Benjamin Soares

Visiting Associate Professor of Religion

Office: Program of African Studies,

620 Library Place, 213

Phone: (847) 467-2005

Email: b-soares@northwestern.edu                                                                                                                                              

Benjamin Soares, Visiting Associate Professor, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Afrika-Studiecentrum/African Studies Centre in Leiden, The Netherlands. He is an anthropologist of religion whose research centers on Islam and religious encounters in West Africa. In recent work, he has looked at the connections between changing modalities of religious expression, different modes of belonging, and emergent social imaginaries in colonial and postcolonial West Africa, especially in Mali. In addition to ongoing research on religion, media, and the public sphere, he has also been studying contemporary Muslim public intellectuals in West Africa. His publications include Islam and the prayer economy (Edinburgh & Michigan, 2005) and the edited volumes, Islam and Muslim politics in Africa (Palgrave, 2007), Muslim-Christian encounters in Africa (Brill, 2006), and Islam, politics, anthropology (Royal Anthropological Institute/Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

His course offerings include: Islam & Transnationalism, Religion in Africa, Islam in Africa, and Muslim Cultures.

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