Alex Kreger is an anthropologist of religion, secularism, and sound. He earned his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. His dissertation, “The Stringed Qur’an: Post-Islamic Reform and Musical Revival among Alevis in Turkey and Europe,” examines transformations in Turkish Alevi ritual life in response to the pressures of Islamism and transnational migration. His ethnographic research in Turkey and Europe has been funded by the Social Science Research Council and Fulbright Foundation. His article, “Wearing fire and chewing iron: Oaths of peace and the suspension of monotheism in contemporary Alevism” was published in 2022 in the journal Modern Asian Studies. He plays the Alevi lute saz and has performed with internationally recognized Alevi musicians in concert and ritual settings. He is also a pianist, composer, and improviser whose latest project, Mana, is a musical setting of text from Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.
PhD, University of Texas at Austin
Modernity, Science, and Secularism