April 2024
Kirstine Sinclair conducted fieldwork in Tromsø during Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr, including a series of interviews with leaders of local mosques.
Bouchra Mossmann spends two months as a graduate fellow at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. There, she gives talks and lectures on the Arctic Muslim project.
February 2024
From November 2023 to February 2024, Bouchra Mossmann conducted the first part of her field work of the “Arctic Muslim” project in Canada. The fieldwork comprised stays in Edmonton, Yellowknife, and Inuvik. Edmonton is an important city for the study of the early history of Muslims in Canada, while Yellowknife is the capital of the Northwest Territories where she did archival work and interviews. In the center of her visit to Inuvik was the long period of polar night and the Sunrise Festival at its end in which the sun is welcomed back.
Between 14 January and 02 February 2024, Dietrich Jung was giving seminars and lectures in the context of the “Arctic Muslim” project in Malaysia, Australia, and Singapore. On this trip he visited among others the International Islamic University Malaysia, the Western Sydney University, the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technical University.
November 2023
With three presentations, the Center had a strong participation at the annual conference of the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA) in Montreal (2-5 November):
- “Making the Arctic a Muslim Home. Strategies of Place-Making in Northern Canada” (Bouchra Mossmann)
- ”The Arctic Muslim: Religious Practice and Mosque Controversies in Northern Norway” (Kirstine Sinclair)
- The New Climate Strategy of the Oil Rich Arab Gulf States (Martin Hvidt)
Dietrich Jung has published his Islamic Modernities in World Society. The Rise, Spread, and Fragmentation of a Hegemonic Idea with Edinburgh University Press. The book has 336 pages and appears in the series “Edinburgh Studies of the Globalised Muslim World” that is edited by Frédéric Volpi. For more information, see: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-islamic-modernities-in-world-society.html.
October 2023
Dietrich Jung is an invited speaker at the final conference Eight Years CASHSS ‘Multiple Secularities’ – Outcome and Prospects through the Eyes of our Interlocutors of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West. Beyond Modernities” at Leipzig University, 12-14 October 2023.
September 2023
On September 1st, we started our last graduate course in Middle East Studies. The course lasts for two years until summer 2025 and 14 students from four different countries will attend our seminars. We are looking forward to conveying the best possible knowledge on the Middle East to this last class at our Center.
May 2023
The leadership of the University of Southern Denmark decided to discontinue our MA programme in Middle East Studies. The last student intake will be in September 2023 and the programme ends in summer 2025. The course was once established in 2005 and the Center would like to thank the numerous students from Denmark and abroad who studied with us.
April 2023
From 1 May until 18 June 2023, Dietrich Jung will be a visiting fellow at the Institute for Middle East Studies of the German Institute for Global and Areas Studies (GIGA) in Hamburg. At GIGA he will present and discuss the “Arctic Muslim Research Project” that he is currently conducting together with Kirstine Sinclair and Bouchra Mossmann in the broader framework of his Modern Muslim Subjectivities Research Program.
February 2023
On Tuesday, 7 February, the Danish ambassador to Ankara, Danny Annan, visited the Center, where he gave a talk on the current political situation in Turkey.
On Monday, 6 February, Dietrich Jung defended his dissertation (dr.phil.) ”Der Islam in der globalen Moderne. Soziologische Theorie und die Vielfalt islamischer Modernitäten”. The assessment committee consisted of Professor Olav Hammer (chair; SDU), Professor Serena Tolino (University of Bern), and Professor Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen (Copenhagen University).
January 2023
Dietrich Jung and Kirstine Sinclair are co-organizers and participants at the annual Danish-German Workshop in Middle East and Islamic Studies. The workshop takes place in Hamburg (27/28/01) and is a forum to present ongoing MA and PhD projects for students from Hamburg University, Kiel University, Aarhus University, SDU and the German Institute for Global Area Studies (GIGA).
Dietrich Jung has published the book Islam in Global Modernity. Sociological Theory and the Diversity of Islamic Modernities (Wiesbaden: Springer Nature; 216 pp.):
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-658-39954-2
Ahmed Abou El Zalaf has published the book The Muslim Brotherhood and State Repression in Egypt. A History of Secrecy and Militancy in an Islamist Organization (London: I.B. Tauris; 222 pp.):
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/muslim-brotherhood-and-state-repression-in-egypt-9780755646609/
December 2022
Kirstine Sinclair participated in the last workshop in connection with the projectDanish Mosques: Significance, Use and Influence.
Two publications are expected to come out in 2023: a reader for high school courses on religion and social studies and a research publication.
Martin Hvidt published the book chapter Economic Diversification in the GCC Countries in The Gulf Cooperation Council at Forty: Risk and Opportunities in a Changing World. Yousef, T. M. & Ghafar, A. A. (eds.). (E-pub ahead of print). Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.
November 2022
Dietrich Jung organized and chaired the international workshop Writing Social Theory in Arabic together with Sari Hanafi (American University of Beirut) and Florian Zemmin (Free University Berlin). The workshop and a public round table discussion took place 3 – 6 November, Institute for Islamic Studies, Free University Berlin. The event was funded by a grant of the Danish Institute in Damascus.
During November and December 2022, Martin Hvidt had more than 35 interviews with Danish media giving expert knowledge in their coverage of the FIFA 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
October 2022
Martin Hvidt published a chapter on Bahrain’s economy in the The Middle East and North Africa Handbook, 69th edition, London and New York: Routledge.
In October and November 2022, Kirstine Sinclair conducted fieldwork in and around Tromsø, Norway, in connection with her subprojectLiving Authentic Islamic Lives: Interpretation and Practice of Islamic Traditions in Arctic Norwaywhich ispart of the larger projectThe ‘Arctic Muslim’: Islamic Traditions and Modern Subjectivity in the Western North.
September 2022
Dietrich Jung gave the keynote speech “Islam as a Problem”. The Challenge of Shifting Paradigms for the Study of Islam for the section of Islamic Studies at the 100th Anniversery of the Deutsche Orientalistentag (DOT), 12 – 17 September, Free University of Berlin.
August 2022
On 1 August 2022, Dietrich Jung and Kirstine Sinclair started the research project “The ‘Arctic Muslim’: Islamic Traditions and Modern Subjectivity in the Western North. The project runs until 31 July 2025 and received 5.703.840,00 DKK from the Danish Research Council for the Humanities (FKK). The project is a part of the Center’s core research program on Modern Muslim Subjectivities and it will be conducted in close collaboration with colleagues and academic institutions in Canada and Norway.
Dietrich Jung will spent the months from September to December 2022 as a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, University of Leipzig, Germany. There, he will work on his projects “Islamic Modernities in World Society” and “The ‘Arctic Muslim’”.
May 2022
Martin Hvidt published the book chapter “Risks Associated with an Interconnected Economy”, in: Guéraiche, William and Kristian Alexander (eds.) 2022: Facets of Security in the United Arab Emirates, London: Routledge: 99-108.
On the occasion of the 20th anniversary for the UNDP 2002 Report and the transition to a new phase of the Danish-Arab Partnership Programme, the Centre for Modern Middle East and Muslim Studies at SDU hosted the international conference ”Future Development for Arab Youth – Challenges and Opportunities” (11-12 May 2022). The conference with about 150 participants was organized by our emeritus colleague Peter Seeberg.
April 2022
Peter Seeberg and Federica Zardo published the article “From Mobility Partnerships to Migration Compacts: security implications of EU-Jordan relations and the informalization of migration governance”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 48(6): 1345-1362.
At:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2020.1851465(restricted access).
March 2022
Martin Hvidt organized and chaired the seminar “Exploring the Link between Research and Policy Formulation in the Global South” that took place at SDU on 25th March 2022. The seminar was a joined activity of the Center for Modern Middle East and Muslim Studies and FAU (Foreningen af Udviklingsforskere i Danmark).
Dietrich Jung published an essay on the current state of academic freedom in Denmark for the Bulletin of the Center for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities” at University of Leipzig in Germany. The essay is open access and accessible via the following link: https://www.multiple-secularities.de/bulletin/researching-islam-in-denmark-public-debates-political-opinions-and-freedom-of-research/?filter2=all
Peter Seeberg published the article “Syrian refugees in Jordan and their integration in the labour market: Jordanian migration diplomacy and EU incentives”,Mediterranean Politics27 (2): 192-211.
At https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13629395.2020.1758452(restricted access).
Peter Seeberg and Jan Claudius Völkel published the article “Arab responses to EU foreign and security policy incentives: Perspectives on migration diplomacy and institutionalized flexibility in the Arab Mediterranean turned upside down”, Mediterranean Politics27 (2): 135-147.
At https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13629395.2020.1758451(restricted access).
February 2022
We welcome Ahmed Abou El Zalaf at the Centre who joins us for one year as a research assistant. Ahmed will be involved in both teaching and research at the Centre. From 2017 to 2020, Ahmed was a PhD student at the Center, doing research on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
December 2021
Dietrich Jung
received a Carlsberg Foundation Monograph Fellowship for his book project on "Islamic Modernities in World Society". The one-year full-time fellowships cover the fellow's own full salary. The fellowships are awarded to tenured senior researchers within the humanities or social sciences with a project aimed at producing a ground-breaking monograph or advanced Danish doctoral dissertation. You can find more about the fellowship and the book project under:
Martin Beck received a field trip grant of 111,360 DKK from Carlsberg Foundation for his project “Lebanon’s economic and political crisis 2019 and beyond”. The project aims at generating an in-depth analysis of the severe socio-economic crisis that Lebanon has been undergoing since fall 2019. Furthermore, the roots of the crisis - features related to the sectarianist system - and chances and constraints to tackle them are analyzed. You can read more about the project under this link:
November 2021
Martin Beck published the article “On the making of the German ‘Refugee Crisis’: Securitizing Muslim Immigrants in 2015 and Beyond”, Journal of Refugee Studies 34 (2): 1307-1326. For more information see https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article-abstract/34/2/1307/6357417?redirectedFrom=fulltext.
Dietrich Jung published the article “Islamism, Islamic Modernism and the Search for Modern Authenticity in an Imaginary Past”, Religions 12 (11): 1-13. The article is available und this link: Open access (https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12111005)
Sofie Pedersen defended her PhD thesis “Gør som os! En undersøgelse af, hvordan rollemodeller med etnisk minoritetsbaggrund fortolker ’god integration’ gennem livsfortællinger i statssanktionerede kampagner”. The thesis was funded by a grant of the humanities programme of the VELUX Foundation and is a part of the Center’s larger research programme “The Modern Muslim Subjectivities Project”. The PhD committee consisted of Associate Professor Martin Hvidt (chair; SDU), Professor Mikkel Rytter, Institut for Antropologi, Aarhus Universitetet and Professor Susanne Olsson, Institutionen för etnologi, religionshistoria och genusvetenskap, Stockholm Universitetet. The supervisor of the thesis was Professor Dietrich Jung (SDU).