Dr Eva Nisa is a cultural anthropologist and expert in Islamic studies. She currently holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) DECRA (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award). Prior to her post in Anthropology, College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University, she taught in Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington. Currently, she is also Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Social and Cultural Studies, Victoria University of Wellington and Honorary Research Associate, the Faculty of Graduate Research, Victoria University of Wellington. She received her Bachelor’s degree from al-Azhar University in Egypt, with a specialisation in Qur’anic exegesis. She then continued her MA degree in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Humanities, Universiteit Leiden in the Netherlands. After finishing her PhD at the Australian National University, she was awarded two post-doctoral fellowships. The first post-doctoral fellowship was at the Asien-Afrika-Institut, Universität Hamburg, funded by a Deutsche Forshungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Fellowship and her second post-doctoral fellowship was at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), University of Amsterdam, funded by ERC (European Research Council).

Her research and publications focus on the intersections between religious, cultural, political, economic, legal, social, and philosophical aspects of peoples’ lives. The core of her research is to analyse diverse aspects of how religion functions in the lives of believers. She is interested in global currents of Islam reshaping the lives of Muslims in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia and Malaysia. She has established a high-quality research profile which is evidenced by her productivity, international collaborations, external and internal funding, and publications in prestigious international venues. Her research has involved international collaborative projects with scholars from the USA, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, Indonesia, Austria, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand and Singapore. Currently, she serves on the editorial board of The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology and chair of the Islam in Southeast Asia series, ANU Press.

BA (al-Azhar University Egypt), MA (Leiden University), PhD (Australian National University)

Anthropology of religion; culture; gender; anthropology of gender and sexuality; religion; Indonesia, Malaysia, Southeast Asia and Asia; Anthropology of Islam; Islam and Muslim societies; Islamic feminism; digital religion; Islamic cultural economy; halal industry; Qur’anic exegesis; religion and media (social media); political religion; religion and literature; Islamic thought; Islamic law; refugee and migration.