Sanja Kurd
sk534@york.ac.uk
I was born in Bosnia and lived there until 1992. I have been living in the UK ever since. I took a break from being a full time mother and returned to academia in 2004 to do a MA in Islamic Studies which I completed with a distinction. This motivated me to embark on the PhD course at the Centre for Women Studies, here in York. I have been awarded Collaborative Research Studentship by the AHRC/ESRC Religion & Society Programme which fully funds my PhD.
My main interest is Islam and Muslim Women's identity. Working on my MA dissertation (which dealt with Muslim women's identity in Bosnia in the period 1950-2000) it became clear that little is known about the Bosnian Muslim women beyond the commonly perceived image of war rape victims. Similarly, in rest of the Europe, Muslim women feel like outsiders and are often portrayed negatively and stereotypically by the media. However, latest studies (Franks, 2004; Afshar, 2005; She Who Disputes, 2006) have shown that Muslim women are refusing their 'ascribed' identities and are negotiating their 'otherness' in the society within different contexts (cultural, political and educational). There is also noticeable emergence of European Muslim women who actively embrace Muslim/Islamic identity. For example, recent articles, titled "Women of Birminghamabad [Birmingham, UK] find identity" and "War brought Bosnian Muslim women back to Islam" from Financial Times (September, 2007) and Reuters (May, 2007) respectively, are imbued with meanings and questions.
My thesis explores these new articulations. It is a comparative study analysing Muslim women's identities in Bosnia and UK. It focuses on the agency of Muslim women in shaping their identities in the context of the legacies of violence. The violence (the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the 9/11 and 7/7 in the UK) has imposed national and ethnic categories on women that define them primarily in terms of their religious backgrounds as Bosnjaks/Muslims or British Muslims. The aim of my PhD is to explore the specific ways that faith and gender relations are re-formulated to meet the perceived needs of Muslim women.