Freigeist project: "Invisible Architects: Jews, Muslims, and the Construction of Europe"

Placing Jews and Muslims at the center of Spanish, German, and French societal formation, this project questions deep-seated assumptions about the formation of Europe as an exclusively Christian-cum-secular body of nation-states. By interweaving comparative-historical, ethnographic and interview-based research, this project team is constructing an alternative sociocultural genealogy, illuminating the agency of Jews and Muslims in the making of Europe. Ultimately, this project pushes the boundaries of how we think about European societies, and the idea of Europe as a whole: suggesting that Europe was - and is - not formed in juxtaposition to, but by its ethno-religious minorities.

• Abrahamic Strangers: German Jewish and German Muslim intellectuals in conversation
  This co-led project focuses on the “Abrahamic stranger,” an insider-outsider positionality shared by Muslims and Jews in Europe. It explores the post-WWII German Jewish intellectual terrain, while also turning to a productive conversation between contemporary German Muslim intellectuals and 19^th-21^st century German Jewish intellectuals, in order to explore the possibilities and limitations of their inclusion in the German academic milieu.

• Politics of Death
• Colonial Borrowing
• Urban Pluralism
• Restitution

Publications from the Project