School of Social and Political Science

Background

I am Lecturer at IMES and Social Anthropology and an academic lead on the Muslims in Europe research theme at the Alwaleed Centre. I have a doctorate in Anthropology from the London School of Economics (LSE), and prior to coming to Edinburgh I worked at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford.

My research has broadly focused on the encounter with difference from an anthropological perspective. I am interested in both how differences are governed and institutionalised - including the inequalities, exclusions and forms of violence that often ensue from these processes - and the possible alternative modes of being and imagining our relations with others that emerge and unsettle these modes of managing difference. 

My current work in Italy (Palermo) explores the encounter of lay Catholic groups in the city with differences in social class, ethnicity and religion. This research is part of an ERC-funded project on Multi-Religious Encounters in Urban Settings (MEUS), on which I am a co-PI with Ammara Maqsood (UCL) and Leslie Fesenmyer (Birmingham).

As part of this project, I am also collaborating on an audio-visual project on the traces of the Islamic past in Palermo with photographer Kate Stanworth and artist Stefania Artusi.

My previous work has focused predominantly on Islam in Europe. My monograph, entitled Somali, Muslim, British: Striving in Securitized Britain (2017) chronicles the aspirations of different generations of Somali women as they respond to and challenge publicly charged questions and modes of governance around religion, ethnicity and citizenship.

As part of my Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship (2015-2019) on Female Islamic scholarship and guidance in the UK  I explored the way female scholars and counsellors not only carve out spaces for themselves within predominantly male-dominated Islamic spaces in the UK, but also challenge dominant secular modes of understanding Islamic knowledge, cross-cultural counselling and psychotherapy, and a broader politics of difference in Europe.

Selected Publications

Books

• Liberatore, G. (2017) Somali, Muslim, British: Striving in Securitized Britain , Bloomsbury Academic (LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology) Awarded the LSE Monographs on Social Anthropology/ Bloomsbury First Book Competition Prize.
• Nando Sigona, Alan Gamlen, Giulia Liberatore, and Hélène Neveu Kringelbach (eds.) (2015). Diasporas Reimagined: The Oxford Diasporas Programme Collection. Oxford: IMI

Journal articles

• Fesenmyer, L., Liberatore, G., Maqsood, A. 2020. 'Introduction: Crossing religious and ethnographic boundaries – the case for comparative reflection.' Social Anthropology, 28: 386-401.
• Liberatore, G. (2018) ‘Forging a ‘good diaspora’: Political mobilization among Somalis in the UK.’ Development & Change, 49 (1), 146-169.
• Liberatore, G. (2016) ‘Imagining an ideal husband: Marriage as a site of aspiration among Somali pious women in London.’ Anthropological Quarterly, 89 (3), 781-812.

Book chapters

• Liberatore, G. and Fesenmyer, L (2018). 'Diaspora and Religion: Connecting and Disconnecting.' In Cohen, R. and Fischer, C (eds) Routledge Handbook of Diaspora Studies. London: Routledge.
• Liberatore, G. (2017). ‘Between wandering and staying put: Piety and urban mobility among young Somali women in multicultural London.’ In D. Garbin and A. Strhan (eds) Religion and the Global City. London: Bloombsbury Academic Book Series.
• Liberatore, G. (2015) ‘Divergences and convergences between diaspora and home: the Somaliland diaspora in the UK’ In Nando Sigona, Alan Gamlen, Giulia Liberatore, and Hélène Neveu Kringelbach (eds.) Diasporas Reimagined: The Oxford Diasporas Programme Collection. Oxford: IMI , pp. 116-121
• Liberatore, G. (2013). ‘Doubt as a double-edged sword: unanswerable questions and practical solutions among newly practising Somali women in London.’ In M.E Pelkmans (ed) Ethnographies of doubt: faith and uncertainty in contemporary societies. I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, pp. 225-250.