Andreas Johansson

Andreas Johansson is a researcher at Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, Lund University and a senior lecturer at Karlstad University

Andreas studies a wide range of sources and has conducted fieldwork in Sri Lanka and Japan. In his book, entitled Pragmatic Muslim Politics – The Case of Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (2019), he investigates the use of religious terms and symbols in Muslim politics. His aim is to analyse the role of religious terms and symbols within a non-fundamentalist political party, namely the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), a Muslim political party that has been part of the democratic process in Sri Lanka since the 1980s.

In his research he examines how different organisations use religious terms and symbols – this took him in 2015 to Japan where he interviewed 30 members of a Yakuza clan in a project that led to publication of his book Yakuza tattoo (Dokument Press, April 2017)

Andreas is was also a part of Associate Professor Kristina Myrvold’s project on the use of religious miniature scriptures during World War I at Linneuas University. His part of the projected started in February 2016. The research project investigates the production, distribution, and use of miniature scriptures for Muslim and Sikh soldiers from the province of Punjab in India who fought for the British Army at the Western front during World War I between 1914 and 1918.