I am an anthropologist with extensive fieldwork experience in Lebanon and Germany. My work focuses primarily on heritage, memory, mobility, loss, as well as sound and empire. Beyond publishing on these topics, I have produced diverse media, including a sound installation at the Amsterdam Museum.
Prior to becoming an anthropologist, I trained as a political scientist, interpreter and human rights consultant. I studied anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, the Polish Academy of Sciences and University College London. Also, I have been awarded several fellowships, including at the Free University of Berlin, the American University of Beirut, the Orient Institut Beirut, and the Institute for Advanced Studies global dis:connect at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, where I am now based.
Currently, I am working on two projects: sound archives and their entangled legacies and a monograph on temporality, heritage and loss in Beirut. I have published in various collections and journals, including the International Journal of Heritage Studies, Visual Anthropology Review and the Review of Middle East Studies.
My research at CARMAH, as part of the Making Differences project, was primarily concerned with participation, belonging and difference. It entailed ethnographic fieldwork on a collaborative project between a state museum and a local collective, as well as research on a slam poetry group of young Muslims and creative ways in which they negotiate their belonging in Germany. While working on the project, I also edited the book Islam and Heritage in Europe: Pasts, Presents and Future Possibilities, with Sharon Macdonald and Mirjam Shatanawi (see also here).
I was a managing editor of CARMAH’s Reflections series from 2018 to 2020.
Research Expertise and Interests
- Heritage, memory, loss
- Mobility, migration, translocality
- Belonging, difference, diversity politics
- Sound, image, performance
- Cities
- Middle East – Lebanon
- Europe – Germany
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
‘Goodbye Mshatta’: Connections and Disconnections on Berlin’s Museum Island, Review of Middle East Studies 56(1), 2023 [Open Access]
Critique of Shifting Worlds, Shaping Fieldwork: A Memoir of Anthropology and Art, Visual Anthropology Review 38(2), 2022
i,Slam. Belonging and Difference on Stage in Berlin, in Sharon Macdonald (ed.), Doing Diversity in Museums and Heritage. A Berlin Ethnography. Transcript, 2022 [Open Access]
Islam and Heritage in Europe: Pasts, Presents and Future Possibilities, Puzon, Katarzyna, Macdonald Sharon and Mirjam Shatanawi (eds), Routledge, 2021 [Open Access]
Heritage and Policymaking in Lebanon, in Hanane Hajj Ali and Nadia von Maltzahn (eds) Insights into Cultural Policies in Lebanon, Orient-Institut Studies, 2021 (in Arabic and English) [Open Access]
Germans without Footnotes: Islam, Belonging and Poetry Slam, in Katarzyna Puzon, Sharon Macdonald and Mirjam Shatanawi (eds) Islam and Heritage in Europe: Pasts, Presents and Future Possibilities, Routledge, 2021 [Open Access]
Heritage, Islam, Europe: Entanglements and Directions. An Introduction, in Katarzyna Puzon, Sharon Macdonald and Mirjam Shatanawi (eds) Islam and Heritage in Europe: Pasts, Presents and Future Possibilities, Routledge, 2021, with Mirjam Shatanawi and Sharon Macdonald [Open Access]
Reframing Islam? Potentials and Challenges of Participatory Initiatives in Museums and Heritage, in Katarzyna Puzon, Sharon Macdonald and Mirjam Shatanawi (eds) Islam and Heritage in Europe: Pasts, Presents and Future Possibilities, Routledge, 2021, with Sharon Macdonald, Christine Gerbich, Rikke Gram and Mirjam Shatanawi [Open Access]
Saving Beirut: Heritage and the City, International Journal of Heritage Studies 25(9), 2019 (published online in 2017)
Participatory Matters: Access, Migration, and Heritage in Berlin Museums, in Heike Oevermann and Eszter Gantner (eds) Securing Urban Heritage: Agents, Access, and Securitization, Routledge, 2019
Translocality, in Otherwise: Rethinking Museums and Heritage, Centre for Anthropological Research on Museums and Heritage/Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, 2018 [Open Access]
Review of Shi’i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa. Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 24(3), 2018
Wissen/Schaffen Exhibition Catalogue. Exhibition by Claire Lambe and Susan Ossman at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, 2018, with Claire Lambe and Susan Ossman
Memory and Artistic Production in a Post-war Arab City, in Des O’Rawe and Mark Phelan (eds) Post-conflict Performance, Film and Visual Arts: Cities of Memory. Contemporary Performance InterActions, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016