Simon Frey is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at the Migrations and Society Research Unit (URMIS), Paris City University.
Out of Many, One Ummah: Memory, Identity and Islam in Jamaica
PhD supervised by Dr Giulia Bonacci and Prof Mahamet Timera.
My PhD research focuses on the development of Islam in Jamaica since Independence in 1962, in relation to questions of belonging, memory and contested heritage. Combining ethnographical and historical methods, I aim to understand why Islam has over the years become an option in a postcolonial context which straddles heritage of slavery and cultural diversity. I am particularly interested in the process of individual and collective identity construction. My research analyze this process in its local and global dynamics in a context strongly shaped by relationships of class, race, ethnicity and gender. On the one hand, I investigate how Jamaican Muslims and Jamaican activists reclaim local historical narratives, inscribing Islam in the national and regional paradigm. On the other hand, I try to assess the role of global Muslim narratives in reinterpreting the creole multiracial national model through concepts such as Ummah. The scope of this research is to contribute to the emerging work on American Islam, and more generally to the scholarship on Atlantic circulations.
M.A. with Distinction in Visual Anthropology, Goldsmiths College, University of London, United-Kingdom, 2016.