Community, Identity and Intergenerational Dynamics: An Ethnography of British Muslim Women

This project is an original study of the long-term practice, culture and every-day experiences of British convert Muslim women and their non-or post conversion families, who originate from the first European convert Sufi community established in the UK. Adopting a feminist anthropological framework to examine the intersectionality of race, gender and religion this ethnographic research will explore place and belonging, intergenerational perspectives and embodied identities. Female converts to Islam and their progeny challenge fixed dichotomies and by traversing social systems, have the capacity to initiate new discourses.

Furthermore, by analysing how identities are performed and produced alongside dominant and static views on the Muslim subject, the research proffers a more nuanced understanding of embodied and subjective knowledge regarding British Muslim women's narratives of lived experience and new ways of being in the world. Providing rich data for feminist literature and the anthropology of Islam and religious transmission.