In her doctoral project at CERES, Aizhana Khasanova examines Muslim content creators on TikTok and the ways they construct hybrid religious, cultural, and national identities through the creative affordances of short-form video communication. Her research explores the themes and narrative tropes through which Muslim influencers present Islam as part of German culture. In particular, she investigates how different communicative modes – visual, textual, and audio – are mobilized within a popularity-driven social media environment for the public articulation of religious and cultural belonging.

•    Religiosity in contemporary societies
•    Digital religion, religion, and social media
•    Minority religions in pluralistic societies
•    Identity and belonging in migration context
•    Qualitative research, multimodality of communication
 

•    Since 2026 Research Assistant CERES, Ruhr University Bochum
•    Since 2023 Student Assistant, CERES, Ruhr University Bochum
•    Since 2022 Master of Arts in Religious Studies, CERES, Ruhr University Bochum
•    Since 2018 Master of Arts in Educational Sciences, Tallinn University
•    Since 2012 Bachelor of Arts in Islamic Studies, Saint-Petersburg State University