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Mara Leichtman
Department: Anthropology Social Science
Countries/Research: Senegal; Tanzania; African and Middle Eastern Diasporas
Email: maral(at)msu.edu
Biography:
Dr. Leichtman is Associate Professor of Anthropology, and she focuses on relations between the Middle East and (East and West) Africa. Her research highlights the interconnections among religion, migration, politics, and economic development through examining Muslim institutions and the communities they serve. She earned her Ph.D. in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from Brown University, and she also holds an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in International Relations and African Studies and a B.A. in Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Michigan. She is author of Shi‘i Cosmopolitanisms in Africa: Lebanese Migration and Religious Conversion in Senegal and co-editor of New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration, Wealth, Power, and Femininity. Among many other publications, Dr. Leichtman also co-edited two special journal issues: The Shiʿa of Lebanon: New Approaches to Modern History, Contemporary Politics, and Religion in Die Welt des Islams and Muslim Cosmopolitanism: Movement, Identity, and Contemporary Reconfigurations in City and Society. As a Fulbright Scholar at American University of Kuwait, she launched a second project on Gulf Islamic humanitarianism directed to global economic development, in particular in Africa. Dr. Leichtman was also a Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) Fellow, a Luce/ACLS Fellow in Religion, Journalism and International Affairs, an Institute of Advanced Study Fellow at Durham University, UK, and an Aarhus University Research Foundation Visiting Fellow in Denmark. She teaches courses on Islam in Africa, Anthropology of the Middle East, Anthropology of Religion, and Ethnographic Field Methods."
