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About Us Paula M. Arana Barbier

HCIAS Research Associate

Tel.: +49 (0)6221 54-19339
Email: paula.arana.barbier(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Dr. Paula M. Arana Barbier is a political scientist with an interdisciplinary profile, specialising in religious diversity, multiculturalism, and governance. She holds a PhD in Rule of Law and Global Governance from the University of Salamanca. Before joining the HCIAS, she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Freigeist project: Invisible Architects: Jews, Muslims and the Making of Europe, led by Dr. Elisabeth Becker. Since October 2025, she has joined Prof. Dr. Motta’s team as a postdoctoral fellow at the HCIAS.

Photo of Dr. Paula Arana

Research Profile

Dr. Arana Barbier’s research explores how religious diversity and minority faith communities shape governance, citizenship, and belonging in contemporary times. Her work combines political science and sociology, with a focus on multiculturalism, religious accommodation, and memory politics. She has conducted fieldwork across Spain and contributed to projects on Jewish-Muslim relations and the governance of religion in Europe. Her publications highlight the intersection of religion, migration, citizenship, and democratic governance.

Research in Progress

Her current research explores how minority religions shape belonging, citizenship, and collective memory in Europe and Latin America. She is developing a main line of inquiry:

The Politics of the Afterlife. This project examines how death, burial, and commemoration are governed, negotiated, and contested, with a particular focus on Jewish and Muslim minorities in Spain and Europe. It advances a framework that shows how political life continues beyond death, shaping bodies, spaces, and memories. This line of research explores how funerary practices reveal tensions between religious needs and secular governance, and how cemeteries function as sites of identity, exclusion, and belonging.  

Publications

Table

  • Arana Barbier, P. M., & Suárez Collado, Á. (2025). The governance of religion in Europe: mapping religious accommodation in the EU. Anaquel de estudios árabes, 36(2), 185-197. 

    https://doi.org/10.5209/anqe.101771

  • Arana Barbier, P. M. (2025). Moros y Cristianos together?: The politics of death and Muslims in Spain. Ethnicities, 25(4), 558-577. 

    https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968251327163

  • Becker, E., & Arana Barbier, P. M. (2025). The politics of death: Multiculturalism and the afterlives of Muslims in Europe. Ethnicities, 25(4), 521-537. 

    https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968251327292

  • Becker, E., Suárez-Collado, Á., & Arana Barbier, P. M. (2025). Towards multicultural memory: Struggles over a muslim cemetery in post-Civil War Asturias, Spain. Ethnicities, 25(4), 538-557. 

    https://doi.org/10.1177/14687968251327285

  • Arana Barbier, P. M., & Suárez Collado, Á. (2023). Religious accommodation in a post-secular Europe? Redefining the secular context. In H. Vilaça, M. J. Oliveira, & A. Zwilling (Ed.), Contemporary Challenges to the Regulation of Religions in Europe (pp. 97-112). University of Porto Press.
  • Bohigues, A., & Arana Barbier, P.M. (2020). La Oferta Programática en Sistemas de Partidos Desinstitucionalizados. El Caso de Perú. In S. Mantilla (Ed.), Los Partidos Políticos en América Latina: Ideología y Estructura de la Competencia (pp. 201-226). CELAP & Hanns Seidel Stiftung.

Presentations

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September 25-26, 2025. Graves of Silence: Methodological reflections of studying the Moroccan Muslim Soldiers of the Spanish Civil War. Freigeist Workshop „Unsilencing Islam: historical and sociological perspectives“, University of Chicago Paris-Center.
July 2-4, 2025. The Politics of the Afterlife: Re-Conceptualising the Afterlives of Religious Minorities in Europe. 12th European Workshop in International Studies, Krakow, Poland.
April 8, 2025. Discrimination Even After Death: The Afterlives of Muslims in Spain. Keynote Speaker, The University Institute of African, Euro-Mediterranean and Ibero-American Studies, Mohammed V of Rabat.
January 27-28, 2025. Jews, Muslims and the Spanish state: A discourse of hate or an opportunity for coexistence? German-Israeli Foundation Young Scientists’ Meeting: Friends, Enemies, Frenemies: Ambivalences of Jewish-Muslim Relations, Heidelberg, Germany.
November 20, 2024. Discrimination After Death: The Afterlives of Muslims in Spain. Guest Speaker, Canopy Forum “Masking Religious Freedom Violations”

Media Contributions

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August 22, 2025. Becker, Elisabeth, Ángela Suárez Collado and Paula M. Arana Barbier. „La historia del cementerio musulmán olvidado de una pequeña localidad de Valdés“ in La Nueva España
July 17, 2025. Arana Barbier Paula. “Cemeteries, Citizenship, and the Politics of Belonging: What the dead can teach us about Multiculturalism in Spain” in Master of Global and International Studies
January 15, 2025. Arana Barbier, Paula M., “Discrimination After Death: The Afterlives of Muslims in Spain” in Canopy Forum (Masking Religious Freedom Violations Series)
June 10, 2024. Becker, Elisabeth, and Paula M. Arana Barbier, “Las puertas a un pasado olvidado” in La reina de los mares

Teaching

Winter Semester 2025/26

  • ¡Oye, Mi Canto! Reggaeton as Protest, Identity, and Cultural Connection in Latin America and the World

HCIAS Course Catalog Winter Semester 2025/26

Contact

Dr. Paula M. Arana Barbier

Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies | HCIAS
Brunnengasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg

Tel.: +49 (0)6221 54-19339
Email: paula.arana.barbier(at)uni-heidelberg.de

Visiting address: 
Brunnengasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg 
Room 105 (3012.01.105)

Office Hours

By appointment
 

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