Since 2021
Postdoctoral Researcher at the DFG-Research Training Group 2661: „connecting-excluding - Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks,“ University of Cologne, KHM, TH Köln

2017-2021
Postdoctoral Researcher as part of the BMBF-funded research project Jihadism on the Internet: Images and Videos, their appropriation and dissemination, Department of Anthropology and African Studies at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.

2013-2017
Doctoral Research Fellow at the research training group „Locating Media,“ University of Siegen, Germany

2011-2013
Doctoral Research Fellow at the research project “Media-related configurations of translocal social spaces by West African migrants in Europe”, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Cologne.

2009-2013
Lecturer (Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin) at the Research and Teaching Network: Media, Culture, and Society" Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Cologne

2019
Dr. Phil. in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, University of Cologne, Germany. 

2006
Master of Arts in Visual Anthropology at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology, Manchester, UK.

2005
Magistra Artium in Social and Cultural Anthropology University of Cologne, Germany.

• Media, Visual and Digital Anthropology
• Mobility, Migration and Postmigration
• Anthropology of Religion & Politics
• Transnationalism and Globalization
• Securitization of Islam
• Ethics & ethnographic research methods
• Collaborative, curatorial, audiovisual methods 

In my postdoctoral research project, I focus on Muslim everyday life and digital media practices in postmigrant contexts. Through digital ethnography, fieldwork in different ‘offline’ as well as ‘online’ contexts, I explore dynamics and practices of connecting and excluding in different Muslim communities in the German-speaking public sphere. 

New spheres of Muslim activism and participation as well as Anti-Muslim racism and the Securitisation of Islam in Germany, are important issues in this research. I explore these themes through a focus on everyday experiences, digital and experimental ethnography and digital curatorial strategies for the co-creation of knowledge, e.g. in the curatorial project and intervention in public space “Muslim*Present” which is part of the exhibition “The Entire Story Starts Where”

As part of the project “Jihadism on the Internet”, I have been working at the intersection of political violence, religion, and artistic practices. I have been informed by critical and decolonial perspectives in this field. Together with Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann I curated the ongoing digital platform “reCLAIM: art against political violence” and organized events surrounding the platform. The co-edited volume (together with Christoph Günther and Robert Dörre) on Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence and Media came out in 2023 with Edinburgh University Press and unravels the nexus of Jihad, Political Violence, and Media and how this has determined the lives of Muslims in Europe and the US over the past 20 years. This work also builds on the co-edited book Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements and the co-authored article on Re-enacting violence (2020) where we explored the appropriations of IS decapitation videos and sounds by very different kinds of actors in contested digital public spheres.

My book on social media in transnational everyday life (Social Media im transnationalen Alltag, 2020, transcript Publisher) is based on my PhD research, a multi-sited media ethnography in Berlin, Dakar and ‘online’. The book analyzes media practices and transnational social relationships across multiple media like videos, photography, mobile phones, Skype, or Facebook, and starts out with a focus on transnational religious and life-cycle celebrations like weddings or the “Magal de Touba”. Through the perspective on images that Senegalese are making and circulating of themselves the book also offers alternative interpretations to images of migration and refugees that dominate journalistic media. The recently published articles Intimate Pictures (2023), In/Visible Images of Mobility (2021), Expanding the Family Frame (2021), and the photo-essay Circulating Family Images (2020) additionally reflect on my PhD research through the lens of embodied media and image practices and family involvement.