Richard Johan Natvig
Associate Professor
Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion
Research Group in Middle Eastern and African Studies
Title: Associate Professor
Phone: +47 55 58 94 39
E-mail: Richard.Natvig@ahkr.uib.no
Visiting address: Øysteinsgate 3
- Everyday Islam in Egypt
- The zar in Northeast Africa and the Middle East
- Muslim devotional posters
My research interests include local religion in Egypt (19th to 20th centuries), zar spirit possession beliefs and rituals in Northeast Africa and the Middle East, Islam in Bulgaria, and Muslim religious iconography. My research on religion in Norway includes Islam, Theosophy, and Norse religion.
“Umm al-Ghulam: Zār Spirit or Half-Forgotten Saint? Making Sense of an Egyptian Zār Song”, in Folklore 124 (December 2013), 289-306, published online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0015587X.2013.812417#.UyGZcV51Ho2
“‘I Saw the Prophet in My Dream’: Prophet Songs from a Zar Ceremony in Lower Egypt” - to be published in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 41 (2014), 3. Published online 16 April 2014: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13530194.2014.888263.
“Commemorating and Venerating the Prophet Visually: Figural Representations of the Prophet Muhammad in Contemporary Shii Devotional Pictures”, with Elisabeth Puin, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, in Popular Muslim Visual Culture, ed. Ingvild Flaskerud, to be published in 2014.