Notes on Contributors
Ibrahim Abraham
joined Federation University in 2023 as a Lecturer in Sociology, after four years as the Hans Mol Research Fellow in Religion and the Social Sciences at the Australian National University where he also convened the Freilich Project for the Study of Bigotry in 2019–2020. He remains affiliated with the ANU as an Honorary Senior Lecturer. His most recent book is Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities (Routledge, 2021).
Amira Aftab
(PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School. Her research interests include feminist legal theory, religion and the law, and family law. Amira’s current research examines gender in state institutions with a focus on family dispute resolution, as well as the experiences of domestic and family violence in culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse communities.
Dijana Alic
(PhD) is an Associate Professor at UNSW’s Arts, Design and Architecture faculty, and a UNSW Scientia Fellow. Dijana has a keen interest in exploring the connection between the built environment and its social, political, and cultural contexts. Dijana is internationally recognised for her research on the relationship between architecture and society, in its multiple representations. The breadth of Dijana’s interests is reflected in her publications – from exploring multiculturalism and city-making in her work on the ethnic clubs of Sydney to publishing a book on social housing in collaboration with TU Vienna. Dijana has published over 50 sole-authored works which reflect the diversity and depth of her research career. Currently, Dijana’s research is focused on a comprehensive survey of numerous buildings serving Sydney’s diverse immigrant groups.
Mahsheed Ansari
is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and a research fellow at the Centre for Religion and Ethics and Society (CRES), Charles Sturt University. She is a reader in Islamic thought plus a community activist working in the areas of interfaith dialogue, social harmony, and leadership-mentoring programs with Muslim youth and women. Her research interests include the history of Islamic thought, spirituality, and culture. She has been working on the oral history project “Muslim Pioneers Post-WWII”, and is writing a biography of Dr. Ashfaq Ahmad. Her latest research monograph is on the Modern Debates on Prophethood in Islam: Muhammad Iqbal and Said Nursi (Routledge, 2023).
Greg Barton
is Professor of Global Islamic Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute. He has been active for the past 30 years in interfaith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society. The central axis of his research interests is the way in which religious thought, individual believers, and religious communities respond to modernity and to the modern nation-state. He also has a strong general interest in comparative international politics. He has undertaken extensive research on Indonesian politics and society, especially the role of Islam. Since 2004 he has made a comparative study of progressive Islamic thought in Turkey and Indonesia.
Renae Barker
(PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in the Law School at the University of Western Australia and Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for Muslim States and Societies. In 2024 she was Visiting Professor in the Dipartimento di Giurisprudenza at the Università Degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, where she conducted research on state and religion modelling. She is an alumna of the International Center for Law and Religion Studies Young Scholars Fellowship on Religion and the Rule of Law, and regularly presents masterclasses in the fellowship on state and religion. She has published widely on a range of law and religion issues, both domestically and internationally. She is the author of State and Religion: The Australian Story (Routledge, 2019) and lead editor of Law and Religion in the Commonwealth: The Evolution of Case Law (Hart, 2022).
Katharine Bartsch
(PhD) is currently Head of the School of Architecture and Built Environment, University of Adelaide, Australia. Her interdisciplinary research explores the built environment of Muslim communities in the context of human mobility. Recent research and supervision focuses on migration (rural > urban, displacement, and forced and voluntary resettlement) and settlement in the context of large-scale infrastructure projects or urbanisation. Katharine is currently leading a research team, funded by the Australian Research Council (2021–2026), which examines “The Australian Mosque Today: Architectural Collaborations” and she is a member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Islamic Architecture.
Mirela Cufurovic
is a Research Associate at Charles Sturt University, and a History and Sociology Tutor for the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme (ITAS) at the University of Sydney and the First Nations tutorial program at Charles Sturt University. Mirela is also a Media and Communications Officer for the Australian Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (AAIMS), and the Assistant Editor of the Australian Journal of Islamic Studies (AJIS). She is currently a PhD candidate at Charles Sturt University, writing a thesis on the new history of Muslims in Australia.
Adis Duderija
is a Senior Lecturer at Griffith University in Brisbane. His research focuses on contemporary Islam and Western Muslim identity construction, with special reference to interfaith and gender issues.
Kevin Dunn
is Provost at Western Sydney University, where he was Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) from 2019 to 2023, and Professor in Human Geography and Urban Studies. His research has highlighted the culturally and spatially uneven distribution of citizenship in Australia. He is co-author of Cyber Racism and Community Resilience (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017) with Andrew Jakubowicz and others, plus more than 30 book chapters and more than 70 articles. His most recent articles are on racism in the sharing economy, Islamophobia, and extremism. They are published in Behavioural Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression (2020); Australian Journal of Social Issues (2020); New Media and Society (2019); and Geoforum (2019). He leads the national Challenging Racism Project based at WSU, delivering impactful research that has underpinned national racism strategies, as well as award-winning interventions.
Majdi Faleh
(PhD) is an Academic Fellow and Lecturer in Cultural Heritage in the Nottingham Trent University Research Peak in Cultural Heritage. He pursued two postdoctoral fellowships at MIT and Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. His international research collaborations include key partnerships with universities and research institutions in Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Tunisia, and India. He focuses on marginalised heritage in North Africa, globalisation in Arab cities, and Islamic architecture.
Farida Fozdar
is Professor of Sociology at Curtin University. She has worked for two decades on migration, refugee settlement, multiculturalism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, racism, and anti-racism, mostly in the Australian context, and has more than 140 publications. Her focus has been on discourses of social inclusion and exclusion, and how these are perpetuated at the macro and micro levels.
Maryam Gusheh
(PhD) is Associate Professor in Architecture at Monash University. Her work examines the relationship between architectural practice and the social and political contexts in which the built fabric is designed, constructed, and received. Her interests include culture and identity in architecture, cross-cultural practices, and inclusive architecture. Maryam often works at the intersection of academia and industry and is skilled at conceptualising and realising collaborations that span these worlds. Maryam is a Practice Critic at Neeson Murcutt + Nielle Architects. Prior to joining Monash University in 2018, Maryam was the director of the Architecture Department at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.
Gerhard Hoffstaedter
(PhD) is Associate Professor in Anthropology in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. He conducts research with refugees in South-East Asia and Australia, on refugee and immigration policy and on religion and the state. He is a regular commentator in newspapers, radio, and online media on topics of his research. His first book Modern Muslim Identities: Negotiating Religion and Ethnicity in Malaysia is published by NIAS Press. A co-edited volume Urban Refugees: Challenges in Protection, Services and Policy was published with Routledge in 2015.
Rhonda Itaoui
is a researcher with global expertise in the geographies of diversity and multiculturalism in urban spaces. Rhonda’s work has focused on the geographies of Islamophobia in Sydney, Australia and the San Francisco Bay Area, USA. Her research has revealed the need for local and context-specific anti-racism policy practice, public education campaigns, and policy initiatives that respond to the spatial imaginaries and lived experiences of racialised groups. She currently serves as an expert advisor on Islamophobia and Multiculturalism with the NSW government and Federal government.
Balawyn Jones
(PhD) is an Associate Lecturer at La Trobe Law School, Melbourne. She researches across the fields of domestic and family violence, victimhood and agency before the law, Islamic law and society, and the implementation of women’s rights at the intersection of gender, religion, and law.
Ghena Krayem
(PhD) is an Associate Professor at Sydney Law School, University of Sydney, Australia. Since 2000, Ghena has been a legal academic teaching in the areas of public law and family law. She has researched and published in many areas to do with Islam in Australia, particularly focusing on Muslim women and Islamic family law. She has authored several books that examine Islamic family law process, accommodation in common law and Muslim women in Australia: Islamic Family Law in Australia: To Recognise or Not to Recognise (Melbourne University Publishing, 2014); Accommodating Muslims under Common Law (Routledge, 2016); Understanding Sharia Processes: Women’s Experiences of Family Disputes (Hart, 2021); and Muslim Women and Agency: An Australian Context (Brill, 2021).
Paul Mitchell
is a Researcher at Griffith University in Brisbane. His research interests include religious conversion, Islam in Australia, and Islam–West relations.
Alyssa Moohin
is a PhD Candidate at the Asia Institute, University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on Muslim community organisations and female-led social change programs.
Adam Possamai
FASSA is Professor of Sociology and Deputy Dean at the School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University. He is the author and editor of more than a dozen academic books, five novels, and more than 100 refereed articles and book chapters. He is a past president of the International Sociological Association’s Committee 22 on the Sociology of Religion and of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion. He was a visiting professor at the City University of New York and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His latest books are The Sociology of Shariʾa: Case Studies from Around the World; Second Edition (edited with Bryan Turner and James Richardson, Springer, 2023), Religion and Change in Australia (with David Tittensor, Routledge, 2022), the Sage Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion (edited with Anthony Blasi, Sage, 2020), The Social Scientific Study of Exorcism in Christianity (edited with Giuseppe Giordan, Springer, 2020), The i-zation of Society, Religion, and Neoliberal Post-Secularism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), and Sociology of Exorcism in Late Modernity (with Giuseppe Giordan, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Dr Mansoureh Rajabitanha is an emerging historian of Islamic art and architecture. Her research focuses on developing a new area of expertise in this field, which examines the intersections between textile, landscape, and architectural designs to inform the theory and history of decorative arts. She is currently a lecturer at the Adelaide Central School of Art and a sessional academic at the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Adelaide. She is also a curatorial advisor at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Mansoureh Rajabitanha
is an emerging historian of Islamic art and architecture. Her research focuses on developing a new area of expertise in this field, which examines the intersections between textile, landscape, and architectural designs to inform the theory and history of decorative arts. She is currently a lecturer at the Adelaide Central School of Art and a sessional academic at the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering, University of Adelaide. She is also a curatorial advisor at the Art Gallery of South Australia.
Halim Rane
is a Professor of Islamic Studies at Griffith University in Brisbane where he leads the study of Islam–West relations. His research interests include contemporary Islamic thought, covenants in Islam, and Muslim communities in the West. He is a founding member and former president of the Australian Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (AAIMS).
Md Mizanur Rashid
(PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Architecture and the founding member and Deputy Director of AV (Architecture Vacancy) Research Lab at the School of Architecture and Built Environment at Deakin University. Mizanur’s research and teaching focuses exclusively on the pluralistic (both tangible and intangible) aspects of architecture and its narratives. He brings extensive knowledge of South Asian and Islamic architectural history with digital modelling and documentation expertise. He examines architecture at the crossroads of multiple historical narratives and brings visualisation capabilities provided by developments in digital heritage documentation to reveal historic buildings to a wider audience, showcasing how the building was conceived, constructed, and used. He has published extensively in the fields of digital heritage, architecture of Islam and diasporic architecture in multicultural Australia.
Rachel Sharples
is a Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences, Western Sydney University (WSU). She is a member of the Challenging Racism Project and the Diversity and Human Rights Research Centre (DHRRC) at WSU and the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS). Rachel’s research interests are interdisciplinary, spanning anthropology, sociology, ethnic and racial studies, cultural studies, and politics. Key areas of research include displaced persons, refugees and migrants in local and global settings; statelessness, citizenship and belonging; racism and anti-racism; and spaces of solidarity and resistance. Recent publications include anti-asylum-seeker sentiment in the Australian population (Geopolitics), claims of anti-white racism in Australia (Journal of Sociology) and segmenting Islamophobia in the Victorian population (Ethnicities). Rachel’s manuscript Spaces of Solidarity was published by Berghahn Books in 2020.
David Tittensor
(PhD) is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies and Graduate Research Director in the Asia Institute at the University of Melbourne. His research interests are religion and society, Muslim movements, religion and development, Turkish politics, and the wider Middle East. He is a co-author of Religion and Change in Australia (Routledge, 2022), author of The House of Service: The Gülen Movement and Islam’s Third Way (Oxford University Press, 2014) and is co-editor of the series Muslims in Global Societies (Springer).
Bryan S. Turner
is Professor at the Australian Catholic University and is one of the world’s leading sociologists of religion. His research interests include globalisation and religion, religious conflict and the modern state, and human rights and religion, and he has received several honorary degrees recognising his contributions to sociology, most recently Doctor of Letters from the University of Cambridge. Professor Turner received the Max Planck Research Award at Potsdam University and is a Visiting Professor at the same university.
Samina Yasmeen
AM is one of Australia’s foremost researchers and commentators on Muslim identity. She is a Director of UWA’s Centre for Muslim States and Societies, and a Professor of Political Science and International Relations. She has published articles on the position of Pakistani and Middle Eastern women, the role of Muslims in Australia, and Indo-Pakistan relations. In 2011, she was awarded Member of the Order of Australia in recognition for her services to international relations as an academic, adviser, and social welfare advocate. This honour follows a string of other awards: in 2012 Samina was named a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs and was inducted into the WA Women’s Hall of Fame in the centenary year of International Women’s Day.
Ihsan Yilmaz
is a Research Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Deakin University’s Alfred Deakin Institute. He also serves as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at Oxford University’s Regent College and at the Brussels-based think tank the European Center for Populism Studies (ECPS). Previously, he held positions at the Universities of Oxford and London, demonstrating a strong track record in leading multi-site international research projects. His research interests include religion and politics, Muslims in the West, authoritarianism, digital authoritarianism, populism, transnationalism, soft power, and sharp power, with a particular focus on Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan. He is a prolific author whose work is published in the world’s leading political science and international relations journals. Currently, he is leading two ARC Discovery projects: “Civilisationist Mobilisation, Digital Technologies, and Social Cohesion: The Case of Turkish and Indian Diasporas in Australia” and “Religious Populism, Emotions, and Political Mobilisation: Civilisationism in Turkey, Indonesia, and Pakistan.” Additionally, he is co-leading a Gerda Henkel Foundation (Germany) project titled “Smart Digital Technologies and the Future of Democracy in the Muslim World.” He is the author of several books, including Sharia as Informal Law (Routledge, 2024), Islam in the Anglosphere (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), and Creating the Desired Citizen (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Flavia Zimmermann
(PhD) is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia, and a Lecturer in Public Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Flavia was a member of the University of Western Australia Centre for Muslim States and Societies, where she conducted a comparative study with migrant Brazilians and Pakistanis in Australia, exploring lived experiences of honour, religion, and gender. She was also a visiting fellow at Western Sydney University. She has published widely on Brazilian politics, policy, and international relations, both internationally and domestically. She is the author of the book Honour Consciousness, Religion and Gender: Brazilian and Pakistani Lived Experiences in Australia (Brill, 2024).