We live in a world where social, political, and religious movements continuously challenge established norms, prompting us to rethink fundamental ideas about power, agency, piety and belonging. These movements take diverse forms: they can deepen polarization, disrupt social cohesion, and give rise to radical factions, yet they also have the potential to drive positive change – amplifying marginalized voices, fostering solidarity, and creating new and inclusive spaces. Nowhere is this dynamism more evident than in the Islam-influenced world, a vibrant arena where emerging movements transcend national borders and exert influence on a global scale. Our research engages with these movements through a combination of on-site and digital fieldwork, social media analysis and critical discourse analysis. We explore models of authority within evolving religious and political landscapes, that are increasingly shaped by digital media. Social media, in particular, functions as a contested space where movements interact and compete, reshaping narratives, identities, and power structures. Beyond the online sphere, we investigate how religious movements influence everyday practices – such as piety, ritual, and fashion – redefining individual and collective identities. By adopting a diachronic perspective, we provide empirically grounded insights into the relational nature of movements, tracing how they both shape and are shaped by local, transregional and global forces.
Unlike sociological or political science approaches that often rely on universal theoretical frameworks, our research prioritizes the lived experiences and everyday practices and of those involved in movements. We emphasise local categories of meaning, seeking to understand movements from within rather than imposing external analytical models. By grounding out work in historical and ethnographic contexts, we capture the complexities of how movements emerge, evolve and are contested – highlighting both the internal dynamics of these movements and the broader geopolitical and cultural currents that influence them.
