Dr Michael Marten

Lecturer in Postcolonial Studies

I joined the School in early 2008, having previously taught at SOAS in London, England, and been a guest lecturer at the Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Pavia, Italy.  Before returning to academia with the writing of my PhD, I worked mostly in the NGO sector in the UK and the Middle East, including a period as a lobbyist for the UK churches on Israel/Palestine, Iraq and Sudan.

Research

My main research interests centre on European colonial engagement overseas, particularly in the Middle East.  I have published on Scottish and English missionary activity in Palestine, and I am currently working on a project addressing questions of gender norms and modernity in Palestine in the period 1918-1939, comparing missionaries from Scotland and Germany.  The period between the two World Wars in both these countries saw many changes in the understanding of these issues, and my work centres on the communication of these understandings – or lack of it – abroad, and how this can help our understandings of modernity in Palestine at this time.

A number of issues arise in these areas, such as the need to reflect on questions of identity construction, ascription and designation in various forms: religious, national, employment etc.  As (conventionally understood) competing national and religious identities struggled over questions of political control, with the Zionist movement aided by the British Mandate power eventually stymieing Palestinian Arab attempts at self-determination, divergent understandings of modernity became ever more significant, and so I find much of my work reflects on questions of multiple, competing modernities as well as issues of periodisation.  Of course, since gender is a central paradigm to this work, questions of the construction of girlhood and boyhood and the ‘making of women/men’ are paramount.  This in turn raises issues of normativity, difference and ambivalence in reflecting on gender and other categories of analysis.

I have also worked on contemporary understandings of religion and politics, including political conflict transformation.  Beyond academia I have worked as a lobbyist on Middle East issues, and I have interests in the ways in which concepts of ‘religion’ are used in the political sphere, in both the Middle East and European contexts.  To this end, I also write occasional comment pieces for Ekklesia, the UK’s premier religious think-tank, of which I am also an Associate.  My membership of the Iona Community is also an expression of a desire to integrate the categories of ‘religion’ and ‘the public sphere’ in meaningful ways.

I also use my personal Twitter account to discuss all these issues and more, and I welcome interaction in the ‘Twitterverse’ – follow me here: @MichaelMarten.

Supervision

I welcome enquiries relating to postgraduate supervision, particularly in the following areas: European colonialism, missions to/from/in the Middle East and elsewhere, Oriental churches, postcolonial studies, theology/religion and gender/politics.  Please use the form below to contact me directly.

Existing postgraduate supervision addresses a number of the interests mentioned above:

• Safaa Abdulrahim (diasporic literary forms, jointly supervised with Prof. David Richards in English)
• Rajalakshmi Kannan (Indian music in a postcolonial setting)
• Inbal Livne (European missionary and military engagement in Tibet, and the collection of Tibetan artefacts in Scottish museums)
• Shani Zour (religion and medical practice in Malawi).

To see all my blog postings on the Critical Religion website, click here.