Research Scholar
Islam and politics in Indonesia and Malaysia, discourse and media analysis, religious and political authority, secularism, public morality, and Islamic feminism
Saskia Schäfer completed her doctorate at the Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies at Freie Universität Berlin. She has since held a lecturer position at the Institute of Asian and African Studies at Humboldt Universität Berlin, where her research focused on contemporary public discourses on religious liberty, deviance, and factions within Indonesian and Malaysian Islam. Her other research interests include Islam and politics in Indonesia and Malaysia, discourse and media analysis, religious and political authority, secularism, public morality, and Islamic feminism.
As of 2013, Schäfer’s article on the Indonesian Ahmadiyya is under review and two book chapters are awaiting publication: “Gender, Justice and Rights: The Malaysian Case” (with Julian C.H. Lee) in Globalization and Social Transformation in the Asia Pacific: The Australian and Malaysian Experience, edited by Claudia Tazreiter and Tham Siew Yean with Palgrave Macmillan, and “Anti-Feminist Discourses and Islam in Malaysia” (with Frederik Holst) in Women’s Movements and Counter Movements: the Quest for Gender Equality in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, edited by Claudia Derichs. Her chapter, “Expanding the Toolbox: Discourse Analysis and Area Studies,” was published in 2011 in Social Dynamics 2.0: Researching Change in Times of Media Convergence – Case Studies from the Middle East and Asia by Nadja-Christina Schneider and Bettina Gräf.
Schäfer obtained her MA in Southeast Asian Studies, Political Science, and Literature from Humboldt Universität Berlin and spent a semester at Universiti Sains Penang in Malaysia. For her doctoral degree, she received a scholarship from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and throughout her MA was supported by the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung).
Schafer held an appointment as the 2013-2014 WEAI Post-doctoral fellow in Modern Southeast Asia.
Email: ss4605@columbia.edu
