Sonja Hegasy is Deputy Director of the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin. She studied Arabic and Islamic Studies at Columbia University and completed her doctorate in political science at FU Berlin. In 2019–2021, she held the professorship for Postcolonial Studies at the Barenboim-Said Akademie in Berlin. In 2023, she was a Senior Fellow at the M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies “Metamorphoses of the Political” in Delhi.

During her fellowship, Sonja Hegasy will focus on previously overlooked (secular) Jewish-Muslim solidarity networks and intellectual debates in times of right-wing ideologies and terrorism. Her project contributes to the visibility and self-efficacy of Jewish-Muslim cross-border communication.


Selected Awards

2023 | Senior Fellowship at the M.S. Merian – R. Tagore International Centre of Advanced Studies ”Metamorphoses of the Political,” Delhi
2016 | Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center
1994/95 | Research Fellowship, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)


Selected Publications

2023 | “Hermeneutische Schikanen: Wie jüdisch-arabische und arabisch-jüdische Solidarität untergraben wird,” in Struggles of Remembrance: Neue deutsche Identität(en), neues deutsches Geschichtsbewusstsein, ed. Jürgen Zimmerer, 291–319. Ditzingen: Philipp Reclam jun.
2021 | “The Liminal Intellectual: A Contrapuntal Reading of Abdellatif Laâbi's ‘Un autre Maroc,’” in “Where is the Maghreb? Theorizing a Liminal Space,” ed. Brahim Guabli, special issue. Arab Studies Journal XXIX, no. 2, 48-70.
2019 | “Memories of Violence, Social Life and Political Culture in the Maghreb and Mashreq,” co-edited with NS Nikro, special issue, Memory Studies 12, no. 3.