Berkley Center

Elisabeth Becker is a summer 2017 doctoral fellow with the Religious Freedom Research Project. As a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Yale University, Becker is a junior fellow in cultural sociology, historical and comparative research, and religion and politics. Her dissertation examines contestation over Islam and its connections to national identity struggles in Germany and Great Britain through ethnographic research in two European mosques. She argues that the formation of a Muslim caste in Europe causes inequality and stunts religious freedoms for Muslims—and that Muslim communities respond to this inequality with a politics of purity. Becker has also been featured in the Washington Post, UN Dispatch, Policy Trajectories, Global Dialogue, and Discover Society; she works as a qualitative research consultant for international organizations. She received an M.Phil. in sociology from Yale University, M.Sc. in Latin American studies and M.Sc. in forced migration and development studies from Oxford University, and B.A. in sociology from Cornell University.