Lena Rose

My work focuses on the interaction between religion and state in contexts of mobility and migration. I currently lead a Leverhulme Trust funded research project on asylum processes based on conversion to Christianity at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Law Faculty, University of Oxford. The research examines the negotiation of ‘Christianity’ through the lens of asylum adjudications of claimants who have undergone a religious conversion and base their claims on fear of religious persecution. This study of case law and ethnographic fieldwork at courts in Germany and the UK explores the tensions between culture, religion, and power in the negotiation of what 'Christianity' is.

I completed my DPhil in Social and Cultural Anthropology based at the Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS), University of Oxford, in May 2019. My doctoral work was concerned with the role of power in the circulation of ideas, resources, people, and theology within global evangelicalism. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork on encounters across difference between Palestinian and 'Western' evangelical Christians in Israel-Palestine, Europe and North America, while paying attention to the theologies that shape evangelicals' approaches to Israel.