Community Foundation, Transnational Encounters

Sofia’s PhD project traces a transnational Islamic charitable network linking Turkey and Tanzania, starting from fieldwork in a community foundation in Zanzibar. Working alongside volunteers, staff, and guests, she examines how international cooperation takes shape in practice: in hesitations over how to speak to distant donors, in the labour of translating intentions across languages, visual worlds, and expectations, and in encounters where Islamic reference points offer a fragile common ground, at once connecting and unsettled. From these everyday scenes, the project examines how transnational formations are held together within the broader historical and geopolitical trajectories in which they are embedded.