Department: Department of Languages and Cultures

  • Michael Meeuwis

    Michael Meeuwis (°1968) is professor at the department of African Languages and Cultures at Ghent University. He received his Ph.D. in 1997 at the University of Antwerp with a sociolinguistic-ethnographic study of the languages used by the Congolese in Belgium and Flanders in particular. His areas of interest include the social, anthropological and sociolinguistic ontologies of the Congolese diaspora, including South-North but also South-South (within Africa) migration patterns; the role of the Congolese language Lingala in and for Congolese communities abroad; the history of Lingala; language policy in the DRC; discourse analysis in the context of migration; and others. He is a member of ‘Babil’, Fedasil’s expert panel for language and communication in reception centers in Belgium and extends his expertise to refugee organizations and services in several European countries. For his Lingala classes at Ghent University, he closely collaborates with Belgians of Congolese origin.

  • An Van Raemdonck

    An is a social anthropologist and Arabist with extensive fieldwork experience in the Middle East and Belgium. Her research interests include contemporary social and cultural debates that revolve around globalization, diversity, identity, gender and religion/secularism. She holds a PhD in Comparative Science of Cultures from Ghent University (2016) and was guest professor at the Department of Middle East Studies (2017-2018). Her doctoral research investigated campaigns against Female Genital Cutting in Egypt in relation to religion. An worked in a collaborative anthropological research project on the shifting meanings and contexts of early marriage and pregnancy among Syrian refugees in Jordan (VU Amsterdam, NWO) and a comparative European project on Islamophobia and radicalisation in Belgium (Bilgi, EUI – ERC). She currently investigates Islamic ethics and conviviality in Western superdiverse societies. She is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Diversity and Gender Studies (DiGeSt).

  • Lisa Maria Franke

    Lisa Maria Franke is research professor in Islamic Studies at Ghent University in the Department of Languages and Cultures. Her research and teaching focus on the social and intellectual history of Islam and being Muslim in the modern Middle East. Before joining Ghent University in 2023, she worked as assistant professor at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Göttingen on individual religiosities and non-conformist perspectives in Alexandria as part of the ERC Advanced Grant “Private Pieties”. She received her PhD in Arabic Studies in 2011 from the University of Leipzig. In this project, she conducted research on martyrdom, gender constructions and social discourses in Palestine. Subsequently, at the University of Cologne, she studied colloquial poetry and the religious, social and political content negotiated therein in the course of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, as well as meaningful symbolism in modern interpretations of the afterlife. In 2022, she held the professorship (interim) for Islamic Studies (Arabic) at Heidelberg University. Her research interests include everyday history, eschatology, faith and identity, discourse analysis and gender studies; individuality, religious transformation processes and social dynamics; modern Arabic literature; language as a form of mediation in various text forms.

  • Ophélie Mercier

    Ophélie Mercier is a PhD Student in the department of Languages and Cultures. She graduated from Sciences Po Rennes and obtained a master in Conflict, Violence and Development at SOAS. Her first resaerch experience explored theatre as a form of resistance in Palestine, doing ethnographic fieldwork with the Freedom Theatre. She worked in Cairo from 2013-16 as a street clown performer and social theatre practitioner with the collective Outa Hamra. Back in France, she coordinated for four years the work of the organisation Caravan, an international network for youth and social circus. In her PhD she is exploring life trajoectories of Egyptian artists residing in Europe, focusing on the reconfigurations of their artistic practices and looking at the transnational dynamics of the production and distribution of their art works.