Our goal

We aim to establish a transcontinental research collaboration on the role of social identities in mediating Muslim-Christian relations in contemporary Africa, with the purpose of elaborating a conceptual framework for comparative analysis. To this end, we bring into conversation colleagues from the University of Münster, the University of Birmingham, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, Hekima College, Nairobi, Kenya, the Université Gaston Berger, St. Louis, Senegal, and Osun State University, Osogbo, Nigeria.

Drawing on this research partnership, the project addresses the following questions:

• How do social identities and considerations inform the ways in which Muslims assert, bridge and accommodate religious difference in Africa’s plural religious settings?
• How do state regimes of religious governance, in their interlocking with non-state religious authority structures, mold the space for maneuver within which Muslims define their relationship to religious others?
• What challenges of knowledge production in and on Subsaharan Africa emerge in close collaboration with colleagues from universities in Europe and Africa?

Ressources

Find Interviews and literature regarding religious plurality here

Prof. Dr. Dorothea Schulz

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Münster

My research, publications, and teaching are centered on the Anthropology of Religion, of Mental Health and Spiritual Wellbeing, Political Anthropology, Islam in Africa, Gender Studies and Media Studies. I also bring to my research and teaching a strong background in critical theory, social theory, and the anthropology of social organization. I have extensive field research experience in West and East Africa, particularly in southern Mali and southwestern Uganda.

 

 

Prof. Dr. Insa Nolte

Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham

I am an anthropologist with a strong interest in history. My research focuses on everyday life in the political and religious history of the Yoruba-speaking Southwest of Nigeria, where members of traditional religion, Muslims and Christians have lived together for several generations. Moreover, many families include Muslims and Christians, and there are many Muslim-Christian marriages, most of which are between Muslim men and Christian women. I am interested in the historical patterns of gendered and religious preference and the accommodation of religious difference in marriage and extended family life, and am currently writing a book with the working title 'Conjugal Histories. Gender, Yoruba religion and the rise of Islam and Christianity, 1780s-1920s'.

 

Prof. Olukoya Ogen

Faculty of Humanities, Oson State University and Department of African Studies and Anthropology, University of Birmingham

Olukoya Ogen is a Professor of Cultural History at Osun State University. He also doubles as a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at DASA, University of Birmingham. A recipient of several postdoctoral visiting fellowships, research grants and travel fellowships, Ogen is currently the Director of a UNESCO-IFCD project on cultural diversity in southwest Nigeria. He was the Country Director and Co-Investigator of the 5-year European Research Council sponsored project on ‘everyday religious encounter’ in southwest Nigeria between 2012 and 2017. In the main, the project explored how the fine grain of everyday life in an inter-religious society is linked to social identity and the non-violent resolution of conflict. In 2022, he won a follow-up grant from the University of Leeds under the LUCAS-LAHRI Visiting Fellowship scheme, to carry out further studies on the resilience of Yoruba culture and the globalization of African traditional religious practices. His latest publication  titled ‘‘Identity, Trade and Warfare in Arogbo-Ile: Historicising Luso-Dutch Commercial and Military Activities in Southeastern Yorubaland during the Seventeenth Century’’ appears in Ayodeji Olukoju and Tokunbo Ayoola (eds.) Politics, Economy and Society in 20th Century Nigeria. (Maryland: Lexington Books, 2023).

 

Dr. Souleymane Diallo

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Münster

Research Focus: Migration studies, Gender, Anthropology of Religion, Political Anthropology, Memory Politics, and Ethnolographic Filmmaking

 

 

 

 

Norbert Litoing (affiliated scholar)

Comparative Religions/Theology, Hekima University College Nairobi

Emma Wendt, M.A.

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Münster

Research Focus: Arabic and Islamic Science, Anthropology of Religion, Islam in Africa, Climate Change in Africa

Lisa Hannen

Student Assistant for the Cluster of Excellence 'Religion and Politics' in the Department of Ethnology, University of Münster