Contribution:

- Explore how academic research and artistic practise combine to capture and disseminate testimony from Muslim communities in the UK - Highlight the benefits of shared knowledge for the very communities researchers work with - Examine ways of working in de-centred, collaborative, decolonised ways

Why would you like to speak in this workshop?:

My interest in this panel stems from the fact that I wear two hats: I am both an academic at Warwick University, with a research interest in Islam in Germany ,and I volunteer for a Birmingham based arts organisation called www.soulcityarts.com led by the renowned artist Mohammed Ali, and which I chaired from 2020-22. Over the last 10 years I have sought to bring insights from my research on Islam in Germany to the public eye in the UK. I have run educational programmes, held public lectures, and exhibitions. Most recently, though, my collaborative work with Ali and SCA has seen me engage in community building and wellbeing projects, which seek to deepen the benefits of shared knowledge for the very communities I am interested in. In my work, academic research and artistic practise combine to capture and disseminate testimony from Muslim communities, in a way that raises the civic pride of those groups and helps to intervene in wider public discourses that tend to misrepresent them. My working method, which sees me (a white academic Muslim convert) work with Ali (a British Bangladeshi Muslim artist) in a de-centred, collaborative fashion, also attempts to blur productively the ostensible divisions between community, researcher and artist, between migrant and mainstream majority, in an attempt to decolonise the work we do.