About
My doctoral research focuses on the intersections of language, religion, migration, and ethics. I conduct my fieldwork in France and Morocco.
My research examines how moral-ethical personhood emerges through processes of social interaction, or in other words, how people's ideas about what it means to be a good person (as well as their actions in pursuit of those ideas of goodness) come about as they interact and communicate with one another. I am specifically interested in the ways people of Moroccan origin in France use different languages and varieties of language in various contexts in order to pursue particular conceptions of the good. In particular, I study how my interlocutors' enagements with Islam relate to moralizing discourses about (national) identity and belonging.
My research examines these questions in a transnational context where immigrants, their children, and their grand-children must negotiate various discourses about what it means to be a good person, and in a multilingual environment where people regualrly use different varieties Arabic, French, Spanish, and Tarifit (a Amazigh indigenous language spoken primarily in Northern Morocco).
Research Interests
ethics and morality; Imazighen; Islam; multilingualism; social interaction; transnational migration
