Dr Ibrahim Abraham
Areas of expertise
- Sociology 1608
- Religion And Religious Studies 2204
Biography
After receiving my PhD in sociology from the University of Bristol in 2012, I worked at La Trobe University's Centre for Dialogue before joining the University of Helsinki as a research fellow from 2013-2018. I joined the ANU in late 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 the sociological study of contemporary religion and culture, as well as qualitative research methods and ethics. My research has abidingly focused on the role of religion in nominally secular social spheres, in Australia and overseas, the focus of my book Evangelical Youth Culture: Alternative Music and Extreme Sports Subcultures (Bloomsbury, 2017) and my edited book Christian Punk: Identity and Performance (Bloomsbury, 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 DFAT-funded research project on the past, present and future of the study of Africa in the Australian Capital Territory.
I am currently exploring social scientific concepts of spiritual insecurity and suffering subjectivity in the old and new literatures of the Lebanese diaspora, which builds on some of my work on religion in South African society and culture. 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: https://hrc.cass.anu.edu.au/events/series/works-shaped-world
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 & Weglarz, R 2021, 'Studying Africa in the Australian Capital Territory: Bureaucratisation, Disciplinisation and Projectisation', Australasian Review of African Studies, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 54-78.
- 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.
