CIS public talk: Sonic relations: devotion and community in Turkey’s eastern borderlands

Abstract

What role does sound play in religious life? How do vocal recitation, lament, and poetry draw people together, forging bonds not only with one another but with the divine and unseen? 

Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with Azeri-Turkish speaking Twelver Shi'i communities whose lives and histories straddle Turkey, the Caucasus, and Iran, this talk traces how sound is enlisted in the cultivation of devotional relations with the Family of the Prophet, a defining concern of Shi'i Islam. Through close attention to the sonic and emotional qualities of vocal lament genres, I argue that these are not superficial features of religious practice but lie at its very heart, shaping ritual, selfhood, and communal belonging. These same sonic forms, taken up and transformed through media technologies, have carried devotional practice across vast distances, extending those bonds of intimacy and connection into transnational networks that link communities sharing language and faith but divided by the modern nation state. 

Together, these threads contribute to a relational anthropology of Islam that places relations between persons, communities, and the immaterial at the centre of religious life, showing how sensory and aesthetic practice is the medium through which those relations are forged, sustained, and felt across human and more-than-human boundaries.

Speaker

Dr Stefan Williamson Fa is a social-cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on Islam through auditory and culinary cultures. He completed his PhD at University College London in 2019. His first major project explored the role of sound in Shiʿi Islam among Azeri-Turkish speakers in Turkey, the Caucasus, and Iran; this research forms the basis of his forthcoming monograph Sonic Relations: Devotion and Community in Turkey’s Eastern Borderlands (Indiana University Press, 2026). 

As a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, his current work centres on Muslim foodways in the UK, with a focus on food provisioning and food-aid initiatives and their intersections with Islamic ethics and traditions of care.

Dr Williamson Fa is also a member of the Cambridge Interfaith Research Forum.

Series

This talk is organised by the Centre of Islamic Studies (University of Cambridge) as part of their regular public talks series. Talks are free to attend.