Sarah Bracke’s research focuses on power structures and processes of subjectivation at the intersection of gender, sexuality, religion, race, and secularity. On the basis of critical theory and qualitative empirical research, Bracke dissects mechanisms through which social categories, relations, and identities emerge. In previous research, she studied topics such as women, piety, and agency within non-liberal Christian and Islamic movements in Europe, feminist standpoint epistemology, homonationalism or the neoliberal subjectivation into ‘resilient’ individuals. Bracke also attends to the contemporary resistance to gender as an analytical category.

As professor, Bracke will carry out research into the role of gender and sexuality in Europe’s ‘Muslim question’ and the specific manner in which Muslims and Islam are problematised in Europe. This research examines structural processes and analyses influential histories (particularly the Jewish question) of how ‘self’ and ‘other’ are constructed within a European context, and traces the ways in which gender and sexuality play a formative role in these processes. The research project ‘EnGendering Europe’s Muslim Question’ is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) through a Vici and Aspasia grant.

Bracke will teach within the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes in Sociology on the subjects of gender and sexuality. At the Bachelor’s level, she designed the course Intersectionalities: Class, Race, Gender, and Sexuality, which introduces sociology students to crucial analytical categories with which to account for social reality, as well as to the way in which these categories are intertwined. At the Master’s level, she coordinates the Master’s track in Gender, Sexuality, and Society and teaches the track’s core course.

About Sarah Bracke

Bracke has been associate professor at the UvA since 2017. Prior to this, she worked as a senior researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and as a research professor at Ghent University. She received her PhD in Women’s Studies from Utrecht University in 2004. From 2006 to 2015, Bracke was affiliated with KU Leuven and Harvard Divinity School, and was a visiting researcher at University of California, Santa Cruz, University of California, Berkeley, and at Harvard University. She is the recipient of, among others, a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie and a Fulbright grant.

Bracke has published extensively in numerous international peer-reviewed journals, including Theory, Culture & Society, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Journal of Gender and Diversity Studies, Journal of Muslims in Europe and Cultural Studies. She is the executive editor of two academic journals, Religion and Gender and Ethnography. She is also one of the authors of the book Een leeuw in een kooi. De grenzen van het multiculturele Vlaanderen (Meulenhoff-Manteau 2009) and she produced a documentary video on the way LGBT rights are deployed within the ‘clash of civilizations’ discourse.