Navigation auf uzh.ch

Suche

Department of Religious Studies

Mirjam Aeschbach

Mirjam Aeschbach, Dr.

  • Assoziierte Forscherin
Address
Religionswissenschaftliches Seminar, Kantonsschulstrasse 1, 8001 Zürich

Biographical Information

Mirjam Aeschbach completed her bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies and English Literature and Linguistics (2010-2014) and finalized her master’s studies in Religious Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Zurich in January 2017. She spent parts of her Master's program at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands, in order to expand her research focus on religion and gender in European public discourses.

Her dissertation project, which deals with media negotiations of national belonging in the discourse on Muslim women in Switzerland, is being carried out as part of a Doc.CH research grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. 2019 she spent 6 months as a visiting fellow at the Center for Religion, Media and Culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

In addition, she worked as a research and teaching assistant at the Chair of Religious Studies with a social-scientific orientation in Zurich from 2017-2018, as a research associate at the Chair of Social Psychology and Higher Education Research (ETHZ D-GESS) and as part of the SNSF project "Ausdifferenzierung des Zeitschriftenmarktes in der Schweiz und Deutschland" at the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich.

Research Interests

  • Religion and Media
  • Digital Religion
  • Religion and politics in media discourses
  • Identity processes and national identity
  • Gender and religion
  • Islam in contemporary Europe

PhD Project

Shaping the Boundaries of National Belonging:
Muslim Women in Switzerland across German-speaking Media Platforms

The project is conceptualized as a qualitative media analysis of how national belonging is shaped by Muslim women in the German-speaking part of Switzerland across digital and non-digital media platforms. Research on current Western European contexts suggests that religion, and specifically Islam, is a key issue when acceptable measures of difference within a particular nation are publicly negotiated. In Switzerland, debates on Islam have characterized many political endeavours on questions about the extent to which Islam is socially acceptable, for instance the initiative to ban minarets or the more recent venture to ban veiling. Such issues have also figured prominently in media outputs, as for instance in the NZZ Folio “Muslims in Switzerland: How much Islam can the country tolerate?” (2016). Muslim women actively take part in these debates on the relationship between Islam and Switzerland and negotiate their own positionalities and the way they are entangled with notions of national belonging. With issues of gender equality figuring prominently as normative demarcation strategies and Muslim women frequently marking images of “self” and “other” in public debates, analysing the contributions of Muslim women sheds light on how such representations are taken up, re-appropriated, and potentially challenged.

This project addresses two central questions: (1) Which Muslim women take part in the current public media discourse on Islam in the German-speaking part of Switzerland? (2) How do these women shape images of “self” and “other” and thereby patterns of national belonging across media platforms? Methodically, the research is based on Altheide’s Qualitative Media Analysis (2013) and approaches the research questions in two ways: (a) Muslim women who actively figure as discourse actors in media outputs are identified and (b) their discourse contributions are tracked across digital, non-digital, and social media platforms. In the subsequent qualitative document analysis, the intersectional subject positions of these Muslim women, the frames and patterns of interpretation with regard to national belonging, and the content-related differences between communication platforms are explored. The first-time focus on Muslim women across media will further result in a differentiated picture of their specific use of different media platforms and will shed light on the active contribution of Muslim women to images of national belonging in Switzerland.

Publications

Paper and Poster Presentations

  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (upcoming): “’Die Muslimin’ in der Deutschschweiz: Gender, Religion und nationale Zugehörigkeit in medialen Islamdiskursen”, in: (Ge)Schlechte(r) Religionswissenschaft!? Multidisziplinäre Ansätze einer kritischen Genderforschung zu Religion, Gründungstagung des Arbeitskreises Gender und Religion (DVRW), Bochum, Deutschland.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2019): “’Secular Muslims’ in the German-Speaking World: Gendered Connotations of a Strategic Counter-Positionality”, in: NWSA Annual Conference Protest, Justice, and Transnational Organizing, San Francisco, CA, United States of America.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2019): “Muslim Women in Swiss-German Media Discourse: Visible Representations of Intersectional Social Identities”, in: Women in German Conference, Sewannee, TN, United States of America.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2019): “Between ‘Swissness’ and ‘Muslimness’: Racialized Differences in Swiss-German Media Debates surrounding Muslim Women”, in: Gender and Islam in Contemporary Germany and Switzerland (sponsored by the Religious Cultures Network; Chair: Emily J. Frazier-Rath), GSA 2019, German Studies Association 43rd Annual Conference, Portland, OR, United States of America.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2019): "Meaning as Multi-modal and Hyperlinked: A Qualitative Frame Analysis Approach to Muslim Women on Social Median", in: Methodological Challenges in Studying Digital Religion (Chair F. Elwert, M. Freudenberg), EASR 2019, Religion – Continuations and Disruptions, University of Tartu, Estonia.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2018): "The ‘Secular Muslim Woman’: Marking the Boundaries of National Belonging in Switzerland", in: Multiple Belongings of German-speaking Muslims: Negotiating Religious and Secular Identity Positions (Chair M. Aeschbach), EASR 2018, Multiple Religious Identities, University of Bern, Switzerland.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2018): "(Not) shaking hands and the politics of gendered culturalization", in: From local interaction to globalized scandal: negotiating religious identities in a Swiss secondary school (Chair: P. Hetmanczyk), EASR 2018, Multiple Religious Identities, University of Bern, Switzerland.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2018): "New Media, Representation, and Belonging: British Muslim Struggle for Recognition on Twitter", CFP: Populist politics and the minority voice: British Muslims, extremisms and inclusion, King’s College London, England.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2018): "Twitter, Facebook & Co.: Religion im digitalen Raum", HSGYM - Hochschultag der Mittelschulen 2018, Universität Zürich, Schweiz.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2018): "Delineating National Boundaries: Discourse surrounding Muslim women in Switzerland (PhD-Project-Presentation)", Winterschool: Perspectives on Gender and Religion, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2017): "Das Bild Muslimischer Frauen in der Schweizer Öffentlichkeit Aushandlung kollektiver Identität entlang religiöser Differenzierungen", öffentliche Projektpräsentation im Forschungskolloquium der Gender Studies, Asien-Orient-Institut, UZH.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2017): "Die Verhandlung religiöser Identität auf Twitter: Herangehensweise und Analyse am Beispiel von #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink", in: Religion in digitalen Medien: Zugänge und Herausforderungen (Chair: M. Aeschbach and A. Suter- Bienisowitsch), DVRW Tagung Medien, Materialität, Methoden, Universität Marburg, Deutschland.
  • Aeschbach, Mirjam (2016): "#WhatBritishMuslimsReally-Think: Negotiating Religious and National Identity on Twitter", International Conference "Religion and Nation(alism): Entanglements, Tensions, Conflicts", University of Tartu, Estonia.

Teaching

BA-Seminar: Religion im digitalen Raum FS18 (VVZ FS 18)
Winterschool: Perspectives on Religion and Gender (VVZ HS 17)

Memberships and Fellowships

  • 2019: Visiting Fellow at the Center for Media, Religion and Culture (CMRC), University of Colorado, Boulder
  • GRC Peer Group Religion und Politik
  • Digital Society Initative UZH (membership pending), associated with the research focus group "Communication"
  • Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Religionswissenschaft (SGR / SSSR)
  • Deutsche Vereinigung für Religionswissenschaft (DVRW), Arbeitskreis "Religion in modernen Massenmedien"