Simone Pfeifer is a social and cultural anthropologist with a focus on visual, digital and media anthropology. She is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Research Training Group "anschließen-ausschließen" and in her research project she focuses on Muslim everyday life and digital media practices in Germany. Before coming to the GRK she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the department of Anthropology and African Studies of the JGU Mainz in the research project “Jihadism on the Internet: Images and Videos, their Dissemination and Appropriation and as junior researcher at the research training group “Locating Media” of the university of Siegen. She holds MAs in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Cologne and in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester. She completed her PhD at the University of Cologne with a dissertation on the social media practices and transnational everyday lives of Senegalese in Berlin and Dakar. Her work explores social, visual, and digital practices, using experimental ethnography and digital curatorial strategies for the co-creation of knowledge.
https://simone-pfeifer.de 

Research Interest 

Media, digital and audio-visual anthropology, (post)migration, mobility and transnationalism, kinship, gender and generations, political violence, religion and artistic practices, Islam in Germany, ethical challenges of ethnographic research. 

Regional Focus

Senegal, Germany, Hungary, Malta.

Muslim Everyday Life and digital Media Practices in Germany

Political Violence, Religion, and Artistic Practices

Social Media in transnational everyday life: media-related configurations of social relationships between Germany and Senegal (in German, PhD, supervised by Prof. Dorothea Schulz).

Books and edited work (selection)

2023. (forthcoming with Robert Dörre und Christoph Günther). Disentangling Jihad, Political Violence, and Media. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

2022. (with Lene Faust). Special Section: Dark Ethnographies. ZfE |JSCA 146: 2.

2020 (with Christoph Günther). Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Aesthetics, Meanings, Appropriations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

2020. Social Media im transnationalen Alltag. Zur medialen Ausgestaltung sozialer Beziehungen zwischen Deutschland und Senegal. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag.

2017. (with Dang-Anh, Mark; Reisner, Clemens; Villioth, Lisa): Medienpraktiken: situieren, erforschen, reflektieren. In: Navigationen – Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften 17 (1).

Journal Articles (selection)

2022. (forthcoming) Calling to Prayer in ‘Pandemic Times’: Muslim Women’s Practices and Contested Public Spaces in Germany. Entangled Religions 12 (3).      

2021. (with Ulf Neumann). In/Visible Images of Mobility: Sociality and Analog-Digital Materiality in Personal Archives of Transnational Migration. In Visual Anthropology 34 (4). https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2021.1944770

2021. (with Lene Faust) Dark Ethnography? Encountering the ‘Uncomfortable Other’ in Ethnographic Research: Introducing this Special Section. ZfE |JSCA 146, 81–90.

2020. (with Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann). Challenges in Digital Ethnography: Research Ethics relating to the Securitization of Islam. In: Journal of Muslims in Europe. Vol. 9 (2): 175–195.

2017. Medienpraktiken der Nähe und Distanz. Soziale Beziehungen und Facebook-Praktiken zwischen Berlin und Dakar. In: Navigationen – Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften 17 (1), 55–75.

2017. (with Mark Dang-Anh, Clemens Reisner und Lisa Villioth). Medienpraktiken. Situieren, erforschen, reflektieren. Zur Einleitung. In: Navigationen – Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturwissenschaften 17 (1), 7–36.

                                                                                                                    Book Sections (selection)   

2022. (im Erscheinen) Digitale ethnografische Methoden, in: Marcel Berlinghoff, Birgit Glorius, J. Olaf Kleist, Tabea Scharrer (eds.). Handbuch der Flucht- und Flüchtlingsforschung. Baden-Baden: Nomos.

2022. Heilige, das Meer und ethnologische Tourist*innen. In: Ethnographic Encounters: Essays in Honour of Martin Rössler. In Michaela Haug and Rosalie Stolz (eds.). Köln: Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 193-196.

2021. Expanding the Family Frame: Social Specialists, Mediated Experiences, and Gendered Images of Mobility in transnational Wedding Videos. In: Alex Vailati and Gabriela Zamorano (Hg.). Ethnographies of ‘On Demand’ Films: Anthropological Explorations of Commissioned Audiovisual Productions. London & New York: Palgrave.

2021. (mit Robert Dörre und Christoph Günther) Journalism and Images of Violence: Ethical Perspectives. In: Sebastian Baden, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann and Johann Holten (eds.) Mindbombs! Visual Cultures of Political Violence/Visuelle Kulturen politischer Gewalt. Bielefeld, Berlin: Kerber Art, 127-136.

2020. Circulating Family Images: Doing Fieldwork and Artwork with/about Family. In: Fabienne Braukmann, Michaela Haug, Katja Metzmacher und Rosalie Stolz (Hg.). Being a Parent in the Field. Implications and Challenges of Accompanied Fieldwork. Bielefeld: trancript Verlag, 79–98.

2020. (mit Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann und Patricia Wevers) Re-enacting Violence: Contesting Public Spheres with Appropriations of IS Execution Videos. In: Christoph Günther und Simone Pfeifer (Hg.). Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Aesthetics, Meanings, Appropriations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 161–180.

2020. (mit Christoph Günther). Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: A conceptual framework. In: Christoph Günther und Simone Pfeifer (Hg.). Jihadi Audiovisuality and its Entanglements: Aesthetics, Meanings, Appropriations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 1–19.

2020. (mit Yorck Beese, Alexandra Dick, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann, Christoph Günther und Bernd Zywietz). Inside the Islamic State’s Media – Eine kollaborative Videoanalyse. In Bernd Zywietz (Hg.) Die Propaganda des Islamischen Staates: Formen und Formate. Wiesbaden: Springer Verlag. 365–414.