About

I’m a social and cultural anthropologist with a focus on media, migration and religious-political contexts. 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.

Before coming to the University of Cologne I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Anthropology and African Studies of the JGU Mainz in the research project “Jihadism on the Internet: Images and Videos, their Dissemination and Appropriation” and as junior researcher at the research training group “Locating Media” of the University of Siegen and the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Cologne. I hold MAs in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Cologne and in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester. I completed my PhD at the University of Cologne with a dissertation on the social media practices and transnational everyday lives of Senegalese in Berlin and Dakar.

Throughout my research, I have been interested in questions at the intersection of the fields of media, migration, and religious-political contexts. In my postdoctoral research project I focus on Muslim everyday life and digital media practices in post-migrant contexts. Through digital ethnography, fieldwork in different ‘off-line’ as well as ‘online’ contexts, I explore dynamics and practices of connecting and excluding in different Muslim communities in Germany and the German-speaking public sphere. New spheres of Muslim activism and participation as well as Anti-Muslim racism and the Securitisation of Islam in Germany, are important issues in this research.  In this context I explore social, visual, and digital practices, using digital and experimental ethnography and digital curatorial strategies for the co-creation of knowledge. With this interest, I am also part of the thematic group “co-producing knowledge” of the Global South Studies Centre (GSSC) of the University of Cologne.

Since October 2021, I’m co-convener of the Working Group “Media Anthropology” (AG Medien) of the DGSKA/GAA (together with Anja Dreschke and Anna Lisa Ramella). As part of our work we have been organizing a series of evens, like the workshop “Multimodal Digital Publishing” (2021) and the follow up for “Multimodal Digital Curating” in January 2023.

Together with Nina ter Laan I’m elected press officer and part of the advisory board of the German Anthropological Association (GAA/DGSKA) since July 2023.