Elisabeth zdalga is a retired senior researcher, and before that director, of the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul. She was professor of sociology at the Middle East University in Ankara 1994-2009 and visiting chair of the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Ankara 2011-13. She is the editor of several anthologies, among others Late Ottoman Society (RoutledgeCurzon, 2005), Novel and Nation in the Muslim World (with Daniella Kuzmanovic) (Palgrave 2015), Muslim Preaching in the Middle East and Beyond (with Simon Stjernholm) (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and author of 'Islamism and Nationalism as Sister Ideologies: Reflections on the Politicization of Islam in a Longue Dur e Perspective,' Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 407-23, May 2009.
""Through a meticulous examination of the Friday sermons, Elisabeth zdalga analyses the public role of religion in Turkey from containment by the secular state to instrumentalisation by the Islamist government. This is a most valuable contribution to our understanding of state-religion configurations in modern Turkey."" -Dr. Sami Zubaida, Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck, University of London