Dr Ibrahim Abraham
Areas of expertise
- Sociology 1608
- Cultural Studies 4702
- Religion And Religious Studies 2204
Biography
After receiving my PhD from the University of Bristol in 2012, I was a research fellow at the University of Helsinki for five years. I joined the ANU in 2018 as the Hans Mol Research Fellow in Religion and the Social Sciences, based in the Humanities Research Centre where I also convened the Herbert & Valmae Freilich Project for the Study of Bigotry from June 2019 to September 2020.
My expertise lies in qualitative research methods and ethics, as well as the study of contemporary religion and culture. My research has abidingly focused on the role of religion in nominally secular social spheres, including popular music and sport, the focus of my book Evangelical Youth Culture: Alternative Music and Extreme Sports Subcultures, published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2017, and my edited book Christian Punk: Identity and Performance, also published by Bloomsbury Academic in 2020.
My second monograph, Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities was published by Routledge in August 2021, based on ethnographic research (i.e. "deep hanging out") in the beautiful city of Cape Town. In August 2021 I also completed a small DFAT-funded research project on the past, present and future of the study of Africa in the Australian Capital Territory.
I am currently working on a research project on Christianity and "serious" lesiure, basically inquiring into whether we can observe a distinct leisure ethic in the ordinary lives of Australian Protestants, rather than the old and often misunderstood idea of a Protestant work ethic. I am also co-editing the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, the publication of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion, co-supervising some seriously brilliant PhD students, doing some guest lecturing around the uni, and convening the 2022 "Works that Shaped the World" public lecture series; twenty public lectures over the course of the year looking at important religious texts and events, from the Peasants' Revolt to "The Exorcist". In May 2022 I will also be running the two-day National Graduate Workshop on the topic of "Representing Belief" for HDR students from across the country.
Updating publications on this website takes quite some time, so more thorough lists of my publications (including those before I joined ANU) are available from the links at the bottom of this page, especially my Researchgate page.
Publications
- Abraham, I 2021, Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities, Routledge, Abingdon.
- Abraham, I 2021, 'Pentecostalism and Secular Youth Culture: Translatability, Ambiguity and Instability', in Stefan Gelfgren and Daniel Lindmark (ed.), Conservative Religion and Mainstream Culture: Opposition, Negotiation, and Adaptation, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 61-82.
- Abraham, I 2021, 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning: Value Monism and Pluralism in Contemporary Evangelical Musicianship', Journal of Contemporary Religion, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 483-500.
- Abraham, I 2021, 'Robert Pippin, Metaphysical Exile: On J.M. Coetzee’s Jesus Fictions', Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 124-126.
- Abraham, I 2021, 'Decolonization and the Sociology of Christianity', Journal of Sociology and Christianity, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 62-69.
- Abraham, I & Liu, S 2020, 'Middle-Class Anxiety and Moderate Prosperity: South Africa and China in Comparative Perspective', Australasian Review of African Studies, vol. 41, no. 2, pp. 5-26.
- Abraham, I 2020, 'Religion after work: Christianity, morality, and serious leisure', in E Bell, S Gog, A Simionca & S Taylor (ed.), Spirituality, Organization and Neoliberalism: Understanding Lived Experiences, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, UK, pp. 149-170.
- Abraham, I 2020, 'Conclusion: Performing Christian Punk Identity', in Ibrahim Abraham (ed.), Christian Punk: Identity and Performance, Bloomsbury Academic, London, pp. 193-198.
- Abraham, I 2020, 'Christian Punk in (Post)secular Perspectives', in Ibrahim Abraham (ed.), Christian Punk: Identity and Performance, Bloomsbury Academic, London, pp. 157-173.
- Abraham, I & Stewart, F 2020, 'Straight Edge Evangelicalism and DIY Spirituality', in Ibrahim Abraham (ed.), Christian Punk: Identity and Performance, Bloomsbury Academic, London, pp. 67-83.
- Abraham, I 2020, 'Introduction: Studying Christian Punk', in Ibrahim Abraham (ed.), Christian Punk: Identity and Performance, Bloomsbury Academic, London, pp. 1-17.
- Abraham, I, ed., 2020, Christian Punk: Identity and Performance, Bloomsbury Academic, London.
- Abraham, I 2020, 'Yinger, J. Milton', in A Possamai & A J Blasi (ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Sociology of Religion, SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, pp. 923-924.
- Abraham, I & Jarvenpaa, T 2020, 'The ruptures and reconfigurations of identity through Christian Hip Hop in Southern Africa', in E D Gault, T Harris (ed.), Beyond Christian Hip Hop: A Move Towards Christians and Hip Hop, Routledge, United Kingdom, pp. 181-204.
- Abraham, I & Doherty, B 2020, 'Editorial: Greetings from the Canberra Bubble', Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 3-4.
- Abraham, I 2020, 'Allan Heaton Anderson, Spirit-Filled World: Religious Dis/Continuity in African Pentecostalism', Journal for the Academic Study of Religion, vol. 33, no. 3, pp. 339ââ¬â341.
- Abraham, I 2019, 'Singing the Congregation: How the Contemporary Worship Music Forms Evangelical Community', Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, vol. 58, no. 3, pp. 766-767.
