Zeinab Karimi

Zeinab Karimi is a Grant-funded Researcher at the Department of Sociology, University of Helsinki, affiliated with the Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ). Her work focuses on the racialization of Islam, boundaries of citizenship, and affective labor in transnational contexts.

• Racialization of Islam
• Citizenship and belonging
• Religious literacy in education
• Critical borderlands studies
• Transnational organizational dynamics
• Decolonial methodologies

Her peer-reviewed articles examine how religious literacy interventions impact social problem-solving in transnational organizations (2025), analyze affective temporalities in border regimes (2024), and critique the racialization of Muslims in 21st-century citizenship debates (2024). Recent work submitted to ACME explores Ta’ārof as a decolonial tool for navigating White ontologies.

She received the 2021 Best Article Award from the journal Gender research-Genusforskning. Karimi actively contributes to academic discourse through editorial work for Sociology Compass (2025–) and conference presentations, including talks on Islamic affective practices at the Nordic Feminist Theory Workshop (2025) and analyses of racialization at the International Conference on Borderlands Studies (2024).