Research Team
Prof Fethi Mansouri
Professor Mansouri holds the UNESCO Chair in comparative research on ‘Cultural Diversity and Social Justice’ and an Alfred Deakin Research Chair in migration and intercultural studies. Professor Mansouri is the Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University-Australia. He is the editor of the Journal of Intercultural Studies, founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Citizenship and Globalisation Studies and founding co-editor of the international journal of Social Inclusion.
Since 2010, Professor Mansouri has been serving as an expert advisor to the UN on cultural diversity, and intercultural relations. He also sits on the advisory boards of various government agencies and NGOs including the Victorian State government and the Australian Intercultural Society respectively.
Dr Michele A. Lobo
Michele Lobo's research reputation is recognised internationally and she holds three leadership positions - Editor of the prestigious international journal, Social & Cultural Geography (Impact Factor – 1.573); Editor, Book Reviews/Critical Dialogues of the highly regarded Postcolonial Studies Journal and National Convenor, Cultural Geography Study Group, Institute of Australian Geographers. She has authored one book, co-edited two books, published 20 peer reviewed articles (12 sole authored) in journals of international repute and nine book chapters. She was nominated for the Paul Bourke Award for Early Career Research, Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, 2015. Since 2013 she has secured prestigious external grants totalling $750,000.
As a Chief Investigator on this ARC Discovery Project (2013-2016), she gained national and international recognition for research on urban Islam, encounter and political engagement. She conducted fieldwork in Detroit, Melbourne and Paris that contributed to the successful completion of the project. During the same period, she held the position of ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow.
Dr Amelia Johns
Amelia Johns is a Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute. Her work spans the fields of youth studies, digital media studies and cultural studies. Her research examines issues of: whiteness and youth identity; Muslim, migrant and diaspora youth negotiations of faith and citizenship; and young people’s negotiation of racism and citizenship in digitally networked publics. Her current research project examines Malaysian-Chinese youth digital practices, and the role 'the digital' plays in negotiations of political participation, citizenship and belonging.
She is the author of 'Battle for the Flag' (2015), an empirical investigation of youth performances of racism, nationalism and whiteness in the Cronulla riots of 2005. She is also co-editor of recently published book 'Negotiating Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest, Culture' (with Anthony McCosker and Sonja Vivienne, 2016).
Prof Bryan Turner
Bryan Turner is one of the world’s leading sociologists of religion and he is founding Director of the Institute for Religion, Politics and Society. His research interests include globalisation and religion, religious conflict and the modern state, and human rights and religion. He was previously Presidential Professor of Sociology and Director of the Mellon Committee for the Study of Religion at the City University of New York.
He has edited many journals in the field of sociology including Body & Society and Journal of Classical Sociology. He is a Faculty Associate of the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and Research Associate at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, he is the former Director of the Institute for Religion, Politics and Society.
Special Thanks
- Liudmila Kirpitchenko, for her research support
- Matteo Vergani, for performing quantitative descriptive analysis
- Virginie Andre, for using her sociolinguistic skills to analyse interview data from France
- Reem Faiq, for providing Arabic translation of the interview transcriptions
- Anne Faithfull, for compiling data on the project final report
- Martine Hawkes and Paula Muraca, for expert editorial assistance
- Lisa Tribuzio and Helen Heath (Dandenong Interfaith Network), for their assistance with the Melbourne fieldwork
- Saeed Khan and Roohi Rahman, for their kind assistance with the Detroit fieldwork
- All of those who have supported directly or indirectly the successful completion of this project in particular those Muslim participants across the various sites individuals who opened up about their personal experiences and trusted the research team with capturing the complex dynamics of their interconnected religious and, social and political practices.
Partners
Many thanks to the mosques, community organisations, and networks for their invaluable helpin organising interviews and focus groups in the three locations. These organisations include:
- Victorian Arabic Social Services (Broadmeadows, Melbourne)
- Hume Islamic Youth Centre (Broadmeadows, Melbourne)
- Albanian Saki Mosque (Dandenong, Melbourne)
- Emir Sultan mosque (Dandenong, Melbourne)
- Hazara Women’s Network (Dandenong, Melbourne)
- Greater Dandenong City Council (Dandenong, Melbourne)
- Australian International Academy (Coburg, Melbourne)
- Deakin University Islamic Society (ISDU)
- Islamic Council of Victoria (ICV)
- Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights (MWCHR)
- Wayne State University (Detroit, USA)
- Islamic Society of North America (ISNA)
- Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
- Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU)
- The Muslim Centre of Detroit (Detroit, USA)
- Al-Islah Islamic Centre (Hamtramck, USA)
- Masjid Mu’ath Bin Jabal (Hamtramck, USA)
- Islamic Centre of Hamtramck (Hamtramck, USA)
- Islamic House of Wisdom (Dearborn, USA)
- Islamic Center of America (Dearborn, USA)
- Tawhid Islamic Centre (France)
- Union of Young Muslims (France)
- Islamic Association Al Islah (France)
- Organisation Against Islamophobia (France)
- CRIDAF-Pléiade, Université Paris 13 (France)
FUNDING
This research was funded by an Australia Research Council Discovery grant (ARC DP130102601), and we would like to thank the Australian Research Council for their support.