News & events
During the project, this page will be updated with news updates and events organised as part of the research project.
Racializing the Ummah: Muslim Humanitarians Beyond Black, Brown and White
🗓️ 25 September 2026
📍Leiden
📚 An ethnography of Islamic Relief (IR), the largest Islamic NGO based in the West, Racializing the Ummah explores how a Muslim organization can do good in a world that defines Muslimness as less than human. In this talk, Rahman begins and ends with the place and meaning of Palestine for US Muslims. Along the way she traces Islamic Relief’s relation to counter extremism political efforts in the UK, to neoliberal development in Mali, to forms of doing good otherwise that are rooted in an Islamic Black Radical Tradition in South Africa. Based on more than a decade of international research, Rhea Rahman’s study on the organization’s projects, methods, and limitations reveals how racial capitalism permeates all aspects of humanitarianism, while also locating possibilities of its refusal that are grounded in Islam as the foundation of a revolutionary praxis.
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Ecologies of Solidarity Inception Workshop
🗓️ March 2026
📍Utrecht
📚 Radhika Gupta was invited to collaborate on the Ecologies of Solidarity Project by architect and artist, Ola Hassanain, The creative collaboration will use ethnography, architecture, and visual art to trace of solidarity in the natural and built world. The project is funded by Basecamp for Tactical Imaginaries.
CADS Research Seminar
🗓️ 16 February 2026
📍Leiden
📚 Salwa Tareen presented her research as part of Leiden's Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Developmental Sociology (CADS) Research Seminar series. The talk, titled "Dissent into Disaster: Reciprocity as Protest in Karachi, Pakistan” explored the relationship between dissent, reciprocity, and ethics through an analysis of two protest events organized by a local charitable organization. Drawing upon participant observation and audiovisual digital media, Tareen demonstrated how the discourse and practice of dissent (or “dissident ethics”) is mobilized in service of the city and its residents.
Roundtable at AAA
🗓️ 21 November 2025
📍New Orleans
📚 Salwa Tareen was invited to speak on a roundtable on religion and anthropology at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Participants of the roundtable, entitled “Between Relativism and Reproach: Exploring Value Judgements About Good Human Lives Within Theologically Engaged Anthropology,” critically analysed the concept of theologically engaged anthropology and its relevance to their own work. Joel Robbins (University of Cambridge) served as a discussant.
Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Governance of Migration and Diversity Conference
🗓️ 29 October 2025
📍Rotterdam
📚 Various project members participated in the LDE Centre on Governance of Migration and Diversity’s 10th anniversary conference. Salwa Tareen spoke on the subject of religious philanthropy within diaspora communities on a panel titled, “Re-centering the Role of Diasporas in Times of Crisis: Insights and Practices from the Dutch context.” At the close of the conference, Radhika Gupta and Sofia Selano were awarded an LDE GMD Seed Grant as part of an interdisciplinary team of development studies scholars (ISS-EUR) and anthropologists (CADS Leiden). The grant will be used to foster collaboration on the theme, “Beyond Remittances: Diasporic Aid and Care in Times of Crises.”
Panel at Madison South Asia Conference
🗓️ 23 October 2025
📍Madison, WI
📚 Radhika Gupta convened a panel at the annual South Asia Conference held by the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The panel, "Everyday humanitarianism in Asian Borderlands," invited scholars to consider how reciprocity is enacted among those caught in between geopolitical conflict. Gupta presented a paper titled, "Youth volunteerism and transnational ideological border-crossing in Kargil (Ladakh)."
Panel at Africa-Asia Confest
🗓️ 13 June 2025
📍Dakar, Senegal
📚 Radhika Gupta, along with Sanjukta Sunderason (UvA), co-convened a panel for Africa-Asia Confest in Senegal. The annual conference-festival encourages transdisciplinary conversations with the aim of developing the Africa-Asia "axis of knowledge." Gupta and Sunderason's panel was titled "Vocabularies of humanity and freedom: art, religion and political thought,” aimed to decenter Eurocentric categories through "creative and fricative entanglements across sites of decolonization in Asia and Africa."
Panel at Afrikaanderwijk Cooperatie
🗓️ May 2025
📍Rotterdam
📚 Radhika Gupta was invited to participate in the Resurgent Cities Forum hosted by the Urban Front. The panel, "Building Heritage(s): Solidarity Under Islamic Frameworks,” brought together artists, architects, and scholars to explore how Islamic aid may support infrastructural and ecological preservation across Africa, Asia, and Europe. Gupta's contribution traced the entangled universals of Islamic charity between India and Tanzania.
Legacy of the late Aga Khan
🗓️ February 2024 | DevEx
📚 Radhika Gupta was interviewed for an article commemorating the passing of the Aga Khan IV, Prince Karim Al-Hussaini. Gupta described the Prince as a "a trailblazer” through his support of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in South Asia and East Africa, in particular. The article was published by DevEx, a media platform highlighting news on the global development community.
