Workshop/CfP - Religious? Secular? Re-thinking Islam and Space in Europe, 30 Nov - 1 Dec, 2017, University of Cambridge, UK

Overview
From identity-framed accounts of territory to contests over mosque construction, questions associated with Islam and space underlie major academic and public sphere debates in contemporary Europe (Fadil 2013; Hopkins and Gale 2008; DeHanas and Zacharias 2011; Baker 2017). The extent of these enquiries is broad, affecting scholarly topics such as place, networks, and the dynamics of identity, as well as familiar policy issues such as values, migration, and political participation (Amir-Moazami 2018; Knott 2005; Minkenberg 2014; Walters 2010). Most recently, both the Alternative für Deutschland and supporters of Brexit have made the presence of Muslims in Europe a key point of their rhetoric. At the same time, ever more sophisticated studies of “local Islams” try to point out the differences of Muslim life worlds varying not only depending on national and ethnic backgrounds, but also with regards to spatially refined levels of analysis such as neighbourhoods, networks, or single mosques (Schiffauer 2014).

The premise of this workshop is that the place of “space” within the study of Islam in Europe has lacked systematic examination. We are therefore looking to bring together researchers tackling questions of space in this field from a range of disciplinary and thematic perspectives, in order to explore challenges and suggest solutions for theoretical, conceptual, and methodological debates associated with the topic.

Proposals
We invite proposals that engage with one or more of the following questions:
- What theories, concepts and methods are most useful in order to investigate the intersections of Islam, secularism/secularity and different dimensions of space in Europe?
- What are the benefits and limitations of utilising space as an analytical lens in the study of Islam and Muslims in Europe?
- How does space connect with other topics associated with the study of Islam in Europe, such as conversion, the state, ethnicity, or the family?
- How should researchers analyse the spatial implications of major scholarly challenges such as debates over Islamic exceptionalism, or the contestation of binaries (e.g., "religious"/"secular", "public"/"private")?
- How do particular research contexts require the use of different space-related concepts, such as territory, network, scale, dispositif, or assemblage?
- How can researchers navigate methodological challenges in the study of Islam and space in Europe?
- Why might symbolic and material contestations and/or collaborations be framed in terms of notions of space, and is space an adequate analytical tool in these instances?
- How should we study the role(s) of governmentality in spaces marked as “religious” and “non-religious” (e.g., spheres, publics)?
- How can a critical evaluation of the categories of "Islam", “Religion”, “Secularism”, and/or "Europe" inform the study of space?
- What can material and sensory approaches (e.g., architecture, media, and orality) to the study of Islam and space reveal?
- How do insights gained within Gender Studies and Postcolonial Theory with regard to agency, power and (subversive) knowledge production relate to a space-sensitive analysis of Islam in Europe?