Aizhana Khasanova is the new research assistant at CERES

Khasanova has a broad academic background: she earned a bachelor’s degree in Islamic Studies from Saint Petersburg State University and a master’s degree in Education from the University of Tallinn. In 2022, she transferred to Ruhr University Bochum, where she successfully completed her master’s degree in Religious Studies and has been working as a student assistant at CERES since 2023. For her outstanding academic achievements and dedication during this time, she was awarded the prestigious DAAD Prize.

In her dissertation project, Khasanova focuses on a highly topical field of research at the intersection of religion and digitalization. She examines Muslim content creators on TikTok and analyzes how they construct hybrid religious, cultural, and national identities through the specific expressive possibilities of short video formats. Her work focuses on the themes, narratives, and modes of representation through which Muslim influencers position Islam as part of everyday German culture. In particular, she explores how visual, textual, and auditory forms of communication are used in a social media environment shaped by popularity to publicly articulate religious affiliation and cultural positioning.

Aizhana Khasanova’s research interests lie in the field of religiosity in contemporary societies, particularly in the context of digital religion and social media. She also examines minority religions in pluralistic societies, questions of identity and belonging in migration contexts, and qualitative research methods with a special focus on multimodal forms of communication.

Through her research, Aizhana Khasanova makes an important contribution to understanding religious dynamics in digital public spheres and to analyzing contemporary processes of negotiating belonging. We are very pleased to welcome her as a colleague at CERES and wish her a successful start and every success in her future research.