Dr. Elisabeth Becker Topkara
Max-Weber-Institut für Soziologie
Universität Heidelberg
Bergheimer Str. 58
69115 Heidelberg
Room: 03.019b
elisabeth.becker-topkara@mwi.uni-heidelberg.de
Personal profile
Elisabeth Becker Topkara is a Freigeist Fellow at the Max-Weber-Institute-for-Sociology, Heidelberg University. She is a cultural sociologist trained at Cornell University (BA in Sociology), Oxford University (MSc in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies), and Yale University (MPhil and PhD in Sociology). Elisabeth previously held an Ad Astra/Assistant Professor position in Sociology at University College Dublin, and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship with the Religion & Its Publics project and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.
Elisabeth’s research centers on the cultural construction and contestation of borders and boundaries. Her research explores the experiences and place-making practices of religious, racial, and ethnic minorities— Muslims and Jews in particular—in both Europe and the United States. Elisabeth has contributed to sociological debates on how migration and pluralism shape contemporary societies, including the continued exclusions faced by Muslims in Europe through a theory of incivility and undercaste status; and the agency of Muslim and Jewish populaces to foster social change in the urban centers of Europe and the United States. Her book, Mosques in the Metropolis: Incivility, Caste, and Contention (University of Chicago Press) offers a unique look into two of Europe’s largest urban mosque communities, providing a complex picture of Muslim life, while highlighting the failures of European pluralism.
Elisabeth’s work has appeared in various scholarly publications, including: Ethnic & Racial Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, American Journal of Cultural Sociology, European Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, and Social Science & Medicine.
Elisabeth is also a public scholar who works with non-profit organizations (e.g. the New America Foundation, the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, and the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies) and writes for mainstream publications to communicate research to a public audience. Her writing has appeared in such publications as the Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Religion & Politics, and Tablet Magazine, and she has been featured on BBC Radio.
Elisabeth’s research has been generously supported by numerous funders, including: the Volkswagen Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World, the Academy for Islam in Research and Society, and the Religious Research Association.
Areas of Research and Teaching
Culture, Migration, Race and Ethnicity, Sociology of Religion, Jewish-Muslim relations
Current funded research projects
2021-2027 Freigeist fellowship, Volkswagen Stiftung, “Invisible Architects: Jews, Muslims, and the Making of Europe”
2025 Science Communication Funding, Volkswagen Stiftung
2024 Research Grant, British Council Springboard Grant
2024 Research Fellowship Leibniz Institute for Jewish History and Culture
2024 Research Grant, European Association for Jewish Studies
2021 Democracy Fellowship, Landecker Foundation
Selected publications
Elisabeth Becker. Forthcoming. “From the Objects to the Subjects of Restitution: Jewish Claims-Making on Nazi-Era Looted Art and Artefacts.” Ethnoscripts.
Elisabeth Becker and Ufuk Topkara. 2025. “Citizen Stranger: German Muslim Intellectuals, German Jewish Intellectuals and a Politics of Relationality.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, available online. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfaf027.
Elisabeth Becker and Paula Arana Barbier. 2025. “The Politics of Death: Multiculturalism and the Afterlives of Muslims in Spain.” Ethnicities, available online. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14687968251327292.
Elisabeth Becker, Angela Collado-Suarez and Paula Arana Barbier. 2025. “Towards Multicultural Memory: Struggles over a Muslim Cemetery in post-Civil War Spain.” Ethnicities, available online. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968251327285.
Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, Elisabeth Becker and Milica Resanović. 2025 “Editorial Introduction: Resilience and/or Vulnerability of the Civil Sphere.” Philosophy and Society, available online. https://journal.ifdt.bg.ac.rs/fid/issue/view/104.
Elisabeth Becker. 2024. “Another Fateful Triangle: Jews, Muslims, Europe.” Religions, available online. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel15111342.
Elisabeth Becker. 2024. “Theorizing ‘New Ethnicities’ in Diasporic Europe: Jews, Muslims and Stuart Hall.” Ethnic & Racial Studies, available online. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2024.2328325
Elisabeth Becker and Marietta Van der Tol. 2024. “What’s Ethnicity Got to Do With It? Religious and Racial Politics in Europe.” Ethnic & Racial Studies, available online. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2024.2328318.
Elisabeth Becker. 2024. “Decolonizing the Metropolis: Vitality and Decay.” Patterns of Prejudice 57(1-2): 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2023.2246294.
Elisabeth Becker. 2024. “Grounded Belonging in the “Open City”: From a Politics of Divisibility to the Making of Muslim Cityzens in Berlin.” Patterns of Prejudice 57(1-2): 17-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/0031322X.2023.2246296.
Elisabeth Becker, Rachel Rinaldo and Jeffrey Guhin. 2023. “Classifying Muslims: Contextualizing Religion and Race in the US, UK, and Germany.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 62(4): 749-769. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12865.
Ruben Flores and Elisabeth Becker. 2023. “The Quest for Normativity: Challenges and New Directions in Social Research.” Civic Sociology, available online. https://doi.org/10.1525/cs.2023.89929.
Elisabeth Becker. 2022. “Struggles for Horizontal Identification: Muslims, Jews, and the Civil Sphere in Germany.” Cultural Sociology 17(1): 44-61. https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221119126.
Elisabeth Becker. 2021. Mosques in the Metropolis: Incivility, Caste, and Contention in Europe (University of Chicago Press)
Elisabeth Becker and Ufuk Topkara. Forthcoming. “Living Between the Lines: German Jewish and German Muslim Intellectuals on Questions of Belonging.” Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion.
Elisabeth Becker. 2021. “Incivility and Danger: Theorizing a Muslim Undercaste in Europe.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology.
Elisabeth Becker. 2019. “Commitment Without Borders: Jewish-Muslim Relations and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Habitus in Berlin.” Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion.
Elisabeth Becker. 2019. “Reconstructing the Muslim Self in Diaspora: Socio-spatial Practices in Urban European Mosques.” International Journal of Islamic Architecture.
Elisabeth Becker. 2017. “Good Mosque/Bad Mosque: Boundaries to Belonging in Contemporary
Germany.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
Elisabeth Becker. 2014. “Little of Italy? Assumed Ethnicity in a New York City Neighborhood.” Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Editorial activities
Civic Sociology, associate editor
Cultural Sociology, editorial board
Patterns of Prejudice, special issue editor