Johanna Kettenbach

Summary

Johanna Kettenbach is a PhD fellow in the Research Group on Peace, Conflict and Development. She is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Oslo.

She holds a bachelor degree in Arabic Studies from Leipzig University and a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Lund University. Her research focuses on the intersection of religious governance and gender governance in Morocco and in Turkey.

Her Ph.D. thesis examines how the two largest post-Islamist movements in Morocco respond to the ongoing family code reform – an arena where the state enforces religious regulation, signals state-feminist initiatives and asserts its national identity. Focusing on the anti-regime Justice and Charity movement and the regime-aligned Justice and Development Party, Kettenbach analyzes their distinct discursive strategies on gender and religion for political (re)positioning. In a semi-authoritarian context where the state claims religious legitimacy, her research sheds light on how these movements balance ideological commitments with pragmatic adaptation. Women’s rights serve as a symbolic, yet relatively low-risk arena for contestation, which allows religious actors to signal resistance or conformity to the state without directly challenging state authority. However, challenging religious regulation remains a more complicated issue, as religion constitutes one of the state's established red lines. By tracing the two movements’ discourses, this research highlights how these movements exercise agency within authoritarian constraints, by strategically negotiating their positioning towards state power while simultaneously attempting to discursively regulate women’s place in society through post-Islamist language.