Dr J. Al Korani (Joud)

Holding an MA and PhD from the University of Toronto, Joud Alkorani is an anthropologist with a background in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Joud seeks to understand how people conceptualize and practice religion in migratory contexts, particularly after the Arab Spring. Her research and teaching span the intersections of migration and transnationalism; statehood and governmentality; relationality and subjectivity; lived theology and food studies.

Joud is currently engaged in two research projects. The first, a book manuscript based on her award-winning PhD dissertation, is an ethnography of Islam in Dubai. Through fieldwork and interviews with middle-class, migrant Muslim women, the book traces how the state governs relations between humans and God.

This project was also central to a 6-month postdoctoral fellowship Joud held at the Orient-Institut Beirut in 2022. While there, she organized an international workshop entitled "Reckoning with God: Divine-Human Relations after the Arab Spring." Joud has co-edited (along with Amira Mittermaier) and contributed to a special section on this topic (Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East). She has also published articles which explore migration as an intersubjective journey (Contemporary Islam); critical thinking as a means to piety (Social Compass); and the entanglement of the state's governance of food and religion (Food, Culture & Society).

Funded by an NWO Veni grant, Joud's second research project investigates how Dutch state policies that promote food entrepreneurship as a route to integration may also influence ideas of “moderate” Islam among Syrian Muslims. Focusing on the decade since the 2015 migration wave, it explores how newcomers navigate entrepreneurship, religion, and state governance.

Together with Stefan Williamson Fa, she leads the Muslim Foodways Network.