Categories : Field-specific (academic)

with Fuchsia Hart, The Sarikhani Curator for the Iranian Collection at the V&A and Stephennie Mulder, Associate professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.

Register at:
https://universiteitleiden.zoom.us/meeting/register/MGNA8u2HT3Ca1RG5ubxtXA#/registration

To stay updated on upcoming events, learn more about our broader project, “Embodied Imamate: Mapping the Development of the Early Shīʿi Community 700–900 CE,” or watch recordings of previous lectures in this series, please visit our YouTube channel (Embodied Imamate) and our website: https://embodiedimamate.hcommons.org/.

Four Positions for the Research Project “Alevi Archive: Ethnohistory of Alevi Communities in Ana-tolia, 16th – 20th Century”, Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig

The project will reconstruct the only scarcely explored ethnohistory of the Alevis in Anatolia, focusing on the period from the 16th to the 20th century. It will examine settlement dynamics and the processes of community-building among Alevi groups, as well as their complex relationships with the state, Sunni Muslims, and non-Muslims. Combining a range of methods based on previously unconnected sources—including Ottoman archives, Alevi manuscripts, oral traditions, and material culture—a comprehensive virtual research environment will be developed. This environment will enable the reconstruction of the development of Alevi communities within the context of Ottoman social and religious history from the Early Modern Period to the Modern Era.

The positions are:

Historian as Research associate (m/f/d): https://www.saw-leipzig.de/de/ausschreibungen/stellenausschreibungen/aral-researcher01_engl.pdf/view
Anthropologist as Research associate (m/f/d): https://www.saw-leipzig.de/de/ausschreibungen/stellenausschreibungen/aral-researcher02_engl.pdf/view
Research Software Engineer (m/f/d): https://www.saw-leipzig.de/de/ausschreibungen/stellenausschreibungen/aral-researcher03_engl.pdf/view
Doctoral position Digital Humanities (m/f/d): https://www.saw-leipzig.de/de/ausschreibungen/stellenausschreibungen/aral-dh-doct04_engl.pdf/view

Deadline for applications: 30 November 2025.

Symposium

Capacity is limited to 100 participants. Please register at your earliest convenience.

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Senses of Mourning:
Moharram Performances in Shiʿi Iran from the Qajar to the Covid Era
November 10, 2025, 13:15, Leiden University (The Huizinga Building, Room 0.26)
A collaboration between the SENSIS project and Leiden University.

A multisensory approach to the study of Shiʿi Iran that examines how devotional Moharram performances changed over time

The mourning traditions of Moharram comprise a body of Shiʿi Muslim devotional performances commemorating the martyrdom of Hosayn ibn ʿAli, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and the Third Imam of the Shiʿi, in 680 CE. These traditional rites are performed during a period of communal mourning when Shiʿis remember Hosayn’s sacrifice and affirm their allegiance to him and to the Prophet’s family. Through remembering the martyrs of Karbala, Shiʿi Muslims reflect on their own afflictions and aspirations, and how these bear consequences for everyday ethical and devotional conduct.

Babak Rahimi analyzes Moharram in Iran through the five senses—sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste—with an emphasis on the relationship between religious practices as embodied experiences and how these performances—and practitioners’ experiences of them—have changed over time. Rahimi begins his investigation in the nineteenth-century Qajar period, when Moharram became a pervasive urban communal practice across most of Iran. He covers the Qajar-era dramatic performances of taʿziyeh, their transformation into cultural spectacles during the Pahlavi era, the public processions in the form of urban street protests in 1978, the tent-burning rituals in the southern city of Bushehr in 2006, and, lastly, the votive performances during Moharram in the digital sphere during the pandemic in 2020.

Through the study of mourning in terms of the senses in a specific historical and social context, Senses of Mourning not only shows the changing embodied dimensions of religious practices that have played an integral role in the complex lifeworld of Shiʿi Iranians but also details the transformation of Moharram within the broader history of Shiʿi Iran in an increasingly interconnected global era. The book’s multisensory approach sheds new light on the performativity of embodied practices, in which spiritualities, materialities, and the politics of the sacred are articulated through lived performances over time.

About the speaker: Babak Rahimi is Associate Professor of Communication, Culture, and Religion and the Director of the Program for the Study of Religion at the University of California, San Diego.

For more info, click here.