Position/Status

Postdoctoral Research Associate

E-mail Address

dh599@cam.ac.uk

Qualifications

• PhD Ethnomusicology (University of Cambridge)
• MSc Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (University of Oxford)
• BA (Hons) History and Music (Birmingham-Southern College, USA)

Membership of Professional Bodies/Associations

• British Forum for Ethnomusicology (BFE)
• Society for Ethnomusicology (SEM)
• Middle East Studies Association (MESA)
• British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES)
• Royal Musical Association (RMA)
• Syrian Studies Association

Profile

Dunya Habash is a Postdoctoral Research Associate working on Dr Farah Ahmed's project "Reorienting Education in Muslim Contexts towards Awe and Wonder through Dialogue, Science, and Art", funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Her interdisciplinary research explores the intersection of aesthetics, the arts, forced migration, integration, and education in post-conflict settings. She completed a PhD in Ethnomusicology at the University of Cambridge in 2023. Through a Woolf Institute Cambridge Scholarship and under the supervision of Dr Matthew Machin-Autenrieth, her ethnographic research with Syrian musicians and artists in Turkey examined the effects of ‘integration’ on performance practices and cultural education among Syrian communities post-displacement. Before and during her PhD studies, Dunya worked as a Public Engagement Coordinator and Outreach Officer at the Woolf Institute. Through these roles she developed and disseminated an interfaith workshop programme based on the institute's Living in Harmony research project alongside a series of teacher resources for RE educators. She is also a Teaching Fellow at CRASSH’s Global History Lab and an affiliated researcher at the Woolf Institute. Her research has been supported by the British Forum for Ethnomusicology, the Royal Musical Association, the Music & Letters Trust, and the Cambridge Trust.

Academic Area/Links

• CEDiR

Research Topics

• Conflict and education
• Decolonising education
• Politics of belonging
• Syrian displacement - resettlement, integration, cultural adaptation
• Contemporary sonic practices from Syria and Türkiye

Current Research Project(s)

• Reorienting Education in Muslim Contexts towards Awe and Wonder through Dialogue, Science and Art (PI: Dr Farah Ahmed)

Principal and Recent Publications

Book Chapters
Rebecca Bryant and Dunya Habash. “Aspiring Cosmopolitans: Syrian Youth in Urban Turkey”. In Knudsen, Are and Tobin, Sarah A. (eds.), Urban Displacement: Syria’s Refugees in the Middle East (Berghahn Books, 2024). Available at: https://doi.org/10.3167/9781805393016

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
Dunya Habash and Naohiko Omata. “The ‘Private’ Sphere of Integration? Reconfiguring Gender Roles Within Syrian Refugee Families in the UK”
Journal of International Migration and Integration, (2022). Available at: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12134-022-00982-x#citeas

Dunya Habash. “Do Like you Did in Aleppo: Negotiating Space and Place Among Syrian Musicians in Istanbul”
Journal of Refugee Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2. (2021). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feab013

Working Papers and Policy Briefs
Naohiko Omata, Dunya Habash and Nuha Abdo. “Integration of Resettled Syrian Refugees in Oxford: Preliminary Study in 2018” RSC Working Paper Series No. 129, University of Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre, (2019). Available at: https://www.rsc.ox.ac.uk/publications/integration-of-resettled-syrian-refugees-in-oxford-preliminary-study-in-2018

Naohiko Omata, Dunya Habash and Nuha Abdo. 2018. “Research in Brief: Resettled Syrian Refugees in Oxford”
RSC Research in Brief 9. University of Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre. Available at: https://bit.ly/2XvarON

Book Reviews
Dunya Habash and Fatima Lahham. “Listening to Egyptian and Uyghur Soundscapes: A Review in Letters between Cambridge and Istanbul”
Journal of the Royal Musical Association 148/1: 1-9 (2024). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1017/rma.2023.9