Giulia Liberatore
Lecturer
- Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies
- Alwaleed Centre
- Social Anthropology
Contact details
- Tel: +44 (0)131 650 4463
- Email: giulia.liberatore@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
Room G.3
19 George Square - City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
- EH8 9LD
Availability
I currently work part-time and on flexible hours on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday
Background
I am Lecturer at IMES and Social Anthropology and an academic lead on the Muslims in Europe research theme at the Alwaleed Centre. I have a doctorate in Anthropology from the London School of Economics (LSE), and prior to coming to Edinburgh I worked at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford.
My research interests are in the anthropology of Europe, religion (Islam and Catholicism), migration, and the politics of difference.
Broadly my work has explored how religious differences are governed and institutionalized in liberal, secular Europe - including the exclusions and forms of violence that often ensue from these processes - and the possible alternative modes of being and imagining our relations with others that emerge and unsettle these modes of managing difference.
My current project in Italy (Palermo) explores the encounter between different Catholic groups in the city, and their engagements with differences in social class, ethnicity and religion. This research is part of an ERC-funded ethnographic project on Multi-Religious Encounters in Urban Settings (MEUS) - on which I am a co-PI with Ammara Maqsood (UCL) and Leslie Fesenmyer (Birmingham) - which aims to theorise non-secular modes of connecting over difference.
As part of this project, I am also collaborating on an audio-visual project on the Traces of Islam in Palermo with photographer Kate Stanworth and artist Stefania Artusi.
My previous work has focused predominantly on Islam in the United Kingdom. My monograph, entitled Somali, Muslim, British: Striving in Securitized Britain (2017) chronicles the aspirations of different generations of Somali women as they respond to and challenge publicly charged questions and modes of governance around religion, ethnicity and citizenship.
As part of my Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2015-2019) on Female Islamic scholarship and guidance in the UK I explored the way female scholars and counsellors not only carve out spaces for themselves within predominantly male-dominated Islamic spaces in Britain, but also challenge dominant secular modes of understanding Islamic knowledge, cross-cultural counselling and psychotherapy, and a broader politics of difference in Europe.
Alongside my research and teaching at UoE I am also deeply interested in critical and anarchist pedagogies and self-directed forms of learning for all ages and I am engaged in the deschooling/unschooling movement.
Responsibilities & affiliations
Visiting Fellow, Università degli Studi di Palermo (UNIPA) from 01/12/21- 30/12/22
Trustee for Kayd Somali Arts and Culture, supported by Arts Council England: https://www.kayd.org/
Undergraduate teaching
Muslims in Europe
Postgraduate teaching
Muslims in Europe
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Areas of interest for supervision
I am interested in supervising projects in the fields of the anthropology of Italy, Europe, migration, religion and Muslims/Islam in Europe
Research summary
Politics of difference; Italy, migration, Catholicism; anthropology of Islam/Muslims in the UK, Italy and Europe; gender and subjectivity; Somali diaspora.
Affiliated research centres
- Alwaleed Centre
Project activity
Multi-religious Encounters in Urban Settings (MEUS)
Current project grants
ERC Starting Grant, Horizon 2020
Past project grants
Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, for a project on 'Female Muslim Leaders in Britain: Transnational Publics and Changing Forms of Leadership and Authority in Britain'
-
Introduction: Crossing religious and ethnographic boundaries - the case for comparative reflection
(16 pages)
In:
Social Anthropology, vol. 28, pp. 386-401
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-8676.12779
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Guidance as 'women's work': A new generation of female Islamic authorities in Britain
In:
Religions, vol. 10
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110601
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Bowen, John R (2016) On British Islam: religion, law, and everyday practice in shari'a councils. Princeton: University Press
In:
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, vol. 25, pp. 182-183
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12980
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Book/Film/Article review (Published) -
Diaspora and religion: Connecting and disconnecting
(8 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315209050
Research output: › Chapter (Published) -
Forging a ‘good diaspora’: Political mobilization among Somalis in the UK
In:
Development and change, vol. 49, pp. 146-169
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12358
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Somali, Muslim, British: Striving in Securitized Britain
(304 pages)
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350027749
Research output: › Book (Published) -
Between wandering and staying put: Piety and urban mobility among young Somali women in multicultural London
Research output: › Chapter (Published) -
‘For my mum It comes with the culture’: Intergenerational dynamics and young Somali women’s interventions within multicultural debates in Britain
In:
Bildhaan: An International Journal of Somali Studies, vol. 16, pp. 49-64
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Imagining an ideal husband: Marriage as a site of aspiration among pious Somali women in London
In:
Anthropological Quarterly, vol. 89, pp. 781-812
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/anq.2016.0047
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Diasporas Reimagined: Spaces, Practices and Belonging
(231 pages)
Research output: › Book (Published)