I am a cultural and political sociologist whose research examines the construction, negotiation, and transformation of collective belonging. Across historical and contemporary contexts, I investigate the symbolic and institutional mechanisms through which political communities define membership and draw boundaries.

My research explores these questions across three interconnected areas: the cultural foundations of collective belonging, focusing on religion, nationalism, ethnicity, collective memory, and cultural trauma; the spatial and social foundations of collective belonging, focusing on how migrants and diasporas negotiate membership across geographic and political boundaries; and the institutional foundations of collective belonging, with a focus on how digital technologies are challenging established understandings of political membership and the nation-state.

I conduct research from a comparative-historical perspective and employ qualitative methods such as interviews, participant observation, historical-institutional analysis, and discourse analysis. In addition to academic publications I occasionally write opinion pieces for non-academic outlets.
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Currently I am Managing Director of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at RWTH Aachen University, where I am also a Senior Researcher at the Sociology department. I received my PhD in Sociology from Yale University in 2016. My book, Under the Banner of Islam: Turks, Kurds, and the Limits of Religious Unity, was published by Oxford University Press in 2021. For further information please see my CV.