Previous activities

Below you will first find a list of sessions, workshops and conferences that we (co-)organized in chronological order (with presentations of members of our group).

 

VALEDICTORY LECTURE ANNELIES MOORS

‘Liberating the money, liberating the sperm: Social reproduction, living Islam and Palestinian ethnography revisited’

Date: 6 December 2019, 16:00
Venue: Aula, University of Amsterdam

MUSMAR CONFERENCE:  POLITICS AND/OF MUSLIM MARRIAGES
Date: 2-3 July 2019 (closed session 1 July 2019)
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
Workshop Programme 

Topics include •  The politics and/of marriages   •  Incarceration, marriage and social reproduction   •  Marriage and non-marriage   •  Mixed-faith marriages

Presentations by team members:

  • Dina Zbeidy: Marriage and displacement in Jordan: practices and discourses among refugees and development organizations
  • Julie McBrien: What’s wrong with bride abduction?: Divergent anxieties in Kyrgyzstan
  • Miriyam Aouragh: Social reproduction and transformative change in Morocco: Women in and for the struggle
  • Annelies Moors (with Samah Salah): Sperm in Palestine: Incarceration, Marriage, and Procreation
  • Arzu Unal: Welfare regimes and Biopolitics in Turkey: Lives of Single Mothers and their “Maternal Families”
  • Tara Asgarlaleh: ARTs1 and The Iranian Reproductive Shift: From Sexual Enjoyment to Laboratory Sigheh: Reflections on Fieldwork
  • Joud Alkorani: Everyday Conversions of the Unmarried Self in Dubai
  • Rahma Bavelaar: Gender, conversion and the revolutionary state (Egypt)
  • Ibtisaam Sadegh: Transnational interfaith marriages in Ceuta
  • Shifra Kisch: Reflections on mixed marriages amongst Palestinian Bedouin in the Naqab

 

INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP: THE MULTIPLE MATERIALITIES OF MUSLIM MARRIAGES
Date: 13 – 14 June 2019
Venue: Department of Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
Workshop Programme
Call for papers here

Presentations by team members:

  • Annerienke Fiool: Extramarital diversions: Materialities and appearances at stake in a Moroccan conjugal dispute
  • Vanessa Vroon-Najem and Annelies Moors: Navigating marrying ‘Islamically’ as a convert to Islam in the Netherlands
  • Joud Alkorani: The Transient Materialities of Muslim Marriages in Diasporic Dubai
  • Annelies Moors: Shifting styles of registering the dower and buying/wearing gold in Nablus
  • Arzu Unal: Festive Occasions and Festive Muslim Dress: Perceptions of Turkish-Dutch women

 

INSRUM (International Network for Scholars Researching Unregistered Marriages) 2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
Topic: Muslim Marriages: Plurality of Norms and Practices in Muslim-Majority Contexts
Date: 11-12 April 2019
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
Conference Programme
Call for papers here

Presentations by team members:

  • Rajnaara Akhtar: Unregistered Marriages in Qatar: A Balance of Rights and Power
  • Julie McBrien: Nike in Kyrgyzstan: Experiences of ‘unregistered’ marriage
  • Annerienke Fioole: Evidently married: shifting understandings of forming conjugal bonds in Morocco
  • Eva Nisa: Battling Marriage Laws: Child Marriage and The Resurgence of Piety in Indonesia
  • R. Arzu Ünal: Achieving Maternity Outside Marriage: Turkish Family Law, Single Mothers (by choice) and their Children in Turkey

 

WORKSHOP: ETHNOGRAPHY, RELIGION AND TRAVELING CRITIQUE BETWEEN EUROPE AND MENA
Date: 15-16 March 2019
Venue: Nederlands-Vlaams Instituut in Cairo, Cairo, EGYPT
Call for papers here

Presentations by team members:

  • Rahma Bavelaar: The Ethnography of ‘unpleasant’ religiosity: Honor, patriarchy and secular power in scholarship around conversion in Egypt
  • Vanessa Vroon: Translating ethnography? The case of conversion to Islam in the Netherlands’, follow by a screening of her documentary ‘Marrying before Allah: Personal stories of converts’
  • Annelies Moors: Problematizing Muslim marriages / entering into Muslim marriages: Engaging with different forms of critique
  • Ibtisam Sadegh: ‘We moved to Ceuta as a compromise’: Interfaith matrimonial lives between Europe and Africa
  • Shifra Kisch: Staging ‘mixed couples’: Preaching tolerance, marking difference (paper co-written with Rahma Bavelaar and Annelies Moors)

 

ACMES (Amsterdam Centre for Middle Eastern Studies) RESEARCH CONVENTION 
Topic: Multiple Encounters: Europe in the Middle East / the Middle East in Europe
Date: 17 December 2018
Venue: ACMES, University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
Conference Programme 

Presentations by team members:

  • Annelies Moors: The trouble with transparency: Doing research on Islam/the Middle East at the University of Amsterdam
  • Miriyam Aouragh: From point of exit to place of arrival… and back to point of departure: Tangiers as city of lost dreams
  • Vanessa Vroon-Najem: Making hijra/coming back: Existential (im)mobility of women converts to Islam from the Netherlands
  • Dina Zbeidy:  Narratives of vulnerability: the approach of international organizations to ’’early marriages’’ among refugees in Jordan
  • Shifra Kisch: Upward mobility between geopolitical peripheries: Palestinian students in Eastern Europe

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 17-20 September 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Presentations by team members:

  • Arzu Unal: Disengaging Marriage from Motherhood: An ethnographic perspective on single mothers in Turkey
  • Vanessa Vroon-Najem: Doing hijra/coming back: Existential (im)Mobility of Women Converts to Islam from the Netherlands
  • Shifra Kisch and Annelies Moors: ‘Mixed couples’ intimately kissing: preaching tolerance, marking difference

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 18-20 June 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

 

PANEL ‘CARVING OUT SPACES FOR INTIMACY: ETHNOGRAPHIES OF RELATIONSHIPS IN NORTH AFRICA’
Fifth World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES)
Date: 19 July 2018
Venue: Seville, SPAIN
Congress Programme

ORGANIZED by: Miriyam Aouragh, Annerienke Fioole, and Iris Kolman
CHAIR: Dina Zbeidy
DISCUSSANT: Samuli Schielke

Presentations:

  • Aymon Kreil, University of Ghent: Marriage even tough. Customary marriage in Egypt, or the precarious conciliation of contradicting desires
  • Iris Kolman, University of Amsterdam: Happily unmarried in Tunis: an ethnographic study of cohabitation through the lens of space
  • Meriam Cheikh, The University of Edinburgh: The intimate life of the disenfranchised and criminalised Moroccan working-class youth
  • Annerienke Fioole, University of Amsterdam: Befitting doubt. Moroccan couples’ establishment of covert intimacies within their core social networks
  • Miriyam Aouragh, University of Amsterdam: Ash al sha’b: Married to the Revolution

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 23-24 April 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

 

CONFERENCE: RELIGIOUS MARRIAGES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN
(Co-organized with the Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta)
Date: 20-21 March 2018
Venue: Mediterranean Institute, University of Malta, MALTA
Conference Programme

This multidisciplinary conference brought together researchers who have engaged in research on religious marriages in the Mediterranean.

 

SYMPOSIUM: NAVIGATING DISPLACEMENT AND HUMANITARIAN RESPONSES: DISCOURSES AND EXPERIENCES OF SYRIAN REFUGEES AND AID PROVIDERS IN JORDAN
Date: 15-16 March 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

This workshop brought together researchers that focus on Syrian displacement in Jordan, and sought to generate a critical conversation on the interaction between displaced communities in Jordan, with development and humanitarian organizations that offer them various services.

 

TALK by Dr. Sarah Tobin ‘Understanding Early Marriage: Amplified Agency, Decreased Regulation, and Structural Violence of Syrian Refugees in Za’atari’
Date: 14 March 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 12-13 March 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Themed discussion: marriage and social class

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 30-31 January 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Themed discussion: Rights

 

MUSMAR Writing Retreat
Date: 26-29 January 2018

 

WORKSHOP: ON GIVING VOICE: ETHICS IN RESEARCH, ACTIVISM AND POLITICS IN POST-REVOLUTIONARY EGYPT
(in cooperation with the Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam)
Date: 25 January 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
Workshop Programme 

The workshop addressed the ethical choices and dilemmas involved in the processes of ‘giving voice’ in Egypt’s current hyper-repressive context.

 

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM: DISCUSSING ETHICS AND INTEGRITY: ANTHROPOLOGICAL DILEMMAS
(organized by Annelies Moors (UvA), Birgit Meyer (UU), Peter Pels (LU), and Martijn de Koning (UvA/RU))
Date: 24 January 2018
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
Symposium Programme

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 18-21 December 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Work in progress meeting; followed by a two-day workshop with guest lectures from Dr. Hanan Kholoussy (AUC, Cairo) and Dr. Sarah Irving (King’s College, London) on interfaith marriage as a lens to explore how religious belonging intersects with class, gender and race in day to day interactions in specific historical contexts and spaces.

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 9-11 October 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Themed discussion: Destiny

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 5-6 September 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Themed discussion: Shame

Presentations by team members:

  • Miriyam Aouragh: Married to the Cause: Love as Resistance
  • Vanessa Vroom-Najem: Viewing of Documentary ‘Trouwen voor Allah: persoonlijke verhalen van bekeerlingen’

 

WORKSHOP: GLOBAL DYNAMICS OF SHIA MARRIAGES
(organized together with Yafa Shanneik (University of Birmingham))
Date: 25-26 August 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

This international exploratory workshop on Shia Marriages brought together researchers working on Iran, Oman, Lebanon, Pakistan, Indonesia, Ghana, the UK, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The workshop focused on various strands of Twelver Shia Islam – defined by doctrinal differences or following different sources of clerical authority, the legal and ethical practices, rituals and everyday lived experience – and investigates how different forms of Shia marriage are debated and concluded.

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 4-5 July 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Presentations by team members:

  • Shifra Kisch: Conversion as a Gift: Palestinian Bedouin Grooms and Rumanian Brides
  • Vanessa Vroon-Najem: First viewing of sections of the documentary ‘Trouwen voor Allah: persoonlijke verhalen van bekeerlingen’

 

MUSMAR Work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 15-17 May 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

 

CONFERENCE: UNREGISTERED MUSLIM MARRIAGES: REGULATIONS AND CONTESTATIONS 
(organized together with Rajnaara Akhtar (De Montfort University))
Date: 24-25 April 2017
Venue: De Montfort University, Leicester, UK
Call for papers here / Abstracts here

Presentations by team members:

  • Rajnaara Akhtar: Modern Traditions in Muslim Marriage Practices: An English Case Study
  • Martijn de Koning, Annelies Moors, and Vanessa Vroon-Najem: Concluding A Muslim Marriage in the Netherlands. Controversy, Criminalisation and Contestations
  • Eva Nisa: In the name of Humanity: Registering unregistered marriages of Indonesian Migrant Workers in Malaysia
  • Ibtisam Sadegh and David Zammit: Legitimising a Maltese Muslim Marriage
  • Dina Zbeidy: Problematizing Marriage Registration In Jordan: Issues Of Identity, Legality, And Customs

 

MUSMAR work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 10-12 April 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

 

CENTRAL ASIA WORKSHOP 
Date: 12 April 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Presentations by:

  • Julie McBrien: When Definitions Matter: Marriage Regulation and the Protection of Young Women in Kyrgyzstan
  • Dr. Jarkyn Shadymanova (Bishkek Humanities University): The problematization and politicization of underage marriages in Kyrgyzstan: discourse on new law
  • Dr. Aksana Ismailbekova (MPI, Halle)
  • Dr. Tommaso Trevisani (University of Naples): Restructuring labor and workers’ families in a former Soviet steel plant: Axes of inequality and conjugality in industrial Kazakhstan
  • Dr. Juliette Cleuziou (University of Paris Nanterre): “If you’re not married here, you’re nothing at all”: Exploring gender, family, and power relations in marriage in Tajikistan

 

MUSMAR work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 27 February – 1 March 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Including Writing Workshop for PhD students by Eileen Moyer

 

MUSMAR work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 23-25 January 2017
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Presentations by:

  • Vanessa Vroon-Najem: Making a documentary
  • Nadia Sonneveld: Male and female judges dispensing justice in paternity cases in Morocco

 

MUSMAR work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 19-21 December 2016
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Themed discussion: Writing Ethnography and Theorizing Cases
PhD fieldwork reports Dina Zbeidy and Jaafar Alloul

 

MUSMAR work-in-progress Meeting
Date: 14-16 November 2016
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS

Presentations by team members:

  • Martijn de Koning, with Vanessa Vroon-Najem and Annelies Moors: Contesting the Primacy of the State and Islamic Authority: the Multiple Meanings of Marriage in the Netherlands
  • Iris Kolman: Happily Unmarried in Tunisia: A Case Study of Extramarital Cohabitation in Tunis
  • Shifra Kisch: Conversion as a Gift: Palestinian-Bedouin Grooms and Rumanian Brides
  • Annelies Moors and Vanessa Vroon-Najem: Converts to Islam: Marriage, Well-being, and the Dutch Nation-State

PhD Fieldwork reports: Annerienke Fioole, Rahma Bavelaar, Ibtisam Sadeqh

 

SENIOR RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM: MIXING AND MATCHING: TRENDS IN MUSLIM MARRIAGES
Date: 26 February 2016
Venue: University of Malta, MALTA

Presentations by team members:

  • Ibtisam Sadegh: Concluding Interfaith-Muslim Marriages in Ceuta
  • Annelies Moors: Problematizng ‘Islamic Marriages’ in the Netherlands
  • Julie McBrien: (Im)proper Marriage in Kyrgyzstan

This event was sponsored by the University of Malta’s Department of Anthropological Sciences in collaboration with the Civil Law Department of the Faculty of Law, organized by Professor Susan Hirsch and Dr. David Zammit

 

ACMES (Amsterdam Centre for Middle Eastern Studies) RESEARCH CONVENTION: MARRIAGE CONTROVERSIES: PUBLIC DEBATES AND LIVED EXPERIENCES
Date: 28 January 2015
Venue: University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS
Convention Programme

Introduction: Julie McBrien
Presentations by team members:

  • Annelies Moors: Islamic Marriages in the Netherlands: Beyond the Radicalisation Frame
  • Vanessa Vroon-Najem: Conversion to Islam: What does marriage have to do with it?
  • Ibtisam Sadegh: Marriage Law, Marriage Stories: Muslims in Malta
  • Annerienke Fioole: From Parenting to Marriage: Dealing with transgressions in Morocco?
  • Rahma Bavelaar: Framing Mixed Marriages in Egypt
  • Dina Zbeidy: Marriage Controversies in Beirut: A Preliminary Note on Categorization

 

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