20 June 2012
Congratulations to Narzanin Massoumi, who has been awarded her PhD.Narzanin’s PhD thesis is entitled Collective identity processes and the political consciousness of Muslim women activists in the movement against the 'War on Terror'.
The thesis is a study of Muslim involvement in the movement against the ‘war on terror’, which emerged in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, and the subsequent war on Afghanistan in 2001. It examined the nature of political consciousness developed by a group of Muslim women activists in this movement. The thesis used models of multiculturalism to analyse the way differences in the movement were negotiated, examining the extent to which the movement fostered or hindered the development of forms of politicised Muslim consciousness. Empirically, the thesis used interviews, movement discourse analysis and focus groups to gather data both on the movement against the ‘war on terror’, as well as focusing specifically on Muslim women activists. The thesis found that the movement fostered the development of both liberal and anti-imperialist forms of Muslim consciousness, and that Muslim women played an important symbolic role in fostering unity and generating external support.