Mira Menzfeld, Dr.
- Postdoc UFSP "Digital Religion(s)"
- Phone
- +41 44 634 47 15
- Address
- Religionswissenschaftliches Seminar, Kantonsschulstrasse 1, 8001 Zürich
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Mira Menzfeld (1988) is a PostDoc researcher at the URPP „Digital Religion(s)“, sub-project „Digital Relations and Local Religious Communities“, based at the Department of Religious Studies/University of Zurich. Her areas of expertise include: appropriations of religious knowledge (especially appropriations mediated by religious counselling) in transmigratory contexts; the European (Neo-)salafiyya; processes of dying and cultural models of dying (especially in South China, Germany, Finland); cognitive methods; long-term participant observation (especially with vulnerable interlocutors and in cases of difficult/limited access).
Mira studied cultural and social anthropology, philosophy, German language and literature. Before coming to Zurich, she worked as a lecturer, fieldwork mentor and PostDoc researcher (prior association: University of Cologne).
In her PhD research, 2013-2016, she focused on dying persons in Germany and South China (funded by German National Academic Foundation). In participant observation, she explored the feelings and perspectives of persons in a biomedically diagnosed terminal condition. Furthermore, she proposed a framework for talking comparatively about dying in different cultures.
Between 2017-2019, she worked as a PostDoc researcher in a project with the aim of exploring spectra of Salafism in North Rhine-Westphalia and beyond. Her responsibility was fieldwork and conducting interviews with Salafis, as well as taking part in developing a processual framework of understanding different schools and lived realities of Salafis. In 2019 (spring), she visited the University of Turku, pursuing an on-going long-term cooperation with the aim of transferring anthropological insights about dying processes into applicable recommendations for carers and caring institutions.
2019-2021, she worked on exploring moral negotiations of Salafis in Switzerland (funded by the DFG – German Research Foundation). Since March 2021, she explores how situation-specific appropriations of religious knowledge take place within transmigrants‘ lives.