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Lecturer, RMIT University

A visual ethnographer by training, my research interests span the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and visual studies, and cohere around the intersections between race, gender, subjecthood and representation.

My research explores the management of twenty-first century cultural diversity in the west, particularly the ways in which multiculture has come to be problematised through the ‘Muslim question.’ An important strand of this work focuses on the ways the minority female subject is visualised in policy and popular discourse. I have explored this question of women’s subjecthood through ethnographic engagement with Australian Muslim women and youth, in the context of a current project on forced marriage in Australia; research on discourses of Islamic veiling practices in France and Australia; and my doctoral research on identity formation among young Muslims in Melbourne.

Visuality is also a strong theme in my work, both in terms of the politics of visual representation and the visual ordering of modern social life. My PhD, which resulted in an exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Photography, explored narratives of multicultural belonging through a visual ethnographic study of photographic self-portraits produced by young Australian Muslims. This ethnography forms part of a sole-authored manuscript titled "Visual representations of young Muslims in the west," which is currently under contract with Routledge.

Experience

  • –present
    Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding , University of South Australia

Education

  • 2009 
    RMIT University, PhD