Call for Papers

Date: December 8, 2020

Venue: Online Symposium (FREE)

Abstract Submission Deadline: October 30, 2020

Research on Covid-19 has highlighted its disproportionate impact on Black and Asian Minority Ethnic groups (BAME) communities (Public Health England, 2020). This MBRN symposium will redress this gap by taking an intersectional perspective in mapping and analyzing the impact of Covid-19 on British Muslim communities. By bringing together practitioners and academics, we will examine how diverse British Muslim communities have experienced the pandemic, how their lives have been impacted during and after lockdown and how they responded.

By focusing on the experiences of British Muslims, this online symposium will enable us to examine the interplay of ethnicity, religion and deprivation, in negotiating the particular challenges of living through Covid-19. It will explore the diversity of ways in which British Muslims have experienced and responded to Covid-19, and seek to understand its ongoing impacts. Our aim is to suggest answers for the question, “How are diverse British Muslims living through, and responding to the challenges of, Covid-19?”.

We invite proposals for papers that explore any dimension of Muslim identity / lived experiences in relation to the pandemic, lockdown and subsequent socio-economic implications of Covid-19 in Britain. We hope that the symposium will attract academics and practitioners from a range of epistemological positions and disciplinary standpoints. Possible themes and topics include (but not limited to):

• the intersections of religion, ethnicity and gender in experiences of and responses to Covid-19
• inclusion and critical engagement of religion as part of the national response to Covid-19
• disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on British Muslim communities
• racism and prejudice (including Islamophobia) linked to Covid-19
• responses of British Muslim charitable and volunteering organizations
• responses of British Muslim faith leaders and scholars…

This is a FREE event, further details about the registration process will be circulated and posted on the MBRN website.