector (Postdoctoral project, Kasper Ly Netterstrøm)

This subproject aligns itself with a body of international research that studies how the public sector in European countries has adapted to and accommodated Muslims. The aim is to give a comprehensive overview of the scale and nature of this accommodation, and whether it is contentious, ideological or pragmatic. The focus is on local institutions such as kindergartens, schools and elderly homes. Data will be collected from Danish municipalities and regions.

Muslim Women’s Islamic Educational Activities (PhD project, Maria Lindebæk Lyngsøe)

This research project focuses on Islamic educational activities in Denmark with a special attention to Muslim women’s engagement in these. Maria’s research consists primarily of interviews with women who actively engage in such activities as teachers and/or students, and of observations of Islamic education as it unfolds in a variety of settings ranging from big conferences, over weekly classes, to private study circles. Importantly, the attention of the research is on individuals and groups rather than on institutions like mosques, even if many activities take place in mosques or similar institutions. Methodologically, this project thus takes a bottom-up approach. Based on the interviews, observations, and logbook notes from a group of women, the project investigates the different paths the women follow in their engagement with Islamic knowledge as either teachers or students – or both. The project asks how knowledge is produced discursively and performatively in the different educational settings. Additionally, it investigates how the women relate to Islamic knowledge and to the knowledge search, and what it means for their individual and collective identity formation to engage with Islamic knowledge. This also includes looking into the question of authority and possible authority positions.

Scandinavian Muslims Pursuing Islamic Education Abroad (PhD project, Maximilian Lasa)

This subproject seeks to answer the following overarching question: Why do young Scandinavian Muslims pursue Islamic education abroad, what kind of universities and schools are they attending, and what impact does this education have?  The PhD candidate will employ qualitative research methods, such as semi-structured interviews and textual analysis. Project descriptions need to show awareness of the relevant research literature, provide a suitable theoretical framework, and convincingly show the methodological and practical feasibility of the imagined PhD project. Documented language skills in the key language(s) used in the educational institution(s) in question are highly meriting. Project descriptions may focus on individuals from either one or several Scandinavian countries.

Professor Masooda Bano, University of Oxford

Professor Nadia Marzouki, École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Professor Catharina Raudvere, University of Copenhagen