The month of Ramadan which has just ended was a turning point in terms of being able to observe changes and/or adaptations in these types of practices around the world. With the help of scholarly experts on these issues (Sol Tarrés, Jordi Moreras, Josep Lluis Mateo Dieste and Ana Planet), we will take a closer look at this changing and adaptive social reality, reflecting on how these communities have evolved with the pandemic in Andalusia, Spain and the world in general, in aspects such as changing ritual practices at places of worship, the pilgrimage to Mecca, fatwas or legal judgments, burials, the use of “new technologies,” etc.

The interviews will be posted on the dates shown below and can be heard on our SoundCloud channel:

- Wednesday, May 27: Returning to spirituality. The cases of Andalusia, Ceuta and Melilla, by Sol Tarrés
- Tuesday, June 2: The modification of rituals and funeral practices in times of the pandemic, by Jordi Moreras
- Tuesday, June 9: ”Umrah” and the pilgrimage to Mecca, by Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste
- Tuesday, June 16: Directives, instructions, communiqués and “fatwas” at the international level, by Ana Planet.


Sol Tarrés has a PhD in Social Anthropology, is a member of the Andalusian Academy of History and is a professor of Anthropology at the University of Huelva. She is a specialist in the field of religious diversity in Spain (Islamic faith), the cultural heritage of religious minorities and the religious expression of death. She has formed part of and directed various domestic and foreign projects related with these subjects, including: a map of religious minorities in Andalusia and in the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla, the first results of which are found in the book “Encuentros, diversidad religiosa en Ceuta y en Melilla” (“Encounters: Religious diversity in Ceuta and Melilla,” Icaria, 2013). She has had over fifty works published, including articles, books and chapters of books, the most notable of which include “Guide for the Management of Religious Diversity in Cemeteries and Funeral Services” (FPC, 2013), “And Who Are You (For)?: Religious minorities in Andalusia (Icaria, 2010), “Muslim Cemeteries in Spain: Places of otherness” (Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales, 2012), and “From Popular Religiosity to the Religion of the Andalusians and Religious Diversity: 25 years of Religion Anthropology in Andalusia (1985-2010)” (Signatura Demos, 2011). Likewise, she has formed part of such entities as the International Seminar of Experts of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on the topics of racism and Islamophobia, and the Seminar of Experts for the “Management and safeguarding of immaterial heritage in the Mediterranean.”

Jordi Moreras is a researcher and professor at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) and a teaching assistant at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). He has a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, a Master’s degree in Euro-Arab Studies from the University of Girona (1993) and a PhD in Anthropology from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (2009). From 1995 to 2001, he coordinated the area of migrations at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs). In 2002, he joined the Secretariat of Religious Affairs for the Autonomous Regional Government of Catalonia, where he worked as the head of studies as of the year 2004. As an independent consultant, he was collaborated with public and private institutions in Spain and abroad. He has authored various monographs about Muslim communities in Spain.
 
Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste (Manresa, 1968). With an interdisciplinary education, he earned his bachelor’s degree in Sociology (UAB, 1991), a Master’s degree in Anthropology (UAB, 1996) and a PhD in History at the European University Institute (Italy) in 2002. A member of the AHCISP research group, he has taken part in projects related with studying the construction of sociopolitical identities. His research has focused on the anthropology and history of North Africa and relations between the Maghreb and Europe. He has completed research projects on Moroccan communities in Catalonia and northern Morocco, about the following topics: mutual stexreotypes of Moroccans and Spaniards, and their political context; the political relations between colonial authorities and the colonized during the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco (1912-1956) and transformations in the Moroccan field of religion; mixed relations between Spaniards and Moroccans throughout the twentieth century; the lack of categories of miscegenation  in the Muslim world; conceptions of the body and healing rituals in Morocco and the diaspora, and the study of contemporary slavery in Morocco

Ana Planet is a co-director of the International Mediterranean Studies Workshop and a professor with the Arab and Islamic Studies Department at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. With a PhD in Philosophy, Planet specializes in Arab and Islamic Studies She earned her bachelor’s degree in Arab and Islamic Studies at the UAM and another in Political Science and Sociology from the UNED. She has been a Board Member in the Directorate General of Religious Affairs (2004-2006) and a professor at the University of Alicante from 1997 to 2004. Since 1991, she has formed part of the International Mediterranean Studies Workshop (TEIM), a group which she currently co-directs. At the UAM, under the direction of Bernabé López García, she took part in 6 research projects. During her time as an educator at the University of Alicante, she led a research and development project coordinated with the UAM, and at the UAM she has directed two projects (in 2011, and in the 2014 tender which is now coming to an end). Her research work has been positively evaluated with three phases of research (the last granted in 2016), and she has directed a large number of end-of-Master’s degree and DEA projects, as well as 11 doctoral theses.