Since 2025 
Project "Critical Anthropology,“ Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt 

2021-2025
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 

Dreschke, A., Pfeifer, S. and Ramella A. L.  (2024), Multimodal Digital Curating as (anthropological) research, collaboration, and engagement. Allegra Lab. https://allegralaboratory.net/multimodal-digital-curating-as-anthropological-research-collaboration-and-engagement/ 

Pfeifer, S. (2024),  "(P)Reenactments der Gewalt: Aneignung und widerständige Praxis?" in: A. Strohmaier und E. Linseisen (eds.). Deine Kamera ist eine App. Medienverflechtungen des Applizierens und Appropriierens. Lüneburg: Meson Press, 99-115. (OA)

Pfeifer, S., Günther, C. and Dörre, R. (2023), Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence and Media, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Pres.

Ahmad, M., Fuhrmann, L., Pfeifer, S. and Wiechert, M. (2023), "Digitale Team-Ethnografie: Teilnehmende Beobachtung auf Instagram mit dem Account ‚Hashtag Islam'" in: L. Niebling, F. Rackzkowski and S. Stollfuß, eds, Handbuch Digitale Medien und Methoden. Springer, 1-24.

Pfeifer, S. (2023), "Digitale ethnographische Methoden" in: T. Scharer, B. Glorius, O. Kleist and M. Berlinghoff, eds, Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung: Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlag, 165-170.

Pfeifer, S. (2023), "Intimate Pictures. Mediating Absence and Presence in Senegalese Transnational Relationships" in: C. Eisenmann, K. Englert, C. Schubert and E. Voss, eds, Varieties of Cooperation. Mutually Making the Conditions of Mutual Making. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer Verlag, 79-94.

Pfeifer, S. and Suzana, J. (2023). Co-Teaching Postdigital Ethnography. Working Paper Series Collaborative Research Center 1187 Media of Cooperation, Vol. 34.

Pfeifer, S. (2022). Calling to Prayer in ‘Pandemic Times’: Muslim Women’s Practices and Contested (Public) Spaces in Germany. Entagled Religions, 12(3).

Pfeifer, S. (2021), "Expanding the Family Frame: Social Specialists, Mediated Experiences, and Gendered Images of Mobility in Transnational Wedding Videos" in: A. Vailati and Z. Villarreal, eds, Ethnographies of ‘On Demand’ Films: Anthropological Explorations of Commissioned Audiovisual Productions. New York: Springer Interantional Publishing, 167-192.

Faust, L. and Pfeifer, S. (2021). Dark Ethnography?  Encountering the ‘Uncomfortable Other’ in Ethnographic Research: Introducing this Special Section. ZfE / JSCA, 146(2), pp. 81-90.

Pfeifer, S. (2021). How Can You Approach the Field Digitally? Reflections on Using Social Media Profiles in Ethnographic Research. Digital Ethnography Initiative Blog,.

Pfeifer, S. and Neumann, U. (2021). In/Visible Images of Mobility: Sociality and Analog–Digital Materiality in Personal Archives of Transnational Migration. Visual Anthropology, 34(4), pp. 317-338.

Günther, C. and Pfeifer, S. (2020), Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Pfeifer, S. (2020), Social Media im transnationalen Alltag: Zur medialen Ausgestaltung sozialer Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Senegal, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

Pfeifer, S. (2020), "Circulating Family Images: Doing Fieldwork and Artwork with/about Family" in: F. Braukmann, M. Haug, K. Metzmacher and R. Stolz, eds, Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 79-98.

Pfeifer, S., Fuhrmann, L. and Wevers, P. (2020), "Re-enacting Violence: Testing and Contesting Public Spheres with Appropriations of IS Execution Videos" in: C. Günther and S. Pfeife, eds, Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Meanings, Aesthetics, Appropriations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 198-221.

Fuhrmann, L. and Pfeifer, S. (2020). Challenges in Digital Ethnography: Research Ethics Relating to the Securitisation of Islam. Journal of Muslims in Europe, 9(2), pp. 175-195.

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.