Randa abdel-fattah
Randa’s research interests broadly centre on Islamophobia, race, ‘everyday multiculturalism’, and youth identities and cultures in the context of the war on terror and the geopolitics of fear. Randa is currently researching the generational impact of the war on terror on Muslim and non-Muslim youth born into a post 9/11 world. Randa is also a multi-award winning author of 11 books.
Biography
Adopting qualitative and ethnographic methods in everyday contexts, Randa’s research interests broadly centre on Islamophobia, race and racism (particularly the spatial, embodied and material aspects of racism and Islamophobia), ‘everyday multiculturalism’, and youth identities and cultures in the context of the war on terror and the geopolitics of fear. Randa is undertaking an ARC (Discovery Early Career Researcher Award) project comparing the generational impact of the war on terror on Muslim and non-Muslim youth born into a post 9/11 world in relation to their trust relations in the everyday contexts of school/university, developing political participation and affective responses to the war on terror in relation to the geopolitics of fear. Randa is also a multi-award winning author of 11 books whose young adult and children’s books are published in over fifteen countries. This literary corpus primarily deals with intercultural relations, migration, race/religious issues in Australia, identity, belonging and political consciousness among young Australians, both Muslim and non-Muslim. She is well known for her commentary as a public intellectual, her media appearances and her writing across a wide range of genres. Her books have been staged as plays and she is currently involved in the adaptation of her debut novel Does My Head Look Big In This? as a feature film.Education
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Arts/Law- Melbourne University
Doctor of Philosophy- Macquarie University
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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Islamophobia, race and racism, multiculturalism, sociology
Books
Articles
'The Double Bind of Writing as an Australian Muslim Woman’
Published: Jan 02, 2018 by Mashriq & Mahjar: A Journal of Middle East Migration Studies
Authors: Randa Abdel-Fattah
The Muslim woman as victim or escapee dominates the publishing world’s imaginings of Muslim women. Nothing titillates the literary world more than the Muslim woman “native informant” who bravely “bares all” to confess her journey from false consciousness to good liberal (preferably atheist) subject.
Islamophobia and Australian Muslim Political Consciousness in the War on Terror
Published: May 07, 2017 by Journal of Intercultural Studies
Authors: Randa Abdel-Fattah
This article analyses the forms of consciousness that inform Australian Muslim responses to Islamophobia in the context of the War on Terror, particularly since the emergence of Islamic State (‘IS’).
‘Lebanese Muslim’: a Bourdieuian ‘Capital’ Offense in an Australian coastal town
Published: Apr 07, 2016 by Journal of Intercultural Studies,
Authors: Randa Abdel-Fattah
This article focuses on encounters between differently habituated bodies at ‘Bayside’, a popular Anglo-majority Australian coastal town. Based on in-depth interviews with locals, I show how banal speech acts, interpretations of encounters, corporeal attitudes and practices of exclusion construct the embodied behaviour and haptic space of Lebanese Muslims visitors as threatening and inferior, producing a racialised habitus of Lebanese Muslims.