2nd Annual Conference - International Islamophobia Studies Research Association
Islamophobia and Knowledge Production
University of California, Berkeley | May 5-7, 2023
CONFERENCE OVERVIEW
This 3-day conference drew speakers from across North America, Europe and Asia to the University of California, Berkeley where previously the Islamophobia Studies conference took place for 10 years, sponsored by the Islamophobia Studies Center (ISC) and the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Project (IRDP). Carrying on that important legacy, the IISRA conferenence heard from leading experts in Islamophobia studies as well as emerging scholars sharing important knowledge, insights, and empirical research on Muslims and their encounters with Islamophobia around the globe. Panel themes included : Transnational Perspectives on Gendered Islamophobia; Islamophobia and Structural ‘Unbelonging’; Literary and Cultural Production; Media, Schooling and Campus Life; The Politics of Securitization and Islamophobia at the 2022 Qatar World Cup. Other panels focused on regional concerns related to Islamophobia in Europe, and Quebec, Canada. A special roundtable session featuring IISRA board members provided overviews on recent Islamophobia reports from Europe, UK, US, and Canada. Overall the conference offered important vistas for the examination of Islamophobia’s diverse horizons discursively, interpersonally, structurally, politically, and transnationally.
Location:
University of California
Berkeley, USA
Islamophobia and Knowledge Production
While research over the past few decades has highlighted the various ways discrimination, racism, and bigotry have become common occurrence in the lives of Muslims as a racialized and targeted group, the need for more systematic and persistent scholarship remains urgent. In the context of the intensified levels of violence and cases of genocide directed at Muslims and the demonization of Islam as a “non-Western” religion, the International Islamophobia Studies Research Association’s (IISRA) vision is to form the global architecture for the field of Islamophobia Studies. In the Islamic tradition, the Arabic acronym for this academic association refers to a nocturnal journey leading to knowledge and spiritual insight known as ‘Isra.’ As an interdisciplinary scholarly network, IISRA draws on this meaning in the development of a ‘global caravan’ dedicated to mobilizing academic knowledge that documents and challenges Islamophobia on a planetary scale.
The second annual conference will be an important step toward actualizing IISRA’s mission to support the dissemination of academic research and publicly engaged scholarship on Islamophobia through academic fora that will facilitate the transnational, multidirectional flow of knowledge across academia, policy and government, media, and global civil society. By engaging in knowledge mobilization activities—such as networking, disseminating, exchanging, and supporting research-based knowledge, IISRA provides the hub for academic leadership in the field of Islamophobia Studies.
The call for papers is an open invitation for all the co-producers of knowledge, resistance, and decolonial framing of the world to gather and discuss how to bring about the future horizons to which we all aspire. We invite papers that cover any aspects of the challenge of Islamophobia in a variety of interdisciplinary and transnational contexts.
The conference seeks papers that examine how the Muslim subject is constructed in public discourses, the distinct periods (historical or contemporary), and the regional specificity of such framings.