Hannah Hoechner is an associate professor in education and global development at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia. She completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford, and has held postdoctoral positions at the Université libre de Bruxelles and the University of Antwerp. Hannah’s research seeks to shed light on the diversity and dynamism of Islamic schooling practices in contexts of social change.
Her doctoral thesis, which forms the basis of her recent book ‘Qur’anic Schools in Northern Nigeria: everyday experiences of youth, faith, and poverty’ (CUP / International African Library), offers an ethnographic and participatory study with young Qur’anic school students in Kano. Debunking stereotypes about Qur’anic schools as recruitment grounds for Boko Haram and other violent groups, Hannah explores through the eyes of the students what it means to be young, poor, and Muslim in a context of pervasive inequality. As part of her work in Nigeria, Hannah produced the ‘participatory’ docudrama ‘Duniya Juyi Juyi – How life goes’, which shows Qur’anic school students’ own perspectives on their education (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-SDeFX5rfI).
Hannah’s current work includes Muslim diaspora communities in the West and their relationships with their homelands. Connecting diaspora and transnationalism studies with the study of change within religious schooling practices in Muslim societies, she explores the involvement of the Senegalese diaspora within the religious education sector of Senegal. She has conducted extensive fieldwork both in Senegal and with West African diaspora communities in the US. Specifically, her research traces how sojourns in Senegal undertaken for the purpose of religious education shape diaspora children’s relationships with their homeland and with Islam, how ‘diaspora’ influences alter Muslim schooling practices in Senegal, and how homeland stays and visits prepare young people for the challenges of living in the US as part of a triple minority as blacks, immigrants, and Muslims.
Hannah’s teaching interests include ethnographic and participatory research approaches, social anthropology, religion and international development, and a range of themes relating to education, including social reproduction theory, education in Muslim societies, education in contexts of migration and mobility, and education as it relates to conflict.

Islamic education, children & young people, education & violent conflict, education & migration, participatory research, West Africa