Benedikt Römer studied Religious Studies, Arabic Studies, and Public Law at the University of Bayreuth (2013–2016) as well as Religious Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London (2016–2018). From 2019 to 2022, he was a Research Associate in the junior research group "Islamic Contemporary Cultures" funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research at the University of Bayreuth, where he completed his doctorate with a thesis on Iranian evangelical communities in exile. In 2024, his book The Iranian Christian Diaspora: Religion and Nationhood in Exile was published with I.B. Tauris. His research focuses on the religious landscape of the modern Near and Middle East, the relationship between religion and nationalism, religious practices in migration contexts, as well as the intellectual history of modern Iran and Turkey. Between 2019 and 2022, Benedikt Römer served as editor of the Zeitschrift für junge Religionswissenschaft (ZjR). Since 2024, he has been the editor of a forthcoming Handbook of Modern Iranian Religions, under contract with Oxford University Press.

Research Interests

• Religion and nationalism, theories of nationalism
• Religious minorities in the Islamic world
• Modern intellectual history of Iran and Turkey
• Religion and migration
• Ethnographic research in Arabic-, Turkish-, and Persian-speaking milieus
• Diaspora studies

Publications

• Römer, Benedikt (2024): The Iranian Christian Diaspora: Religion and Nationhood in Exile, London/New York: I.B. Tauris.
• Römer, Benedikt (2024): Preaching the Pandemic: COVID-19-Specific Theodicies among Iranian Evangelical Christians in the Diaspora, in Religion, https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2024.2408557.
• Römer, Benedikt (2024): Becoming Christian, Remaining Iranian: The Salience of National Identity in Iranian Evangelical Exile Churches, in: Lena Rose and Ebru Öztürk (eds.): Asylum and Conversion from Islam to Christianity in Europe: Interdisciplinary Approaches, London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 147–163.
• Römer, Benedikt (2024): Reversion, Revival, Resistance: Framing Iranian Neo-Zoroastrian Religiosities, in Entangled Religions 15 (2), https://doi.org/10.46586/er.15.2024.11525.
• Römer, Benedikt (2023): Iran und der Wiederkehrende Ruf nach Revolution: Ein Historischer Überblick [transl. “Iran and the Recurring Call for Revolution: A Historical Overview”], in Einsichten und Perspektiven: Bayerische Zeitschrift für Politik und Geschichte 2/23, pp. 36–45. (https://www.blz.bayern.de/data/pdf/ep_2-23_web-0711-1854-41.pdf)
• Römer, Benedikt (2022): “Turban Tossing” in Iran: Reflections on an Act of Anticlerical Revenge, in Marginalia: Notes on Religious Studies, https://marginalie.hypotheses.org/2420.