ELISABETH BECKER is currently a Freigeist Fellow/Assistant Professor at the Max-Weber-Institute-for-Sociology, Heidelberg University, living between Heidelberg and Berlin. She is a cultural sociologist trained at Cornell University (BA in Sociology), Oxford University (MSc in Forced Migration and Refugee Studies), and Yale University (MPhil and PhD in Sociology). Her first book, Mosques in the Metropolis: Incivility, Caste, and Contention (University of Chicago Press, 2021), offers a unique look into two of Europe's largest urban mosque communities, providing a complex picture of Muslim life, while highlighting the failures of European pluralism. Elisabeth's research has been supported by numerous funders, including: the Volkswagen Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World, the Academy for Islam in Research and Society, and the Religious Research Association. In 2021, she was awarded a Landecker Democracy Fellowship for her project Inscribing Plurality , which in 2022 united aspiring young Jewish and Muslim writers (age 18-25) to pen both their future and the future of our society together. In 2023 she was awarded the Paul Lazersfeld Professor (a visiting professorship) at the University of Vienna, focusing on the role of Jewish cultural brokers in the restitution of Nazi-era looted art. She has been a visiting scholar at the Hannah Arendt Center of Bard College. She participates in the Katz Center for Jewish Studies colloquium at the University of Pennsylvania and she teaches a course entitled The Moving Lives of Jewish Berlin for the Yivo Institute of Jewish Studies in New York City.
Elisabeth's work has appeared in various scholarly publications, including: Ethnic & Racial Studies, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, American Journal of Cultural Sociology, European Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion, and Social Science & Medicine. Elisabeth is also a public scholar who works with non-profit organizations and writes for mainstream publications such as The Washington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, New England Review, Religion & Politics, and Tablet Magazine, and she has been featured on BBC Radio. She speaks German and Spanish fluently, and also can speak Turkish moderately.
ARTICLES:
The Tablet People of the Books (also featured in Lit Hub Daily 8 October 2021)
The Tablet The Jewcomer
A Beautiful Perspective Married to the Stranger Within Your Gates
The Washington Post Peace Baby or Trump Target? A Mother's Dream of Jewish-Muslim Unity Turns into Fear
The Washington Post Blinded by the Israel-Palestine conflict, American Muslims and American Jews overlook the need for domestic unity
Forward I Moved to Berlin and Found my Jewish Identity
The Washington Post, What it's like to see my husband's mosque set on fire