Vanessa Rau

Vanessa Rau holds a PhD in sociology and is an author and podcaster. She studied social sciences, anthropology and international politics in Cambridge and Berlin, and was awarded her PhD by the University of Cambridge for a thesis on Israeli migration and new Jewish scenes in Berlin. Her research lies at the intersection of social transformation, intersectionality and the politics of difference, with a focus on religion, disability, racism/anti-Semitism, as well as biography and intimacy. She was a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Multi-Religious and Multi-Ethnic Societies, Göttingen, where, amongst other things, she was a co-founder and advisor on the international research project ‘Encounters – Jewish-Muslim Relations in Urban Europe’, and has taught at various universities in Germany and abroad. Her research was awarded the Körber Prize (2020). She is currently conducting research and working on the topic of religion, democracy and civil society in the society in transition in eastern Germany.