Miriam Gazzah
Dr. Miriam Gazzah (b.1977) a cultural anthropologist, writer, consultant and editor. Gazzah works as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Amsterdam and for the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR), working within the NWO (Cultural Dynamics) funded research programme Islamic Cultural Performances: New Youth Cultures in Europe. The topic of her project is From ethnicity to Islam? Moroccan/ Muslim music scenes in the Netherlands.
Gazzah received her MA degree in Mediterranean Studies at the Radboud University (Nijmegen) in 2001. Her MA thesis focused on the development of the raï music subculture in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s in Algeria. Her areas of interest are in popular culture, identity issues and its interfaces with religion, migration within contemporary Dutch society. She is also involved in a research project on the emergence of new (Islamic) youth cultures among European Muslim youth, funded by NWO.
Between 2003 and 2007 Miriam Gazzah was a PhD candidate at the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden. Gazzah received her PhD degree at the Radboud University in 2008 with her PhD dissertation Rhyhtms & Rhymes of Life: Music & Identification Processes of Dutch-Moroccan Youth (AUP, 2008). At Framer Framed, she was a guest speaker for the debate The View of the East on 26 November 2009, organised in collaboration with the Tropenmuseum. Between 2008 and 2010 she also worked for the Limburgs Museum (Venlo), where she was the project officer for Kleur Bekennen.