Qudra Goodall

I am a social anthropologist whose research examines Muslim self-formation, ethics, and belonging in contemporary Britain, with a focus on second-generation convert Muslim women and the ways religious subjectivities are shaped through embodied practice, relational life, and moral cultivation within secular, liberal, and post-imperial contexts.

I completed my PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of East Anglia. My thesis develops an ethnographic and feminist account of Muslim self-formation among women from second-generation British convert communities, based on long-term fieldwork with the Murabitun (Norwich Sufi Community), the longest-standing indigenous British convert Muslim community. The research traces the "journeying self": a processual exploration of how individuals become fully autonomous subjects through decolonising inherited culture and practice. It examines how women challenge patriarchal, reifying, and post-colonial ideologies across three transformative rites of passage: belonging to kin and community; marriage and gender justice; and the creation of new forms of representation and lived religion through work and social media. The thesis contributes to debates on lived religion, whiteness, moral personhood, and British Islam.

I am currently a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) Associate with UEA, Innovate UK, and Groundwork East, leading a federation-wide practice audit and evidence review of community engagement. This involves systematic organisational ethnography across multiple UK sites, producing a Theory of Change, "GreenPrint" framework, and professional competency and learning systems. The work positions anthropology as practice-based expertise and institutional reflexivity, translating ethnographic insight into organisational development and policy influence on environmental justice, nature recovery, and climate resilience.

I hold a BA (Hons) in International Politics and Modern Languages (Aberystwyth) and an MRes in Social Sciences Research Methods (UEA). I contributed to the RCUK-funded British Muslim Values Project (UEA/BBC), producing an auto-ethnographic research film on British convert Muslim women's perspectives on "British" and "Islamic" values.

Research interests: Lived Islam; Muslim self-formation; gender, race, and whiteness; participatory and decolonial methodologies; environmental justice; organisational ethnography; applied anthropology.