A one-day Muslims in Britain Research Network conference organised in partnership with the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, King’s College London

Date: 19 April 2018

Across Europe and North America populist parties and leaders have surged in recent years, with figures such as Donald Trump and Andrej Babiš and parties such as UKIP and Alternative für Deutschland making significant electoral gains. Although different in important respects, these movements share certain themes, such as emphasis on national self-interest and hostility toward international co-operation, liberal political norms and established news media. In almost all cases this desire to reassert national identity has also involved renewed hostility toward ethnic and religious minorities – especially Jewish and Muslim minorities – as well as toward any frameworks of liberal accommodation that have allowed minorities to participate in public life on an equal footing. In the UK, this was evident in the referendum on European Union membership in 2016, which not only destabilised previously taken-for-granted political and legal frameworks but also contributed to a sustained rise in hate crime, anti-immigration rhetoric and Islamophobia.

This one-day conference on ‘Populist politics and the minority voice’ will discuss the effects of these changes on British Muslims, and how the concerns of British Muslims relate to those of other minority groups as well as wider debates about the future of liberal states, free speech and ‘fake news’. Since at least the 1970s, British Muslims – as a group and alongside other minorities – have been involved in a struggle for rights, for media and political representation and for recognition. What might these struggles look like in the future? What is the future of British Muslim identity, post-Brexit? How might rights and legal accommodations be affected by withdrawal from the EU? How do concerns about rising Islamophobia intersect with concerns about resurgent anti-Semitism and far-right and populist movements? How should debates about Muslims and the media proceed in an era of ‘fake news’? How can standards of debate about minorities be preserved and what can higher education and Muslim institutions contribute?

Abstracts are invited for papers that address any of the conference themes:

• Muslim activism and populist politics;
• New media, populism and the representation of Muslims and other minorities;
• Recognising, opposing and offering alternatives to anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and other extremisms;
• British Muslims and national identity after Brexit;
• Challenges to, and for, principles of tolerance, free speech and accommodation.

Participants will be asked to present their research in a short format as part of a panel. To participate please send an abstract (250 words max) to the email address below by Friday January 19th along with a biographical note of no more than 50 words.

Abstract submissions and any general questions should be sent to the conference organisers at MuslimsinBritainRN@gmail.com.

A workshop will be held on the 12-13 Jan 2018 in London, UK

As contemporary Europe has become ever more diverse due to globalization and international migration, processes of mediation and brokerage have become increasingly central to communication, cooperation, and conflict resolution in a range of political, institutional, and social domains. Whether as religious mediators, ethnic community leaders, diaspora experts or so-called migrant smugglers, middlemen and go-betweens bring together disparate communities and translate across different social fields.

To describe their role, the concept of brokerage is used across a variety of disciplines, including political science, sociology, anthropology, economics, linguistics, development studies and subfields of each discipline, such as social movement studies, network studies, religious studies, and organizational studies. However, disciplinary boundaries have meant that disparate conceptions of brokerage coexist with limited exchange across research fields.

This two-day multi-disciplinary workshop aims to bring together scholars working on brokerage in different social and political domains with the aim of identifying trends and divergences across various fields. We also seek to share and develop conceptual and methodological frameworks for studying brokerage in a diversifying Europe. We invite paper presentations on the following topics, but are open to any paper addressing brokerage in a diverse Europe: 

• What are typical characteristics of brokers? Are certain groups or individuals more likely to act as brokers, and if so, why? 
• What are the conditions of success of brokerage and what leads to its failure? 
• How do brokers negotiate loyalty and conflicting interests between different social groups? 
• How does brokerage reinforce or challenge static conceptions of ‘culture’, ‘communities’, ‘borders’? 
• How can we understand brokers as gendered, racialized and classed subjects? 
• What is the role of brokerage in the governance of diversity? 
• What distinguishes brokers from related figures, such as native informants and mediators?

Please submit abstracts between 250 and 400 words by the 15 th of November to avi.astor@uab.cat

The workshop will be held on the 12-13 Jan 2018 in London, UK and is organised by Avi Astor (Autonomous University of Barcelona) and Sara de Jong (The Open University/Göttingen University). The workshop is sponsored by the Council for European Studies (CES). There is no registration fee, but participants have to fund their own travel and accommodation.

We seek to develop concrete plans for the publication of a special issue or edited volume on the basis of selected papers presented at the workshop.