Avraham Astor (PI)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Sociology,
Avraham Astor is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a member of Research in Sociology of Religion, ISOR. He has written on a variety of topics specialising in Spain and it’s interaction with religion, Islam, culture, identity, and intergroup relations. He received his doctorate in Sociology from the University of Michigan in 2011. Before joining ISOR, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow with GRITIM-UPF and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University.
Rosa Martinez Cuadros (Postdoc)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Postdoctoral researcher at the ISOR research group, currently working in the project “DIGITISLAM”. PhD in Sociology with International Mention and Cum Laude Mention from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2022. She has been a visiting researcher at the University of Birmingham and her previous predoctoral training took place at the Pompeu Fabra University (Bachelor in Humanities), at Boston College (Bilateral Agreement during the degree), at the University of Barcelona (Master in Anthropology) and at the University of Manchester (MA Religion and Political Life). Her doctoral thesis was funded by FPU grants from the Ministry of Universities. In 2021 she received the “Peter B Clarke Memorial Essay Prize” for an essay written on the basis of her doctoral thesis. Her research addressed the study of Islam, gender and political and social participation. She has also collaborated in several research projects on religious diversity and public expressions of religion, with a gender perspective. In 2022 she received funding from the University of Birmingham’s INSBS, for a project on the intersection between Islam, science and health.
Ghufran Khir Allah (Postdoc)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Ghufran Khir Allah is a Ph.D. holder in Sociolinguistics from the Autónoma University of Madrid. She is a diploma holder in Religion and Law in a democratic society: challenges of Coexistence in a plural context, Zaragoza University, Spain. A professor of Sociolinguistics in an official Master’s class at Nebrija University. Her multidisciplinary research encompasses cultural diversity, European identity, minority rights in Europe, religious visibility, secularism, feminism, and Muslim women’s rights. Her novel research methodology CCDA (Cognitive Critical Discourse Analysis), joins Cognitive Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis theories to identify the mental frames controlling public debate on cultural diversities. Her expertise includes conceptual metaphors, mental frames, and public discourse on religious minorities. She is the book’s author: Framing Hijab in the European Mind.
She participated in national and European projects: the project “La sociedad civil musulmana europea: Hacia nueva forma de pertenencia y participación política en Madrid, Londres y Paris” in Complutense University of Madrid and “Hacia la implementación del enfoque de derechos humanos, genero e interseccionalidad en las políticas municipales madrileñas” (Implemad) at Nebrija University. Currently, she is participating in “Qualify Unification in Europe for Shifting Trust (Quest): A comparative research on Muslims responses to the politics of threat in France, UK, Spain, and Norway” Political Studies and Sociology Faculty in Complutense University of Madrid.
Berta Güell (Postdoc)
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Berta Güell is a researcher and lecturer at the Department of Sociology of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). She has a PhD in Sociology with an extraordinary award from the UAB, and she wrote her thesis about the Pakistani ethnic businesses in Barcelona. Her main lines of research are migrations and labour market incorporation, and migrations from a gender perspective, with a special focus on the Pakistani community. She has previously worked at the interdisciplinary and interuniversity research centre CER-Migracions (UAB-UB), at the area of migrations of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and at the Department of Anthropology of the University of Barcelona. She is coordinator of the Labour Market and Immigration Module of the Interuniversity Master in Contemporary Migration of CER-Migracions, and regularly participates in several Master’s Degrees about migration and social exclusion.
Zouhair El Hairan
Euro-Arab organisation
President of the Euro-Arab organisation, and member of the Salam Shalom and AUDIR associations. He is also Associate Professor at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of Pompeu Fabra University, an IMISCOE network member, and 5th ISA Forum of Sociology 2025 Coordinator in Rabat, Morocco.
Zouhair El Hairan has experience working in non-profit organisations, news analysis, the media, and international cooperation. His research interests are focused on Moroccan Youth Transnational Entrepreneurship, Catalan cooperation with the Maghreb Area, the Post-Migrant Generations, participation in Political Transnationalism, Prevention of Radicalization Processes, and Islam and the Media in Spain.
