Sultan Doughan

I am a political anthropologist specialized in the secular governance of religious difference within liberal democracies in Europe. My current book project tentatively titled 'Converting Citizens: German Secularism and the Politics of Holocaust Memory' is based on fieldwork in Germany and approaches citizenship as a practice & technology of secular conversion. My main concern is how debates on memory, race and religious difference after the genocide of European Jewry generate, shape and minoritize Middle Eastern communities as Muslim. I explore how the memory of violence inscribes state-funded educational institutions in Germany to become arbiters of injury, as such hierarchizing suffering and belonging with grave consequences for contemporary migrant communities and their access to legal and political rights. I further focus on migrant archival practices, memorial and museum spaces for purposes of repair amidst ongoing state & police violence and the deferral of justice.