Andreas Bandak

Short presentation

Research

My research focuses on Christianity as a lived religion. I have been particularly interested in Christianity in settings where it has not been the majority religion, but where it has had to occupy a different and less dominant position. I have studied figures of sainthood and the diverse relationships people hold towards religious authorities, and the interplay between orthodox and popular religion. Specialised in anthropological studies of Christianity, I have focused on the way religious practices have been working in an otherwise overtly secular Syrian state. Related to this focus on Christianity I have most recently studied the new situation for Christians and Christianity in the Levant in light of the Syrian civil war and refugee crisis, where I have worked on how prayer has been taken up as a way of coping or addressing the changed landscape of the Middle East.

My work has been funded by grants from The Danish Council for Independent Research in the Humanities | Culture and Communication and from The Velux Foundation.

Keywords:

Christianity, Sainthood, Minority relations, Syria, Lebanon, The Middle East, Secularism, Prayer, Power of Example, Qualitative Analysis, Escalations

Teaching

I teach in the following subjects:

- Migration, politics and social change

- Negotiating Culture

- Qualitative Methods

- Theories of Culture and Society

- Theory of Science

Member of the Young Academy under the Danish Royal Academy of Science and Letters

Recent publications

Ethnographies of Waiting. Doubt, Hope and Uncertainty. London: Bloomsbury (2018, with Manpreet K. Janeja).

Arjun Appadurai writes:

"This book is certainly worth the wait, since it offers a beautifully introduced anthropological collection that shows that waiting is no less than a general feature of the human condition. [...] It will be of great interest to anthropologists as well as humanists more generally."

Joel Robbins writes:

"Inasmuch as every good anthropologist cares about time, all of them stand to learn a great deal from this volume."