Farid Hafez was born in Austria on December 23, 1981. In 2009, he completed his PhD in Political Science at the University of Vienna. In his doctoral thesis, Hafez analyzed the parliamentary debates on the banning of mosques and minarets in two Austrian districts. From 2009 to 2014 he taught at the Muslim Teachers’ Training College in Vienna and from 2008 to 2010 he continued his research at the Department of Religious and Cultural Law at the University of Vienna. He is a senior fellow at the University of Salzburg and at The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University. In 2014, he was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York. In 2017, Hafez was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and led the project “Understanding Islamophobia in a Global and Comparative Perspective” at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also a visiting professor at this university.
His research focuses on Islamophobia and racism. Hafez has been the editor of the Islamophobia Research Yearbook since 2010 and since 2015 he has been working with Enes Bayraklı on the European Islamophobia Report, published annually by SETA publications. The 2019 report assessed European society’s understanding of Islam in thirty-two countries in Europe, including countries such as Russia, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo (SETA, n.d.). In 2009, John Bunzl contributed to the “Anthology of Islamophobia”, which was awarded the prestigious Bruno-Kreisky-Anerkennungspreis by the Dr. Karl-Renner-Institut as the political book of the year. In 2019, he co-edited the book Islamophobia in Muslim Majority Societies with Enes Bayraklı.
In this book, the authors examine the phenomenon of Islamophobia in Muslim-majority societies, which has not been sufficiently studied, and state that it is the first attempt in this field. Hafez has published more than eighty books and articles and regularly contributes opinion pieces to various publications. These include Middle East Eye and Daily Sabah. He is also frequently interviewed by media outlets. He has been interviewed by Austrian-based organizations such as Der Standard and Die Presse, as well as The Washington Post. Dr. Farid Hafez was featured in the short documentary film “After the Raid”. In this documentary, he talked about the police raid on his house and his experiences (TRT Haber, n.d.).
References
İstanbul Zaim Üniversitesi (n.d). Prof. Dr. Farid Hafez, PhD. Retrieved from https://www.izu.edu.tr/en/ciga/about-us/staff/staff/farid-hafez
SETA (n.d). Avrupa İslamofobi Raporu 2019 Yayında. Retrieved from https://www.setav.org/avrupa-islamofobi-raporu-2019-yayinda-eir2019/
TRT Haber (n.d.). Akademisyen Farid Hafez, Avusturya’da polisin şiddetine maruz kaldı. Retrieved from https://www.trthaber.com/haber/dunya/akademisyen-farid-hafez-avusturyada-polisin-siddetine-maruz-kaldi-562701.html
