Michael who received his DPhil in Anthropology from the University of Heidelberg joined York’s Sociology department in 2006. His research and teaching expertise can be defined as multidisciplinary. His contributions range from Anthropology and Sociology to Religious Studies and South Asian Studies. He has a vested research interest in the relationship between experiences of social and political violence and suffering and their reconfiguration in the realm of cultural articulations. More recently he has worked in the area of religion and secularism and migration and diaspora studies. His forthcoming co-edited volume Suffering, Arts, and Aesthetics (Palgrave MacMillan 2014, with Ratiba Hadj-Moussa) represents his specific interest in social suffering and the arts. He is also currently completing a book manuscript on a related topic that problematizes the formation of diasporas from a perspective of everyday social relations, memory, and political discourses in the articulation and representation of diasporas. His new work is titled Heretic Subjects: Violence, Memory, and Youth in Sikh and Ahmadiyya Diasporas (under review) and is scheduled to appear in late 2014. He is the author of a number of refereed and non refereed articles as well as book chapters, in both English and German and has recently (December 2013) also guest-edited a volume for the Routledge journal Sikh Formations: Religion, Culture, Theory which focuses on “Violence, Memory, and Transnational Youth Formations”. Michael is also the co-producer of the documentary Musafer-Sikhi is Travelling.
nijhawan@yorku.ca