Sophie Moser studied the Masters "Modern Islamic World" (M.A. 2019) and "Interdisciplinary Anthropology" (M.A. 2020) at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Since summer 2020, she is a doctoral student at the Seminar for Middle Eastern Studies under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Maurus Reinkowski.

The Graduate School of Social Sciences of the Department of Social Sciences funded her with a start-up scholarship from October 2020 to March 2021. Since April 2021, she is a research assistant for the project "Kerbela at the Bosphorus: Negotiating religious identity among Shii communities in Istanbul", which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation with a duration of 2021-2025.

Her dissertation project deals with religious identities of Shii communities in Istanbul since the late 20th and 21st centuries. Here, the focus is particularly on the memory of the Battle of Kerbela, which is characterised by change due to migration processes, national affiliations and linguistic heterogeneity.

Kerbela am Bosporus: Aushandlungsprozesse religiöser Identität in schiitischen Gemeinschaften in Istanbul

Smaller Shiite communities already existed in Istanbul during the Ottoman Empire. Especially in the mid-20th century, these expanded as a result of migration and established themselves with numerous mosques in the city. The dissertation project deals with the construction of religious and national identity of these communities on the basis of their ʿĀshūrāʾ rituals in negotiation processes with the Sunni majority society since the late 1970s.