Strengthened by a collaboration with at least one partner among civil society and policy actors in each country, our extended engagements in urban settings will fuel a final ‘action’ phase dedicated to the sharing and transferring innovative practices and forms of dialogue. A key ambition is to produce outputs that speak to stakeholders (policy, civil society, media) interested in furthering action in this area.
Qualify Unification in Europe for Shifting Trust (QUEST): a comparative research on Muslims responses to the politics of threat in France, UK, Spain and Norway
Cross-national project
QUEST is a cross-national three-year project focused on the shifting nature of identities and representations of Muslims in four European contexts: France, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Two phases of empirical research
Two phases of empirical research shape the deployment of the project focusing on the scale of cities. In a period of growing anxiety and mistrust, the first one will involve tracing the discourses and mechanisms through which Muslims are folded into ‘the politics of threat.’ The second phase will highlight and deepen based on an original ethnographic data collection the representations and experience of Muslims to identify individual and collective discourses, practices, and strategies in the re-elaboration process of what it means to ‘be Muslim’ in the context of a polarised Europe.
Key ambition
Team
Project Leader:
Professor Dr. Alexandra Poli, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (France)
Prof. Dr. Alexandra Poli is a professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in France. She is also a research fellow at the CNRS and a member of the CEMS. Her research focuses on the themes of racism and discrimination linked, among other things, to the origin, religion, age, and gender. She has recently worked on North-South migration, mainly from Europe to the Maghreb.
Principal Investigator:
Professor Dr. Ángeles Ma Cea D’Ancona, Complutense University of Madrid (Spain)
Prof. Dr. Ángeles Ma Cea D’Ancona is a full Professor of Sociology at Complutense University of Madrid (Social Research Methodology Department) and the Director of GEMI (International Migration Studies Group. Her recent research focus has been within the sociology of migration, racism, and xenophobia, public opinion, emphasizing methodological aspects. She has published widely on quantitative methods, multivariate analysis, and survey methodology.
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Ajmal Hussain, University of Warwick (UK)
Dr. Ajmal Hussain joined Warwick as Assistant Professor of Sociology in December 2020. Before this, he was a Research Fellow in Sociology at the University of Manchester. He led the UK element of research and dissemination – with young Muslims in an urban setting – on a large Horizon 2020 collaborative project concerned with radicalization, young people, and equality. Ajmal’s research interests and activity are broadly located in urban and cultural sociology and straddle the conceptual, methodological, and impact in equal measure.
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Monika Grønli Rosten, Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway)
Dr. Monika Grønli Rosten works as a researcher in the Childhood, Family, and Child Welfare division. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oslo (2015). Her thesis concerns place, belonging and young adults in Eastern Oslo. Her research interests include questions of integration and ethnic minorities, youth culture and youth work, urbanity and area-based strategies, school and leisure activities, gender and identity, sexuality, and domestic violence.
Researcher:
Dr. Dorra Mameri-Chaambi, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (France)
Dr. Dorra Mameri-Chaambi is a Ph.D. of the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes where she defended her thesis in History and Political Science in 2016, entitled "The Muslim Institute of the Great Mosque of Paris (1916-2015): towards an Islam of France?" Focusing on an interdisciplinary approach, her research is articulated around three axes. The first one is about the socio-history of the Muslim fact in France in the context of advanced modernity with a comparative perspective (Europe and North Africa). The second one is to study the historical, social, and legal issues arising from the problematic of the articulation between Islam and secularism. The last axis, developed through action research, deals with religious radicalism.
Researcher:
Dr. Bartolomeo Conti, School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (France)
Dr. Bartolomeo Conti is a doctor in Sociology and a researcher at the Center for the Study of Social Movements (CEMS) at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), where he obtained his doctorate in Sociology in 2011 with a thesis in joint supervision with the 'University of Bologna. His research focuses on the following themes:
• Islam and public space in European societies.
• Stigmatization, marginalization, and emergence of actors.
• Radicalization, violence, and exit from violence.
Researcher:
Professor Dr. Claire Alexander, The University of Manchester (UK)
Prof. Dr. Claire Alexander is a professor of Sociology at The University of Manchester and a member of the Critical In/Equalities research cluster. She works on race, ethnicity, migration, and youth in Britain. She is Director of Research for the School of Social Sciences and Associate Director of the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity. Claire was Editor of Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power between 2011 and 2018. She is on the editorial board of Ethnic and Racial Studies and Whiteness and Education.
Researcher:
Professor Dr. Berta Alvarez-Miranda, Complutense University (Spain)
Prof. Dr. Berta Álvarez-Miranda has been a tenured professor of Sociology at Complutense University, Madrid, since 2001. She served as Research Director of the Spanish government’s agency for public opinion research CIS between 2013 and 2017, in charge of national and international surveys on discrimination and attitudes towards migrants. Her quantitative research in migration encompasses both general public opinion and ethnic minorities' beliefs and behaviors. Her qualitative work is currently focused on migration research.
Researcher:
Dr. Cecilia Eseverri Mayer, Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain)
Dr. Cecilia Eseverri Mayer (Madrid, 1979) is a postdoctoral researcher at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She has carried out studies on urban conflict and youth immigration in Paris, London, and Madrid. Dr. Eseverri Mayer concludes that Muslim civil society has a crucial role in creating new forms of belonging, which are vital in avoiding the current sense of emptiness among young European Muslims. It seriously affects their integration and exposes them to the dangers associated with violence and radicalism.
Researcher:
Dr. Monica Five Aarset, Oslo Metropolitan University (Norway)
Dr. Monica Five Aarset works as a researcher in the Childhood, Family, and Child Welfare Division at the Oslo Metropolitan University. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Oslo (2015). Her expertise relates, in particular, to minority families and minority youth. Her research interests include gender, generation, ethnicity, migration, and inclusion/exclusion questions. Her Ph.D. thesis concerns family life and belonging among descendants of immigrants from Pakistan and India in Norway.