Paula Arana Barbier
University of Heidelberg, Faculty
Dr Arana Barbier is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Heidelberg with the Volkswagen Foundation Freigeist Project, Invisible Architects: Jews and Muslims and the Construction of Europe. She is a political scientist with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Freiburg (B.A. in Liberal Arts and Sciences, Major in Governance) and a master’s and PhD from the University of Salamanca (M.A in Political Sciences and PhD in Rule of Law and Global Governance specialised in Comparative Politics).
Her research explores the relationships between minority religions and European states, including the regulation of religious practices in the public sphere through what she calls “governmental religious accommodation.” She primarily focuses on Jews and Muslims in Europe, as she is also working on the historical presence of Muslims and Jews in Spain and possible precedents of religious accommodation that have been forgotten throughout the years. Her latest project focuses on the study of minority exclusion after death, focusing on the spatial politics of cemeteries. In it, she argues that the ability to bury a deceased following minority funeral practices can be a way to examine the inclusion or exclusion of a particular group from the national imaginary.
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