Ongoing Projects

Head: Dr. Kenneth Chitwood

Duration: 2026-2028

Funding: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)/UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)

The research project “The Global Landscapes of Muslim Lives: Latin American and Caribbean Intersections” seeks to address gaps in global Islamic studies by focusing on Muslim communities in Latin America and the Caribbean, regions that historically received limited scholarly attention despite their long-standing and diverse Muslim populations. Led by Dr. Ken Chitwood (Universität Bayreuth) and Dr. Kholoud Al-Ajarma (University of Edinburgh), the German–British collaboration aims to document and analyze the everyday realities of Muslim life in the context of global dynamics and transregional networks of encounter and exchange. 

Using ethnographic fieldwork conducted in countries such as Argentina, Barbados, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and in the U.S./Mexico borderlands, the project investigates how local Muslim communities are shaped by, and interact with, transregional flows of people, capital, materials, ideas, and technologies. Around 100 interviews and life histories will be collected in order to explore daily practices, migration experiences, social networks, and forms of religious belonging within differing geographical, social, political, and economic contexts. By comparing these contexts, the researchers aim to identify broader patterns as well as significant local differences in how Islam is lived in the Americas. 

The study will produce 15–20 detailed community profiles that will form the basis for academic publications and public-facing outputs. In addition to generating new empirical insights, the project seeks to strengthen this emerging field of study by supporting early-career scholars, organizing colloquia in Edinburgh and Bayreuth, and fostering international cooperation beyond the UK and Germany—particularly through partnerships with regional scholarly networks such as the Latin America and Caribbean Islamic Studies Association (LACISA). 

Running for 36 months from January 2026 and funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the project ultimately aims to make its findings accessible to both academic and public audiences.

Religious engineering - photo: Peter Kolb

Project members in Bayreuth: Hamissou Rhissa Achaffert (PhD), Prof. Dr. Paula Schrode (leader), Ibrahim Bachir Abdoulaye (PhD), Prof. Dr. Eva Spies (leader, PI)

Project partner at Université Abdou Moumouni Niamey, Niger: Prof. Dr. Mahaman Sanoussi Tidjani Alou (leader)

Project description

PhD Candidate: Sophie Faulstich M.A.
Supervisor: Dr. Stefan Schröder, Prof. Dr. Anna Neumaier (Ruhr University Bochum)

Short description: 

What is religion? There is no standardized answer to this seemingly simple question, neither in the academic world nor in other areas of society. Rather, the very category of “religion”—and the question of which groups, positions, practices, and so on can rightly be classified under it—sparks heated debates. Various voices in the field of religious studies have therefore been pointing out the relevance of everyday concepts of religion and their discursive negotiation for several years. However, it has remained largely unclear how individuals’ everyday conceptions of religion can be captured and contextualized. This doctoral project is situated within this field. It focuses on a group that is of particular interest in light of current debates on the study of religion: adolescents. The goal is an exploratory reconstruction of adolescents’ everyday conceptions of religion based on an interview study with adolescents from various parts of Germany. In this way, empirically grounded insights into individual conceptions of religion will be gained, and conclusions will be drawn for the debate on the concept of religion.

PhD Candidate: Ines Sonntag, M.A.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Christoph Bochinger, Prof. Dr. Susanne Lachenicht

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries numerous works were dedicated to the question of how to deal with various forms of Christianity that emerged in the course of the Reformation and confessionalization. Within this discourse, frequent references were made to “Turks” who had reached Vienna by this point and represented a significant military threat. The dissertation project investigates how references to “Turks” figured in the confessional disputes and what influence they had on the notion of tolerance at the time. What role did individual narratives (from antichrist to idols) play in the Christian discourse on tolerance? How did the “Turk” contribute to the resolution of inner political conflicts?

The Role of Charitable Activities of Turkish Organisations in Niger (working title)

• PhD Student: Ibrahim Bachir Abdoulaye (a.ibrahim-bachir@uni-bayreuth.de)
  
• Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Paula Schrode
  

The main objective of this project is to understand the role of the activities of Turkish charitable organizations, which are shaping the new image of contemporary Turkey, in the processes of ongoing social transformation in Niger. Thus, based on concepts of ‘religious engineering’ and ‘morality/ethics’, this project aims to explore and analyze humanitarian aid and development projects carried out by Turkish charities in Niger from a relational perspective through an interdisciplinary study.

This project intends to achieve these goals by investigating the following main research questions: How are Turkish charities related to "religion" in the conduct of their charitable activities? What kind of interaction exists between these charities and other actors such as donors, target groups and state? How and what moralities are generated from these multiple processes of relating? In this study, ethnographic research will be used as the dominant methodology to answer the research questions.

Associations de dialogue interreligieux et gouvernance de la pluralité religieuse au Niger : vers une laicité «de contexte»

• PhD Student: Ibrahim Seyni Mamoudou (seynimamoudou90@gmail.com)
  
• Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Eva Spies
  

Inter-religious activities represent a place of encounter between people who may or may not belong to the same religious tradition, and offer an opportunity to observe the interactions that occur. Set up in Niger by NGOs, these inter-religious associations are mainly involved in promoting peaceful cohabitation and conflict prevention. These associations operate throughout the country to the point where the State is trying to make them a tool for the management of religious plurality through inter and intra religious dialogue.

What do these associations tell us about the transformations of the Nigerien religious landscape resulting from the new religious situation and the ways of managing the plurality that it induces? As part of a socio-anthropology of religion, this research aims to show how religious differences are mobilised in the service of living together, as well as the challenges that this initiative faces.

Entrepreneurship and Prosperity Gospel. A Business Ethical Perspective on Neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic Churches in Ghana

• PhD Student: Issac Osei-Tutu (Isaac.Osei-Tutu@uni-bayreuth.de)
  
• Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Eva Spies
  

The research is exploratory in nature. It has seven Neo-Pentecostal/Charismatic churches, their pastors and their ancillary philanthropic and profit generating institutions such as educational setups and social service agencies as subject of study. The churches, all headquartered in the Accra metropolis of Ghana, include the International Central Gospel Church (ICGC), Lighthouse Chapel International (LCI), Royalhouse Chapel International (RCI), Action Chapel International (ACI), Perez Chapel International (PCI), Global Revival Ministries (GRM) and Harvest Chapel Ministries (HIM). Focusing on these churches as religious-economic enterprises and their pastoral agents and institutional managers both as entrepreneurs and as ethical leaders, the work will dedicate a special attention to internal entrepreneurial structures of the churches and their para-institutions and to the message of prosperity that serves as a success-factor in the NP/C religious-economy. Consequently, the work will rest on the three hinges of church economy, ethical concepts and ethical conduct.

Penser et faire le développement au Niger : Le rôle des acteurs islamiques locaux (working title)

• PhD Student: Hamissou Rhissa Achaffert (Hamissou.Achaffert@uni-bayreuth.de)
  
• Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Eva Spies
  

This thesis tries to describe and analyse the project of social transformation pursued by a Salafist association in Niger. In order to achieve this objective, the study explores the explicit and implicit visions of a ‘‘different society’’ expressed not only in official documents of this association but also in the activities they are carrying out.

The study does not take these visions of an ‘‘otherwise’’ as given, but as dynamically emerging and shaped through the transformative actions implemented by the association. This research pays particular attention to the terminologies used to designate the expected results of their actions as well as the forms of commitment to act and change the Nigerien society which are observable in the Salafi associative milieu in Niger. The research accounts for the gendered dimensions that permeate processes of social transformation and the position of women as promoted in the explicit and implicit visions of a “different society” in Niger.

This PhD project is part of the research project “Religious engineering: the making of moralities, development and religion in Niger” within the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence.

Habilitant: Dr. Kenneth Chitwood, Mentorat: Prof. Dr. Paula Schrode, Prof. Dr. Eva Spies, Prof. Dr. Kai Kresse 

This Habilitation project examines how individuals and communities navigate processes of globalization that intensify encounters with difference and diversity in everyday life. Building on the premise that pluralization has become more fluid, immediate, and ubiquitous in the late-modern, the project investigates how “globality” is embedded in mundane social, cultural, and religious experiences. It focuses particularly on how actors engage, negotiate, and co-exist with multiple forms of alterity — be it social, ideological, technological, and/or religious — within interconnected local and transregional settings.

The research advances the study of global religion in two ways. First, it interrogates how religious actors and communities, especially those positioned at the perceived margins, both adapt to and actively shape global cultural formations. Second, it expands ethnographic inquiry into the material, embodied, and networked dimensions through which religious life unfolds amid overlapping and often competing orders. By centering marginalized narratives, the project challenges dominant, often homogenizing accounts of global religion and instead offers a more nuanced, multi-local understanding of religious dynamics and their implications for the future. 

Empirically, the project draws on multi-sited ethnographic research spanning diverse global contexts. Topics include forms of “engaged spirituality” across the world, migration and mobility in borderland regions (e.g., along the U.S./Mexico border), the entanglement of secular and religious temporalities in urban environments such as Berlin, diasporic negotiations of belonging, and the localized yet globally informed activism of Muslim women in the Americas. Methodologically, it also contributes to the development of innovative  approaches suited to the complexities of global religious life, including multisited fieldwork, the employment of flânerie as a means to encounter the late modern, and hybrid approaches such as ethnographic journalism.