Sultan Doughan
I research religious difference, race, citizenship and memory within secularism in Europe & the Middle East.
Staff details
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I am a political anthropologist specialised in the secular governance of religious difference within liberal democracies in Europe.
I am also one of the academic co-directors of Goldsmiths’ newly convened Migrant Futures Institute (MFI).
Academic qualifications
- MA, Middle Eastern Studies, Freie Universität Berlin 2009
- PhD, Anthropology, University of California - Berkeley 2018
Teaching and supervision
Museum Anthropology
Anthropology of Violence
Anthropology of Rights
MRes: Doing Ethnography
Research interests
My current book tentatively titled 'Converting Citizens: German Secularism and the Politics of Holocaust Memory' is based on fieldwork in Germany and approaches citizenship as a practice of secular conversion. My main concern is how debates on memory, race, migration and religious difference after the genocide of European Jewry generate, shape and minoritise Middle Eastern diasporas as Muslim. I explore how the memory of violence inscribes state-funded educational institutions in Germany to become arbiters of injury, as such hierarchising suffering and belonging with grave consequences for contemporary migrant communities and their access to legal and political rights. I further focus on migrant archival practices, memorial and museum spaces for purposes of repair amidst ongoing state & police violence and the deferral of justice.