I am a Doctoral Candidate in Social Anthropology (Universität Bielefeld) and Associate of the Contemporary South Asia Studies Programme (University of Oxford). In my studies, teaching and research, I explore the various relations between politics, religion and belonging and between development and violent conflict in South Asia. In addition, I am interested in the effects of historically built-up bureaucratic cultures (for more detail, see research interests). My diploma thesis analyzed various connections between religious identities and political agency among Muslim peace activists in Gujarat; after a Master's dissertation on India's diplomatic culture, my PhD concerns the formation of Muslim identities in Lucknow under the working title "How do strategic discourses combine with personal experiences to form Muslim belonging in a North Indian town? The politics and poetics of belonging" (more on this in my Blog). In all this, I attempt to integrate sociological, anthropological and psychological approaches to complement mainstream discourse analyses.
My current research is jointly supervised at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology (Prof. Pfaff) and the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, University of Oxford (Dr. Michelutti); for field research, I am affiliated with the Center for the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Before embarking on my PhD, I read political science, sociology and peace and conflict studies (Dipl.-Pol.) at the Universität Marburg from 2004 to 2009, development studies and cultural anthropology at the School for International Training, Jaipur, in 2008 and area studies of contemporary India (M.Sc.) at the University of Oxford from 2009 to 2010. From 2010 to 2011, I worked as part- and later full-time research fellow in comparative politics and international development studies at the Universität Marburg.
In Marbug and New Delhi, I also taught roughly 200 contact hours since 2007, in six undergraduate classes in comparative politics (on democracy in South Asia) and research methods (on academic skills, fieldwork, and independent study projects) as well as one graduate class in comparative politics (on religion and politics), both German and English medium; all classes have been evaluated as good or very good. In my teaching, I strive to encourage regular academic writing in peer groups to strengthen students' analytical skills (for more detail, see teaching materials).
I obtained three Cusanus scholarships (German federal competitive scholarships for 1% top batch), two DAAD scholarships and a number of grants from various bodies. I am currently a member of the German Research Network Religion and Conflict at FEST, the German Association for Asian studies (DGA), the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) and the European Association for South Asian Studies (EASAS).
