This research area explores the (de)construction of traditions, concepts, and practices resulting from different forms of interaction and communication. In contrast to Plural Traditions, it privileges a “horizontal perspective”. It investigates processes of transfer, translation, and adaption through spatial and social mobility, focusing on the agents, modes, and frames of travel, transfer, and transmission, as well as on the movement of discourses, genres, and cultural practices.

This area covers the following research focuses and potential dissertation topics:

• mission and conversion;
• Sufi preachers and networks (brotherhoods);
• modern Muslim preachers-cum-activists;
• processes of de-territorialisation (notably globalisation);
• the impact of the modern media;
• literary and aesthetic forms of expression (theatre, film, literature).

Selected projects:

• Becoming Muslim: Chinese Muslim Converts in Malaysia.
• Initiation, Segregation and Negotiation as Key Factors in Coversion Processes between Christians and Muslims in Southwest-Uganda