Welcome!
I’m a social and cultural anthropologist with a focus on visual, digital, and media anthropology, migration and religious-political contexts. Currently I’m working on my postdoctoral research project on Muslim everyday life and digital media practices in post-migrant contexts, using digital and experimental ethnography and (digital) curatorial strategies for the co-creation of knowledge. I’m interested in understanding practices of connecting and excluding within different parts of post-migrant society from a critical and reflexive perspective. In my previous research I have been focusing on migration, mobility and transnationality, new kinship, securitization of Islam, political violence and ethical challenges in ethnographic research.
Currently I’m a postdoctoral researcher in the Research Training Group “anschließen -ausschließen: Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks,” a joint project of the University of Cologne, The Academy of Media Arts Cologne (KHM) and TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences. Since June 2023 I’m also a member of the Global South Study Centre of the University of Cologne and together with Jonathan Ngeh co-convener of the thematic area “Co-Producing Knowledge“.
Together with Anja Dreschke and Anna Lisa Ramella I’m co-convener of the working group media anthropology of the DGSKA/GASCA (since 2021).
Since July 2023 I’m part of the advisory board and elected press officer (together with Nina ter Laan) of the German Anthropological Association (GASCA/DGSKA).
News | Out now:
Call for blog contributions: “Co-Producing Knowledge” guest edited together with Ute Dieckmann, Gerda Kuiper and Hauke-Peter Vehrs on boasblog, please submit until 30 March 2025, later contributions are also possible!
Presentation at the Conference”Religionsethnografie: Perspektiven und Praktiken,” 13.-15.03.2025, University of Rostock.
Cologne International Forum Salon & Workshop: “Weaving Memories – Doing Research with and for the people” – A conversation between Tahereh Aboofazeli, Arjang Omrani, Simone Pfeifer, and Kris Rutten. 25 November 2024 – 6 p.m., International House (Kringsweg 6).
Workshop: “Collaborative, Multimodal, and Curatorial Approaches to Research,” 26 November 2024, 10-4 pm, Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum.
Workshop: Academic Writing as Craft & Epistemological Practice organised together with Annette Steffny from 6-8 November 2024. With Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo, Julia Pauli, Cornelia Schadler, and Toni Giselle Stuart. Application until 30.09.2024.
Exhibition: WE ARE NOT CARPETS – I tell you my story on display from 27 September 2024 until 5 January 2025 at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne. Co-curated together with Arjang Omrani and Tahereh Aboofazeli. For updates on the program and events: https://rautenstrauch-joest-museum.de/calendar
Multimodal Contribution/Happening at AllegraLab: together with Anja Dreschke and Anna Lisa Ramella we published the article: Multimodal Digital Curating as (anthropological) research, collaboration, and engagement. AllergaLab, including six video contributions by Shireen Walton, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann, Roger Canals, Rafael Schacter, Paolo Favero, Carolin Höfler and Johanna Mehl.
Panel Organisation and talk: Multimodality, Collaboration and Co-curation as Critical Anthropological Pedagogy organised together with Arjang Omrani and Tahereh Aboofazeli at the RAI Conference “Anthropology and Education” in London from 25-28 June 2024, 10:30-5pm.
Invited Hybrid Talk at the Max-Weber-Kolleg, University of Erfurt: Feminist Muslim Activists in Postdigital Spaces, Erfurt/Webex, 27 May 2024, 4:15-5:45 pm.
Book contribution (open access): (P)Reenactments der Gewalt: Aneignung und widerständige Praxis? In: Elisa Linseisen und Alena Strohmaier (Hg.). Deine Kamera ist eine App. Über Medienverflechtungen des Applizierens und Appropriierens. Lüneburg: Meson Press. 99-115.
Workshop: Inclusion and Symmetrical Participation in Knowledge Production organized by the thematic group “Co-Producing Knowledge” at the GSSC Cologne from 24-25 April, 2024.
Presentation with Cihan El Mentawi: “Navigating Shifting Membership
in a Digital Team Ethnography“
Two Presentations with Arjang Omrani and Tahereh Aboofazeli:
Collaborative, Multimodal and Co-Curatorial Methods for Research: the Weaving Memories Project as part of the informal conversations of the thematic area “Co-Producing Knowledge of the GSSC, Cologne, 30 November 2023.
Exploring Woven Traces Critical Perspectives as part of the annual conference “Spuren-Spüren” of the research training group “connecting-excluding,” Cologne, 01 December 2023.
Working Paper: (with Suzana Jovicic). Co-Teaching Postdigital Ethnography. Working Paper Series Collaborative Research Center 1187 Media of Cooperation. Vol. 34. Universitätsbibliothek Siegen. https://doi.org/10.25819/UBSI/10427.
Project Funding: Cologne International Forum Innovative Tandem Collaboration. Together with Arjang Omrani and Tahereh Aboofazeli, I will be collaborating on the curatorial project Curating and Weaving Memories: Critical Multimodal Collaborations. The project will lead to the exhibition “We are not Carpets!” in the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum Cologne that is planned for 26 September 2024 – 6 January 2025.
Presentation/Participation in Roundtable: Muslim*Present in Cologne: multimodal (digital) curation as intervention and research at the workshop Multimodal Storytelling; Exploring the More-than-Text Modes of Research and (Re)Presentation at the University of Ghent, 23-27 October 2023, organized by Dr. Arjang Omrani and Dr. Laura Van Beveren.
Edited Volume: (with Christoph Günther and Robert Dörre eds.). Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence, and Media. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Contribution to Handbook: Digitale Team-Ethnografie: Teilnehmende Beobachtung auf Instagram mit dem Account ‚Hashtag Islam‘, with Muna Ahmad, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann and Maike Wiechert). in: Laura Niebling, Felix Rackzkowski, Sven Stollfuß (Hg.) Handbuch Digitale Medien und Methoden. Springer VS. 1-24.
Workshop at the DGSKA/GAA conference on Contested Knowledge: The Politics and Practices of Meme Culture: Ethnographic Perspectives on Post-digital Modes of Knowledge Production. Co-organized together with Anja Dreschke and Anna Lisa Ramella for the Working Group Media Anthropology, 25-28 July 2023 in Munich.
Intervention in Public Space and Event: Muslim*Present in Cologne. Intervention in public space with Asma Aiad, as part of the exhibition “The Entire Story Starts Where: Connections and Exclusion of Translocal Positions”, from 10 June- 20 July 2023.
10 June 2023, 7-8:30 pm at Ebertplatz Cologne: talk and readings with Asma Aiad, Lana Sirri and Fatima Remli.
Blogpost: Weaving Well-being – Multivocal and Multilocal Stories of Employment and Identities with Hind Bouqartacha and Liesbeth Nonkululeko Kanis as part of the Birmingham Blogs and the VOICE Project: EUniWell “Decentering Epistemologies for global Well-Being.”
Curatorial Project: Part of the curatorial team of: “The Entire Story Starts Where: Connections and Exclusion of Translocal Positions”, at different locations in Cologne from 15 May – 2 July 2023.
Contribution to Handbook: Digitale ethnografische Methoden. In: Tabea Scharrer, Birgit Glorius, Olaf Kleist und Marcel Berlinghoff(Eds.), Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung: Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag. 165-170.
Book Contribution: Intimate Pictures. Mediating Absence and Presence in Senegalese Transnational Relationships. In: Clemens Eisenmann, Kathrin Englert, Cornelius Schubert, Ehler Voss (eds), Varieties of Cooperation. Mutually Making the Conditions of Mutual Making. Wiesbaden, Springer Verlag. 79-94.
Online Workshop: Mutlimodal Digital Curating co-organized with Anja Dreschke and Anna Lisa Ramella for the Working Group Media Anthropology of the DGSKA. 19-20 January, 2023, Zoom.
Journal Article: ‘Calling to Prayer in “Pandemic Times”: Muslim Women’s Practices and Contested Public Spaces in Germany’. Entangled Religions 12 (3).
Contribution (reprint): (with Ulf Neumann). In/ Visible Images of Mobility: Sociality and Analog– Digital Materiality in Personal Archives of Transnational Migration. In: Cathrine Bublatzky and Fiona Siegenthaler (eds.). (Un)sighted Archives of Migration Spaces of Encounter and Resistance. New York: Routledge, 317-338.
Cologne-Siegen Masterclass for Media Ethnography (Post)Digital Ethnography: from Participant Observation to Collaborative Approaches
with Simone Pfeifer and Suzana Jovicic (University of Vienna)
Date: 24.-26.11.22, registration possible until 14th of November 2022
Place: Alter Senatssaal (Main building), University of Cologne
For more information click here (Siegen) or here (Cologne).
Screening and presentation: „Archival Screens: Collecting, Saving, and Ordering Obscure Material“ as part of the interim conference of the AG Visual Anthropology “Caught in the Crisis: Doing audio-visual ethnography in times of crisis”, 28-29. October 2022, University of Münster.
Invitation to the Gender & Diversity Lunch the University of Siegen. A collaborative format of CRC 1187 & 1472. 12 July 2022, 12:15-1:45 pm, Herrengarten 3, AH-A 228.
Invited Presentation: Ethnologie als Störung? Herausforderungen ethnografischer Forschung in einem interdisziplinären Projekt der zivilen Sicherheitsforschung as part to the Departmental Seminar Series of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies (ifeas) at the University of Mainz, 21 June 2022, 6-8 pm, HS13 (Forum 7, 1. OG).
Contribution: Heilige, das Meer und ethnologische Tourist*innen. In Ethnographic Encounters: Essays in Honour of Martin Rössler. In Michaela Haug and Rosalie Stolz (eds.). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 193-196.
Invited Presentation: “I was touched by the mercy in his voice“: Gendered and affective dimensions in the appropriation of religious images and videos on social media as part to the After Lunch Lecture | 60 Minutes in Ethnographic Theory by the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of the University of Cologne. 1 June 2022, 2-3 pm, lecture hall XII (Main Building).
Video: Together with Alexandra Dick and Christoph Günther, I just published the video Sounding Out DAESH with Open Science at the JGU Mainz (03/2022).
Invited presentation to the INSPIRE Seminar Series. 16 March 2022, 12:00-13:00 CET: “reCLAIM: Digital Curatorial Practices as Ethnographic Intervention” together with Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann. Watch the talk online!
Hybrid Workshop: Populist Aesthetics in Cultural Perspectives: Truthmaking, Faking, and the Politics of Affect in (Digital) Media. 10.-11. March 2022 at the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS, Heidelberg University). Co-Organised with: Cathrine Bublatzky (HCTS). See full program here.
Co-edited Special Section “Dark Ethnographies” in ZfE |JSCA 146 (Dec. 2021).
New Position: Since 11/2021 I am part of the DFG-funded research training group “anschließen – ausschließen: Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks“, at the University of Cologne. As part of my postdoctoral research project I am focussing on Muslim everyday life and digital media practices in Germany.
Catalogue Contribution (with Robert Dörre & Christoph Günther): Journalism and Images of Violence: Ethical Perspectives. In: Sebastian Baden, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann and Johann Holten (eds.) Mindbombs! Visual Cultures of Political Violence/Visuelle Kulturen politischer Gewalt. Kerber Art (2021).
Digital Platform: www.reclaim-platform.de co-curated with Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann.
Book Contribution: ‘Expanding the Family Frame. In: Alex Vailati and Gabriela Zamorano Villarreal (eds.). Ethnographies of ‘On Demand’ Films: Anthropological Explorations of Commissioned Audiovisual Productions. Palgrave (2021).
Journal Article (with Ulf Neumann). In/Visible Images of Mobility: Sociality and Analog–Digital Materiality in Personal Archives of Transnational Migration. In: Visual Anthropology 34 (4): 317-338 (2021)
Blogpost: 2021 How Can You Approach the Field Digitally? Reflections on Using Social Media Profiles in Ethnographic Research (DEI Blog).
Republication in the interface blog