Religion

Professor Emeritus

• Islam and Muslim societies, religion & politics, religion & media, religious encounters, Africa and the Diaspora

PhD, Northwestern University

Benjamin Soares is a scholar of Islam and Muslim societies in Africa whose research focuses particularly on religious life from the early 20th century to the present. He has conducted research in Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, Senegal, and Sudan, as well as among West African Muslims in Europe and Asia. In recent work, he has looked at the connections between changing modalities of religious expression, different modes of belonging, and emergent social imaginaries in colonial and postcolonial West Africa. In addition to ongoing interests in religious encounters and religion, media, and the public sphere, he is studying contemporary Muslim public intellectuals in Africa.

A former editor of Africa, the journal of the International African Institute (London), he also previously co-edited the International African Library book series (Cambridge) and Studies of Religion in Africa (Brill).

Books

• Islam and the Prayer Economy: History and Authority in a Malian Town, Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute & University of Michigan Press, 2005.
• Muslim-Christian Encounters in Africa (editor), Brill, 2006.
• Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa (co-edited with René Otayek), Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007.
• Islam, État et société en Afrique (co-edited with René Otayek), Karthala, 2009.
• Islam, Politics, Anthropology (co-edited with Filippo Osella), Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
• الإسلام والسياسة المسلمين في أفريقيا (co-edited with René Otayek), Arabic translation of Islam and Muslim Politics in Africa with a new preface. Cairo: al-Maktabah al Akādīmīyah, 2012.

• New Media and Religious Transformations in Africa (co-edited with Rosalind I.J. Hackett), Indiana University Press, 2015.
• Muslim Youth and the 9/11 Generation (School for Advanced Research Advanced Seminar Series, co-edited with Adeline Masquelier), University of New Mexico Press & SAR Press, 2016.

Recent articles/book chapters

• 2023 “Les Dogons musulmans, les saints « païens » et autres « oxymores » : retour critique sur l’étude du fait religieux en Afrique de l’Ouest.” Annuaire de l'École pratique des hautes études (EPHE), Section des sciences religieuses, 130: 21-28.
• 2021 “Islam and Muslim Societies in the Contemporary Sahel.” In Benjamin Soares (ed.), “The Religious Landscape in Flux,” in Leonardo Villalón (general ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the African Sahel. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 551-67.
• 2021 “Introduction.” In Benjamin Soares (ed.), “The Religious Landscape in Flux,” in Leonardo Villalón (general ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the African Sahel. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 529-32.
• 2020 (co-authored with Filippo Osella) “Religiosity and its Others: Lived Islam in West Africa and South India," in Leslie Fesenmyer, Giulia Liberatore, & Ammara Maqsood (eds), Crossing Religious and Ethnographic Boundaries: The Case for Comparative Reflection, a special issue of Social Anthropology, 28(2): 466-481.
• 2016 “Reflections on Muslim-Christian Encounters in West Africa,” in Marloes Janson and Birgit Meyer (eds), “Studying Islam and Christianity in Africa: moving beyond a bifurcated field,” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, 86(4): 273-97.
• 2016 “New Muslim Public Figures in West Africa.” In Robert Launay (ed.), Writing Boards and Blackboards: Islamic Education in Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 268-84.
• 2016 (co-authored with Adeline Masquelier) “Introduction: Muslim Youth and the 9/11 Generation.” In Adeline Masquelier and Benjamin Soares (eds), Muslim Youth and the 9/11 Generation. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press & SAR Press, pp. 1-29.
• 2016 “Malian Youth between Sufism and Satan.” In Adeline Masquelier and Benjamin Soares (eds), Muslim Youth and the 9/11 Generation. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press & SAR Press, pp. 169-88.
• 2016 “Incontri tra musulmani e cristiani in Africa.” In François Boespflug and Emanuela Fogliadini (eds), Le missioni in Africa: La sfida dell’inculturazione. Bologna: EMI, pp. 305-326.
• 2015 (co-authored with Marie Nathalie LeBlanc) “Islam et jeunesse en Afrique de l’Ouest dans l’ère néolibérale: un regard anthropologique.” In Kadya Tall, Marie-Emmanuelle Pommerolle, and Michel Cahen (eds), Collective Mobilisations in Africa/Mobilisations collectives en Afrique. Leiden: Brill, pp. 67-90.
• 2014 “The Historiography of Islam in West Africa: An Anthropologist’s View.” Journal of African History, JAH forum, Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa 55(1):27-36.
• 2011 “Family Law Reform in Mali: Contentious Debates and Elusive Outcomes.” In Margot Badran (ed.), Gender and Islam in Africa: Rights, Sexuality, and Law. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, pp. 263-90.
• 2010 “‘Rasta Sufis’ and Muslim Youth Culture in Mali.” In Linda Herrera & Asef Bayat (eds), Being Young and Muslim: New Cultural Politics in the Global South and North. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 241-57.