The 'kitchen talks' are a podcast about the research done at ZMO: Historical as well as social- and cultural-anthropological fieldwork in the Middle East, Eurasia, South- and Southeast Asia. Over a cup of coffee or tea, we talk about research questions, regions, and methodologies. We also take a look behind the scenes of academic practice – at personal reflections, challenges, failures, and unexpected outcomes.
Dr. Arpan Roy is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at ZMO whose current research revolves around theologies of “mission” in Arab Christianity. In this episode, Dr. Sonja Hegasy, vice director of ZMO, speaks with him about the Syriac Catholic monastery Deir Mar Musa al-Habashi in Syria and its founder, the Italian priest Paolo Dall’Oglio, who developed a unique practice of Muslim-Christian interfaith dialogue that he called badaliya. Two years after the beginning of the Syrian War in 2011, Dall’Oglio was kidnapped while attempting to engage in dialogue with the Islamic State (ISIS) militant group and has not been seen since. Dr. Roy discusses the theological relationship between Dall’Oglio’s monastic practice and his engagement with militant Islamist groups, also shares some ethnographic moments and motives that drive his research.
Political scientist Dr. Noura Chalati (University of Erfurt, ZMO) researched relations between East German and Syrian intelligence services during the Cold War (1960-1990). She defended her dissertation exactly one month before the fall of the Assad regime on December 8, 2024. In this episode, she talks about recent events in Syria, as well as how the historical relationship between the GDR and Syria came about and what interests guided it. How did the search for archive material on the activities of the secret services turn out? And what are the prospects for a possible reappraisal of the past under the new Syrian regime?
Dr. Sana Chavoshian is an anthropologist working for several years on war environments in Iran and more recently in Iraq. Before joining ZMO in 2021, she was a junior researcher at the Centre for Advanced Studies, “Multiple Secularities” in Leipzig for five years and currently holds a fellowship at Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Cultural Practices of Reparation” at the University of Saarland. Her book “Women, Martyrs and Stones in Iran’s Postwar Politics” will appear early 2025 by Edinburgh University Press. In this episode, Sana speaks about her current project on dust-winds in the Mesopotamian Marshlands at the southern borders of Iraq and Iran. How can dust be studied by an anthropologist? And what is the connection between the dust-winds and international sanctions on Iran?
In this episode, Prof Dr Nora Derbal (University of Hamburg) and Dr Dominik Krell (University of Oxford) speak on the occasion of the conference they organized with Prof Dr Ulrike Freitag (ZMO) on “Law and Society in Saudi Arabia”, which will take place at the ZMO from 8-10 October 2024. This episode focuses primarily on the Saudi legal system, which is the research focus of lawyer and social anthropologist Dominik Krell. He provides insights into his research for the book “Islamic Law in Saudi Arabia” (Brill), which will be published in 2024. Can a change in the legal system be recognized parallel to the social change in Saudi Arabia since 2015? What about the codification of Islamic law? And what is the role of legal scholars today?
Guest of this episode is Dr Feyza Burak-Adli, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Anthropology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, who visited ZMO as a guest researcher in the unit “Contested Religion and Intellectual Culture”. She is a social anthropologist specializing in religion at the intersection of gender and class, and focuses on Muslim women’s ethical self-formation as it is informed by Sufism, Islamic feminism, and female religious authority in Turkey. In the episode, Feyza speaks about the Rifai order, a Sufi group in Turkey that is led by Shaykha Cemalnur Sargut, who is an unveiled female religious authority leading both men and women. What is the history of the Rifai order? How is Sufism practiced in secular Turkey where the Sufi orders are still legally banned? And, can the Shaykha be considered an Islamic feminist? Feyza also reflects on how her personal research interest developed based on her own story and shares insights on her fieldwork experience as a native ethnographer.
PD Dr Katharina Lange heads the research field “Environment and Justice” at the ZMO and works primarily on ecology and resources in rural areas with a regional focus on Syria and Kurdistan-Iraq. She combines ethnology and history in her research. In this podcast episode, she talks to Elisa Nobel-Dilaty about her forthcoming book “Historicity, Tribality and Voice in Rural Syria” and the field research on which the monograph is based among the Welde, the inhabitants of a rural area in the Euphrates Valley between Aleppo and Raqqa. How do they view their history? How do their narratives differ from one another? And what has changed for the Welde in recent decades? (In German)
Dr Maria-Magdalena Pruß is a research fellow at ZMO and a historian of modern South Asia. She received her PhD at Princeton University in 2019. In this episode, Maria talks about doing research in Pakistan and her resulting forthcoming book, titled "Islamic Modernism and Religious Identity in Colonial Punjab". The episode takes a look behind the scenes of archival work in Pakistan, how to gain access to records and source material while keeping in mind research methodology and ethics. It also focuses on the question of "What is Islamic modernism", the role of the Ahmadiyya movement, as well as regional variations and translocal connections in the history of Islamic modernism in South Asia. The episode is moderated by ZMO-affiliate Noura Chalati.
Robin Schmahl is a research fellow at ZMO and a PhD-candidate at Freie Universität Berlin. Being part of the international research network 'Historicity of Democracy in the Arab and Muslim Worlds' (HISDEMAB), his main research focus is Ottoman Egypt. Which deliberation practices during the French occupation can be traced back and what does deliberation mean in this context? What makes the approach of “historicity” unique as opposed to simply looking at the history of democracy in the region? Robin also shares his archival research experiences in Europe and the Middle East, reflecting on the material’s languages and his positionality as a researcher. The episode is moderated by Lena Herzog-Sounaye, ZMO’s former knowledge transfer officer.
Stefan Kirmse is currently researching legality, law and minorities in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. His research can be located in both history and cultural anthropology and his geographical focus is mainly on Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia and the Caucasus. In the podcast, he talks about his diverse experiences in archives in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia and other countries of the former Soviet Union. How do the archives differ from one another in terms of accessibility and what has changed over the last few decades? He also presents his new ERC project “In Pursuit of ‘Legality’ and ‘Justice’ Minority Struggles in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union” (JUSTIMINO).