Benedikt Römer

Walter Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellow
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
benedikt.romer@ames.ox.ac.uk
 
Benedikt Römer

Biography

I am currently a Walter Benjamin Postdoctoral Fellow, hosted by Prof Laurent Mignon at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies in Oxford. Before coming to Oxford, I obtained an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS University in London (2018), where I wrote my dissertation about linguistic purism in Modern Persian. My main academic area is the Study of Religions, in which I obtained a PhD at the University of Bayreuth in Germany (2022). A revised version of my PhD thesis was published in 2024 under the title “The Iranian Christian Diaspora: Religion and Nationhood in Exile” at I.B. Tauris. From 2022 to late 2025, I was a senior lecturer and researcher at Bundeswehr University in Munich, where I contributed to the establishment of a new BA/MA programme in Cultural Studies. My research in Oxford is about the historical evolvement of images of “the Arabs” among Turkish intellectuals of the 20th century. Alongside this project, I am editing a forthcoming Oxford Handbook of religion in post-1800 Iran. 

Current Projects

  • A Most Similar Other: Images of “the Arabs” in the Turkish Republic: In explaining the recent flare-up of anti-Arab sentiment in contemporary Turkey, much of the academic literature hastily points to a supposed longue durée of Turkish anti-Arabism rooted in the late Ottoman and early Kemalist eras. However, given the limited scope of existing scholarship, we still know relatively little about how perceptions of “the Arabs” evolved in Turkey throughout the 20th century. This project addresses that gap by examining a large corpus of Turkish-language sources, mainly from the second half of the century, including travel writings by leftist Turkish intellectuals interested in the development of socialism in countries such as Iraq and Egypt; hajj memoirs recounting journeys to the Arab world culminating in the pilgrimage to Mecca; historiographical works critically engaging with the purported “anti-Turkish” bias of Pan-Arabism; political commentaries on contemporary political and religious developments in the Arab world; and personal memoirs by Turkish intellectuals and politicians who, for various reasons, spent extended periods in Arab countries. While cognizant of the legacy of late Ottoman and Kemalist Orientalisms, the project aims to produce a more nuanced historiographical account and to highlight the diverse and ambiguous portrayals of “the Arabs” in 20th century Turkish intellectual discourse.    
 
  • The Oxford Handbook of Modern Iranian Religions (Editorship together with Navid Fozi, Bridgewater State University): The Oxford Handbook of Modern Iranian Religions addresses a major gap in scholarship by offering a comprehensive, interdisciplinary examination of Iran’s diverse religious landscape from circa 1800 to the present. Bringing together perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, it explores both the historical and lived dimensions of religious traditions, highlighting their internal diversity and evolution in response to the political and social transformations ofmodern Iran. Featuring contributions by well-established and emerging scholars in Iranian Studies, the Handbook offers an up-to-date account of the state of research in the field, including recent research on post-1979 religious trends in Iran and its diaspora communities. 

​​​​Research Interests 

  • Intellectual history of modern Iran and Turkey 
  • Theories of religion, nationalism, and diaspora 
  • Religious minority groups in the MENA region 
  • Dynamics of religious practice after migration 

Educational Background 

  • PhD, Study of Religions, University of Bayreuth 
  • MA, Near and Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS University of London 

Recent publications

Books

  • Römer, Benedikt (2024), The Iranian Christian Diaspora: Religion and Nationhood in Exile, London/New York: I.B. Tauris. 

Edited Volumes

  • Römer, Benedikt and Navid Fozi (eds.; forthcoming): The Oxford Handbook of Modern Iranian Religions, Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. 

Book Chapters and Articles

  • Römer, Benedikt (2025): Bedouins, Blacks, and the Bringers of Islam: the Arabs in late Ottoman Encyclopaedic Literature, 1876–1928, in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2025.2493237.  
  • Römer, Benedikt (2024), Becoming Christian, Remaining Iranian: The Salience of National Identity in Iranian Evangelical Exile Churches, in: Rose, Lena and Ebru Öztürk (eds.): Asylum and Conversion from Islam to Christianity in Europe: Interdisciplinary Approaches, London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 147-163,  https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350407909.ch-8.  
  • Römer, Benedikt (2024): Preaching the Pandemic: COVID 19-Specific Theodicies among Iranian Evangelical Christians in the Diaspora, in Religion 55 (1), pp. 141–159, https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2024.2408557.   
  • Römer, Benedikt (2024): Reversion, Revival, Resistance: Framing Iranian Neo-Zoroastrian Religiosities, in Entangled Religions 15 (2), https://doi.org/10.46586/er.15.2024.11525.  
  • Römer, Benedikt (2023), Iran und der Wiederkehrende Ruf nach Revolution: Ein Historischer Überblick, in Einsichten und Perspektiven: Bayerische Zeitschrift für Politik und Geschichte 2/23, pp. 36-45, accessible online: https://www.blz.bayern.de/data/pdf/ep_2-23_web-0711-1854-41.pdf. 
  • Römer, Benedikt (2022), “Turban Tossing” in Iran: Reflections on an Act of Anticlerical Revenge, in Marginalien: Religionswissenschaftliche Randbemerkungen, accessible online: https://marginalie.hypotheses.org/2420.  

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