Jewish-muslim research network

From 2019 to 2020 I was lucky to be one of three co-ordinators of the Jewish-Muslim Research Network. Founded by Adi Bharat and Katharine Halls, the JMRN brings together researchers studying Jews, Muslims, Judaism and Islam in any time period and region. Through book launches, seminars and reading groups we’ve been bringing scholars together to question the ways we understand Jews, Muslims and how both groups relate and interact with one another. Over the past few decades, within the media and popular discourse Jewish and Muslim relations have often been imagined as tense, with the Israeli Occupation or terrorism being the primary angles through which the topic has been discussed. Yet research from anthropology, Jewish studies and Middle East Studies sheds alternate light on such topics, such as through exploring histories of Jewish existence in Muslim majority countries. In my former anthropological research, I found it useful to understand Jewish existence in contemporary Europe through case studies within the Anthropology of Islam, such as comparing Islamophobic and anti-Semitic discourses and movements.

Link to the website here. Links to our past events here (see events from 2019-21 below).