Miray Philips
Biography
Miray Philips is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She received a B.S. in both Psychology and Sociology from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, as well as an MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of Minnesota. Miray was born in Egypt, raised in Kuwait, lived in the United States, and now resides in Toronto, Canada.
Miray’s research explores the transnational politics, meaning, and memory of violence and suffering. She is especially interested in how religion and rights shape interpretations of violence and chart trajectories for mobilization. Her book project, The Transnational Politics of Religious Difference, explores the impact of geopolitics on meaning-making struggles about the plight of Christians in the Middle East. This research is based on transnational ethnographic fieldwork between Egypt, Kuwait, and Washington, DC. In addition, Miray’s collaborative projects examine knowledge production and memory after mass atrocities, including the Armenian Genocide and the Syrian war.
You can find more information about my research, teaching, and public sociology on my website.
Education
- Ph.D. Sociology, University of Minnesota
- B.S. Sociology and Psychology, University of Michigan
Research Interests
- Religion
- Human Rights
- Culture, Knowledge, and Memory
- Globalization, Transnationalism, and Diaspora
- Middle East and North Africa
Publications
- Philips, Miray. 2023. “‘We Love Martyrdom, but we also Love Life’: Coptic Cultural Trauma between Martyrdom and Rights.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology. 11(2):220-247.
- Philips, Miray and Joachim Savelsberg. 2023. “Social Fields, Journalism, and Collective Memory: Reporting on the Armenian Genocide in Legal, Political, and Commemorative Field Events.” Memory Studies. Online First.
- Savelsberg, Joachim and Miray Philips. 2022. “Epistemic Power of Universal Jurisdiction: Spreading Knowledge about Mass Atrocity Crimes.” Minnesota Journal of International Law, 31(2): 57-95.
- Philips, Miray. 2023. “Christians in Egypt: Transformations in Representational Authority and Narratives of Belonging.” In In the Eye of the Storm: Middle Eastern Christians in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Mitri Raheb. Wipf and Stock Publishers.