Main Content

Igor Johannsen

Main research areas

Islamic Philosophy
Islamism/political Ideas in Islam
History of political thought
International Relations
Histroy of the Near East
Popular Culture/HipHop Studies

  • Vita

    M.A., studied Islamic Studies, History and Political Science at the University of Hamburg. After completing his M.A. in 2011 with a thesis on the political ideology of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood as reflected in their 2007 draft party manifesto, he started preparatory work for a doctoral dissertation on Arab hip-hop.

    Since October 2013 Igor Johannsen is a research fellow at the research network “Re-Configurations: History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa” at the University of Marburg.

  • Current research project

    Hip-Hop in Egypt: Aesthetics, Politics and Language in Revolutionary Cultural Practices

    This research project focuses on the specific cultural practices of hip hop-culture in an Arabic context in the post-2011 period. Hip-hop and its related practices can be described as containing a decidedly glocal quality and a clearly delineated set of myths, norms and values.

    Through the observation of the practices involved, the research project aims at situating the Arabic, and especially Egyptian, hip-hop scene as a part of the global culture. Delineating the structure of hip-hop culture in general and the forms of representing the respective practices and norms in the Egyptian case specifically, leads to a comprehensive understanding of the contents and the meaning of these practices in Egypt.

    Focusing on the cultural practice of “rap”, the overarching aim is to decipher references to politically relevant discourses in Egyptian society during and after the uprising of 2011, assessing their impact. Here rap is understood as a form of poetry and the artist, or rapper, as a spokesperson, or “organic intellectual”, for his/her community.