Claudia Liebelt

Claudia Liebelt is a University Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology and Managing Director of WE 04 (Social and Cultural Anthropology) at Freie Universität Berlin (FU Berlin). She leads the Research Unit 'Gender, Body, Sexualities' and serves as PI for the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies. Her academic career includes a Habilitation (2019) and a Heisenberg Stipend (2020–2021). She has held roles at institutions like the University of Bayreuth and Keele University (UK).

Her research focuses on body anthropology, gender, critical beauty studies, political anthropology, and religious anthropology. Regional expertise includes the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, and the Philippines. Current projects explore olfactory affects, transnational formations of self, and aesthetic citizenship in urban contexts.

Teaching includes courses on the anthropology of religion, transnational sexualities, and critical beauty studies. She supervises numerous PhD students and has published widely on topics such as beauty politics, diaspora studies, and care work.

Awards include the DFG Heisenberg Stipend and scholarships from the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and Minerva Foundation. Her work appears in journals like Sociologus and Citizenship Studies, with grants from DFG and SFB 1171 (Affective Societies).