Narciss M. Sohrabi

Aufenthalt

Oktober – Dezember 2026

Forschungsthema

»Religious Minorities in the Desert City of Yazd in the 19ᵗʰ century«

Projektbeschreibung

This project examines religious minorities and urban life in the nineteenth-century desert citiy of Yazd, with a particular focus on the spatial relations between Jewish, Zoroastrian, and Muslim communities. Drawing on urban history, spatial analysis, architectural history, and the study of religion, it investigates how religious difference was expressed through neighbourhoods, religious buildings, streets marketplaces, and other urban spaces. The project asks how boundaries between communities were produced and negotiated in everyday life, while also examining forms of proximity, interaction, separation, and coexistence. By approaching Yazd as a shared yet differentiated urban environment, the research explores how religious identity, social relations, and urban space shaped one another in nineteenth-century Iran.

Wissenschaftliches Profil

Narciss M. Sohrabi is an urban studies scholar and architectural historian specializing in urban public space, minoity heritage, Jewish urbanism and memory politics in Iran. She holds a PhD in Spatial Planning and Society from Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense, where her doctoral research examined the relationship between the Islamic Revolution and neighbourhood public space in Tehran. She is currently a researcher at the Institute of Iranian Studies, Austrian Academy of Sciences and an associated researcher at the LADYSS laboratory at Université Paris Nanterre. Her interdisciplinary research brings together urban sociology, architectural history, critical heritage studies, and the study of religious and cultural diversity

Veröffentlichungen (Auswahl)

• »Critical Jewish Heritage and Memory in Tehran: Funerary Spaces, Aesthetics, and Preservation«, in: Middle Eastern Studies 62, 4 (2026), S.745–760.
• »Heterotopias of Death: The Spatial Politics of Cemeteries in Tehran«, in: Space and Culture (2025).
• »The Politics of In/Visibility: The Jews of Urban Tehran«, in: Journal of Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 53, 1 (2024), S. 74–92.
• »Tehran Synagogues: The Socio-Cultural Topographies and Architectural Typologies«, in: Journal of Modern Jewish Studies 22, 1 (2023), S. 29–42.
• »Tehran’s Nightlife and Public Space: Between Popular Culture and Heritage of Shia’s Rituals. In Transforming Urban Nightlife and Development of Smart Public Spaces«, in: IGI Global Scientific Publishing (2021), S. 114–128.

Forschungskontext

Narciss Sohrabi ist auf Einladung von Catherina Wenzel, Professorin der Religionswissenschaften an der Goethe-Universität, Fellow am Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften. Ihr Aufenthalt wird gefördert vom LOEWE Center »Dynamiken des Religiösen«.