Dietrich Jung

Since 2009, I have been a Professor in Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) in Odense. I studied Political Science and Islamic Studies at the University of Hamburg where I received my PhD degree on a thesis about “Tradition, Modernity and War” from the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences in 1995. Before joining SDU, I was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Hamburg University, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bilkent University in Ankara, a Senior Researcher at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute (COPRI) and at the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS). Moreover, I taught as an External Lecturer in Sociology and Political Science at the Universities of Aarhus and Copenhagen. My fields of research have been wars and conflicts in the Middle East, the political and cultural history of modern Turkey, and the sociology of modern Islam. I look back on large field experiences in various Muslim regions of the Middle East and Asia and have held Fellowships and Visiting Professorships at the Centre for Studies in Religion and Society, University of Victoria; German Institute for Global Area Studies, Hamburg; Political Science Department, University of the Bundeswehr, Munich; Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton; Green College, University of British Columbia; Center for Advanced Studies “Multiple Secularities”, Leipzig University; Department of Sociology, National University of Singapore; and the International Islamic University Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

During my career I have served as expert in appointment and evaluation committees of academic institutions such as Austrian Science Academy, Alexander Humboldt Foundation, Free University Berlin, Hamburg University, NTU Singapore, Oslo University, Rockefeller Foundation, Stockholm University, Swiss Science Foundation, Turkish Science Foundation, and the University of the Bundeswehr, München. Amongst my more recent book publications are: Orientalists, Islamists and the Global Public Sphere: A Genealogy of the Modern Essentialist Image of Islam, Sheffield: Equinox (2011); The Politics of Modern Muslim Subjectivities: Islam, Youth and Social Activism in the Middle East, together with Marie Juul Petersen and Sara Lei Sparre, New York: Palgrave (2014); Muslim History and Social Theory: A Global Sociology of Modernity, New York: Palgrave (2017); Muslim Subjectivities in Global Modernity. Islamic Traditions and the Construction of Modern Muslim Identities, edited with Kirstine Sinclair, Leiden: Brill (2020). Islam in Global Modernity: Sociological Theory and the Diversity of Islamic Modernities, Cham: Springer (2023); Islamic Modernities in World Society. The Rise, Spread, and Fragmentation of a Hegemonic Idea, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press (2023).