Project Launch
Project Launch took place at the UCL, Wilkins Building, Haldane Room on 2nd December, 2022. Details here.
Conferences
Academic Workshops
The workshops bring together various scholars to work on their articles towards publication.
20 November, 2021. “Islamic Politics and the Imaginative: Intangibility and Critique”
20 January, 2022. “Heritage in The Margins: Forgetting, Remembering Rewriting”
20 February, 2022. “Islam, Critique, and the Canon”
March-April, 2022. “Book Proposal Writing Workshops”
21 October, 2022. “Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Global South: A Roundtable on Methodology, Agency, and Care”
Takhayyul Seminars
2020
15 October 2020. Seminar by Darryl Li on his book “The Universal Enemy”. Details here.
12 November 2020. Seminar by David Henig on his book “Remaking Muslim Lives”. Details here.
16 December 2020. Seminar by Gulay Turkmen on her book "Under the Banner of Islam: Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity". Details here.
2021
19 January 2021. Seminar by Jeremy Walton on '"Remembrance of Ottoman Times Past and the Politics of the Balkan Present: Notes on Ferhadija Mosque and Maškovića Caravanserai" Details here.
24 February 2021. Seminar by Samuli Schielke on “The migrant dream of stability” Details here.
17th March 2021. Seminar by Sima Shakhsari on “Politics of Rightful Killing: Civil Society, Gender and Sexuality in weblogistan” Details here.
28th April 2021. Seminar by Niloofar Haeri on her book ‘Say What Your Heart , Woman, Prayer and Poetry in Iran’ Details here.
19th May 2021. Seminar by Alice Elliot on her book ‘The Outside: Migration as Life in Morocco’ Details here.
2nd June 2021. Seminar by Elora Shehabuddin on her book “Sisters in the Mirror” Details here.
2023
11th July 2023. Seminar at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, by Sertaç Sehlikoglu on “Genealogy, Critique, and Decolonization: Ibn Khaldun and Moving Beyond Filling the Gaps”. Details here.
6th November 2023. Seminar at Concordia University, Montreal, by Sertaç Sehlikoglu on “Inheritance without the Heritage: The Fig Trees and the Ecological Effects of Imaginative Attachments to Fetih (Conquest)”. Details here.
7th November 2023. Seminar at McGill University by Sertaç Sehlikoglu on “Genealogy, Critique, and Decolonization: Ibn Khaldun and Moving Beyond Filling the Gaps”. Details here.
23rd November 2023. Seminar at University of Cambridge by Fatemeh Sadeghi on “The Future’s Pasts: Consecration and Redemptive Aspirations in Contemporary Iran”. Details here.
2024
18th January 2024. Seminar at Edinburgh University by Sertaç Sehlikoglu on “Inheritance without the Heritage: The Fig Trees and the Ecological Effects of Imaginative Attachments to Fetih (Conquest)”. Details here.
31st January 2024. Seminar at Goldsmiths University, London, by Sertaç Sehlikoglu on “Inheritance without the Heritage: The Fig Trees and the Ecological Effects of Imaginative Attachments to Fetih (Conquest)”. Details here.
16th May 2024. Seminar by Alice Wilson on her book “Afterlives of Revolution: Everyday Counterhistories in Southern Oman”. Details here.
17th May 2024. Seminar by Nazan Üstündağon on her book “The Mother, the Politician, and the Guerrilla: Women’s Political Imagination in the Kurdish Movement.” Details here.
24th May 2024. Discussion panel by Sertaç Sehlikoglu, Mashuq Kurt, and Humeria Iqtidar following the release of their new special issue: ‘Islam, Critique, and the Canon’. Details here.
30th May 2024. Seminar by Charlotte Al-Khalili, on her book “Waiting For The Revolution To End: Syrian displacement, time & subjectivity”. Details here.
6th June 2024. Seminar by Kusha Sefat on his book “Revolution of Things: The Islamism and Post-Islamism of Objects in Tehran”. Details here.
19th November 2024. Presentation series by Sertaç Sehlikoglu and Yu Qiu. Lecture 1: “Methodological Crisis in Anthropology”. Details here.
21st November 2024. Presentation series by Sertaç Sehlikoglu and Yu Qiu. Lecture 2: “Anthropological Thinking and Critical Epistemologies”. Details here.
22nd November 2024. Presentation series by Sertaç Sehlikoglu and Yu Qiu. Lecture 3: “Alternative Methodological Experiments”. Details here.
2025
28th November 2025. Seminar by Charis Boutieri on “Beyond Words: Non-Dialogical Public Reason in (Post) Revolutionary Tunisia”. Details here.
20th January 2025. Seminar by Aslı Zengin on her book, “Violent Intimacies: The Trans Everyday and the (Un)Making of an Urban World”. Details here.
27th March 2025. Seminar by Deniz Yonucu on “Abolition in Practice: World-Building and Political Imaginaries in Racialized Urban Spaces of Turkey”. Details here.
Reading Groups
The reading groups run on a weekly basis open to post graduate and post-PhD scholars. The geographical focus of the topics rotate bi-weekly and discussants are encouraged to publish their reviews on their selected platform. If you are interested in contributing to the reading group(s) as a discussant, please contact us.
Publications
Further publications of the Takhayyul project will be announced on this website and made open access.
2021
Journal Articles
Sehlikoglu, Sertaç (2021). Global far right and imaginative interconnectivities. Social Anthropology, 29(2). DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.13039
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2021). Post-Islamism: From Making Islam Democratic to the Politics of Myth. Manchester Journal of Transnational Islamic Law and Practice, 17(1). Link
2022
Book Chapters
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2022). God as Sovereign; Sovereign as God: An Archaeology of the Iranian Constitution. In Sharia Law in the Twenty-First Century. DOI: 10.1142/9781800611689_0011
2023
Journal Articles
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2023). Vali-e Faqih and his Female Subjects: Women in the Iranian Constitution. Manchester Journal of Transnational Islamic Law and Practice, 19(1). Link
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2023). The Murshids and the Messiahs: popular Messianism as a grassroots political movement in Contemporary Iran. Politics, Religion & Ideology, 24(1). DOI: 10.1080/21567689.2023.2190890
Kalia, Sumrin, & Jackson, Gregory (2023). Dialogue through Food: The Ethics of Adab and Islamic Welfare Organization. Academy of Management Proceedings. DOI: 10.5465/amproc.2023.343bp
Uddin, Layli (2023). Casteist demons and working-class prophets: subaltern Islam in Bengal, circa 1872–1928. Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, First View. DOI: 10.1017/s1356186323000366
Uddin, Layli (2023). Red Maulanas: Revisiting Islam and the Left in twentieth-century South Asia. History Compass, November. DOI: 10.1111/hic3.12787
Sehlikoglu, Sertaç (2023). "Traitor over a night": on critique and the fragility of privilege in the aftermath of Turkey's coup attempt. Contemporary Islam, Online First. DOI: 10.1007/s11562-023-00549-2
Book Reviews
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2023). Book Review: The Age of Counter-revolution: States and Revolutions in the Middle East by Jamie Allinson. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 19(1). DOI: 10.1215/15525864-10256211
Kostadinova, Zora (2023). Book Review: "Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran" by Niloofar Haeri. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 19(1). DOI: 10.1215/15525864-10256239
2024
Journal Articles
Sehlikoglu, Sertaç (2024). Genealogy, critique, and decolonization: Ibn Khaldun and moving beyond filling the gaps. Open Research Europe, 4. DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.16148.1
Sehlikoglu, Sertaç, & Kurt, Mashuq (2024). Islam, critique, and the canon: an introduction. Contemporary Islam. DOI: 10.1007/s11562-024-00555-y
Aydin, Hazal (2024). Diriliş: Resurrection theme in the populist regime of 'New Turkey'. Open Research Europe, 4(55). DOI: 10.12688/openreseurope.16751.1
Caron, James (2024). Kārwān's talking forest: Materiality, poetic imagination, and the metaphysics of war violence. History and Anthropology. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2024.2435662
Books and Edited Volumes
Sehlikoglu, Sertaç, Kurt, Mashuq, & Kostadinova, Zora (2024). Islam, Critique, and the Canon. Contemporary Islam. Link
Sadeghi, Fatemeh, & Sehlikoglu, Sertaç (Eds.). (2024). Fieldwork in the Global South: Methodology, Agency, and Care. Allegra Lab: Anthropology for Radical Optimism. Link
Book Chapters
Sehlikoglu, Sertaç, & Kütük-Kuriş, Merve (2024). Locating Women and the Expansion of Islamic Morality in the New Turkey: Anthropological and Sociological Perspectives. In The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197624883.013.27
Sadeghi, Fatemeh, & Sehlikoglu, Sertaç (2024). Introduction: Conducting Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Global South. In Fieldwork in the Global South: Methodology, Agency, and Care. Link
Aydin, Hazal (2024). The Transformative Potential of Intimacy: Turkish Coffee Talk and Ethnographic Listening. In Fieldwork in the Global South: Methodology, Agency, and Care. Link
Qato, Mezna (2024). On Commitment. In Fieldwork in the Global South: Methodology, Agency, and Care. Link
Kalia, Sumrin (2024). The Ethics of Researching the Far-Right in the Global South. In Fieldwork in the Global South: Methodology, Agency, and Care. Link
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2024). Street Books in Tehran: Collective Mentality and Decolonizing Research Engagement. In Fieldwork in the Global South: Methodology, Agency, and Care. Link
Sehlikoglu, Sertaç (2024). Ethics without the Ethics: The Institutionalized Committees and the Question of Integrity. In Fieldwork in the Global South: Methodology, Agency, and Care. Link.
2025
Journal Articles
Sehlikoglu, Sertaç, Caron, James, & Polat, Ayşe (2025). Introduction to 'Islamic politics and the imaginative: intangibility and critique'. History and Anthropology. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2025.2460787
Non-Academic Publications
See below a selection of non-academic entries that our team members have also authored.
Book Reviews
Kostadinova, Zora (2021). Book Review: "The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity" by Darryl Li. Stanford University Press, pp. 364, 2020. Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 39(1). DOI: 10.3167/cja.2021.390111
Kostadinova, Zora (2021). Book Review: “Empires of Memory” by Jeremy Walton. Link.
Kostadinova, Zora (2023). Book Review: "Say What Your Longing Heart Desires: Women, Prayer, and Poetry in Iran" by Niloofar Haeri. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 19(1). DOI: 10.1215/15525864-10256239
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2023). Book Review: “The Age of Counter-revolution: States and Revolutions in the Middle East” by Jamie Allinson. Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, 19(1). DOI: 10.1215/15525864-10256211
Sehlikoğlu, Sertaç (2023). Book Review: “The New Turkey and its Discontents” by Simon Waldman and Emre Caliskan. Link.
Blogs, Reflections & Other Articles
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2021). “A World not Theirs”. Link.
Kostadinova, Zora (2021). “Religion, Prosperity, and Imagining Bosnian Islam”. Link.
Kalia, Sumrin (2022). “Drowning Pakistan”. Link.
Kalia, Sumrin (2022). “The Populist Rage”. Link.
Qato, Mezna (2022). “At the South”. Link.
Sadeghi, Fatemeh (2022). “Women of the Land of Sun”. Link.
Sağlam, Erol - CITE Scholar (2022). “What do Imaginations of Haunted Landscapes tell us about Everyday Politics?” Link.
Sadeghi, Fatemeh & Narain, Vrinda (2022). “Iran on fire: Once again, women are on the vanguard of transformative change”. Link.
Karakaş, Fahri - CITE Scholar (2023). Reflections on Imperial Threads Workshop Series at the IGP. Link.
Working Papers
To be announced
Exhibitions
To be announced
Artistic Events
January 13th to March 24th 2023: Imperial Threads Workshop Series, led by Artist-in-Residence Laurelie Rae. Details here.