To launch our 2021/22 CoDE lunch time seminars, during Islamophobia Awareness Month, Dr Amani Hassani presents a case study of how Danish Muslims experience Islamophobia in everyday life. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Copenhagen, the paper unpacks the experiences of racialisation in Denmark – a ‘colourblind’ progressive liberal nation – where little attention is given to racialised power dynamics that are reproduced in everyday interactions. Structural Islamophobia is promoted through political discourse and mainstreaming of anti-Muslim racism, which inadvertently trickles down to everyday social and spatial encounters.

We will be joined by members of the OSCH Young Collective Hawwa Alam (Manchester Museum Cultural Learning & Participation Officer Apprentice) and Samihah Mudabbir (Manchester Museum Social Action Intern) who will act as discussants for this seminar.

Speaker biography:

Dr Amani Hassani is an urban ethnographer working at the intersection of sociology, anthropology and geography. Her work explores the interplay between racialisation and spatialisation with a specific focus on Muslims in the Global North. Her PhD research was a comparative ethnography of young Muslims’ urban lives in Denmark and Quebec exploring issues of class, racialisation and urban life.

She holds an MA in Anthropology from University of Copenhagen (Denmark) and a PhD in Social and Cultural Analysis from Concordia University (Canada). She’s currently the Sociological Review Fellow 2020/21.