Ragnhild Johnsrud Zorgati

Academic Interests

I have pluridisciplinary background with specialization in Religious History, Islamic Studies and Comparative Literature. My research focuses on different aspects of religious- and cultural encounters between Muslims and Christians, spanning from conversions and mixed marriages in medieval Iberia, via the Hammam as a cite of cultural encounters in 19^th century travel writing, to literary descriptions of immigrant workers in Paris. Currently, I participate in three research projects: Tracing the Jerusalem Code: Christian Cultures in Scandinavia where I analyze 19^th century Scandinavian descriptions of the Holy Land; Mobile Musilms and Invisible Islam where I explore fiction as a source for studying Islam in Europe; and Value Politics (ValPol) where I have worked on divergent value discourses that shape the Tunisian political landscape after 2011.

Teaching and Tutoring

• REL2250 – Islam
• REL3050 – Islam i Europa
• REL4550 – Islam og pluralisme - historiske røtter
• REL4015 – New Themes in Religious Studies - Islamic Modernities

Higher Education and Employment History

I joined the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages as Associate Professor in August 2013.

From 2011-2013, I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo. The period included a one year research stay in Tunisia.

I hold a PhD degree in religious history from the University of Oslo (2007) and followed PhD-studies in Comparative Literature and Islamic Studies at the University of Montreal and McGill University, Canada. In my PhD-thesis, I analyzed Christian and Muslim legal texts from Medieval Iberia on conversions and mixed marriages in light of postcolonial theories. I am a Cand. Philol. from the University of Oslo with a Master in French/Francophone literature and a Bachelor in North African and Middle Eastern Studies, Philosophy and French, including one semester at l’Université Libre de Bruxelles. I addition, I hold a Masters Degree in Contemporary Literature from the University of Paris XIII.

From 2008-2010, I was a lecturer at the University of Oslo, Oslo University College and Volda University College, teaching courses in religious history, the epistemology of science, and the history of medieval Spain.

I have received scholarships from the Norwegian Research Council, the University of Oslo, and The Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Books