Sonic Relations: Devotion and Community in Turkey's Eastern Borderlands

The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS) will host a book launch for Dr Stefan Williamson Fa's Sonic Relations: Devotion and Community in Turkey's Eastern Borderlands on 26 May 2026 at the Aga Khan Centre, London. This hybrid event will explore how sound shapes religious life and communal belonging among Twelver Shi'i Muslims in Turkey and across connected regions.What role does sound play in shaping religious life and communal belonging? How do practices such as vocal recitation, lament, and devotional poetry cultivate relationships among participants, as well as with the divine and unseen?This book talk by Dr Stefan Williamson Fa introduces Sonic Relations: Devotion and Community in Turkey's Eastern Borderlands (Indiana University Press, 2026). Drawing on long-term ethnographic research with Azeri-Turkish speaking Twelver Shi'i communities, the presentation explores how sonic practices, including the call to prayer, ritual lamentation, praise poetry, and mediated recordings, form the core of devotional life.The talk examines how sound operates not simply as an expression of belief, but as a medium through which religious experience, affective ties, and collective identities are created and sustained. It also traces how these sonic practices travel across borders through media technologies and transnational networks linking Turkey with Iran, the Caucasus and Western Europe.Dr Stefan Williamson Fa is a cultural anthropologist and Research Associate at the Centre of Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge.
He completed his PhD at University College London in 2019. His research focuses on Islam through auditory and culinary cultures, with particular attention to Shi'i devotional practices across Turkey, the Caucasus and Iran. His current work explores Muslim foodways in the UK, including food provision, food-aid initiatives, and their relationship to Islamic ethics and traditions of care.This event offers an opportunity to engage with new research on sound, devotion and community in contemporary Muslim contexts. It will be of interest to scholars, students and wider audiences interested in anthropology, Islamic studies and transnational religious life.