Cross-Cultural & Regional Studies > Staff > Comparative Cultural S...
Andreas Bandak
Associate Professor
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
2300 København S, Søndre Campus, Building: 10-4-10
Research
My research focuses on Christianity as a lived religion. I have been particularly interested in Christianity in settings where it has not been the majority religion, but where it has had to occupy a different and less dominant position. I have studied figures of sainthood and the diverse relationships people hold towards religious authorities, and the interplay between orthodox and popular religion. Specialised in anthropological studies of Christianity, I have focused on the way religious practices have been working in an otherwise overtly secular Syrian state. Related to this focus on Christianity I have most recently studied the new situation for Christians and Christianity in the Levant in light of the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, where I have worked on how prayer has been taken up as a way of coping or addressing the changed landscape of the Middle East.
My work has been funded by grants from The Danish Council for Independent Research in the Humanities | Culture and Communication and from The Velux Foundation.
Keywords:
Christianity, Sainthood, Minority relations, Syria, Lebanon, The Middle East, Secularism, Prayer, Power of Example, Qualitative Analysis, Escalations
Teaching
I teach in the following subjects:
- Migration, politics and social change
- Negotiating Culture
- Qualitative Methods
- Theories of Culture and Society
- Theory of Science
Member of the Young Academy under the Danish Royal Academy of Science and Letters
Recent publications
Ethnographies of Waiting. Doubt, Hope and Uncertainty. London: Bloomsbury (2018, with Manpreet K. Janeja).
Arjun Appadurai writes:
"This book is certainly worth the wait, since it offers a beautifully introduced anthropological collection that shows that waiting is no less than a general feature of the human condition. [...] It will be of great interest to anthropologists as well as humanists more generally."
Joel Robbins writes:
"Inasmuch as every good anthropologist cares about time, all of them stand to learn a great deal from this volume."
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