In this talk Maria Birnbaum interrogates the conditions, limits, and consequences of recognizing religion in global politics, arguing that recognition is neither neutral nor benign. Drawing on her forthcoming book Before Recognition. How the Politics of Religion Shaped the International Order (Cambridge University Press) she shows that recognition operates through looping logics of legibility that reinforce existing hierarchies, reify religious difference, and deepen social and political divisions. In doing so, the book reframes religion not as a fixed object of inclusion, but as a historically contingent category of knowledge and governance. By critically engaging the politics of recognition, the book shifts the question from whether religion should be recognized to how it becomes recognizable. Using illustrations from the entangled imperial histories of British India and Mandate Palestine, the talk traces how colonial and anti-colonial governmental logics structured the politics of religious minorities, representation, and border making that continue to shape postcolonial states of Pakistan and Israel and their respective conflicts. In short, the talk offers a timely critique of the epistemic assumptions that underlie global discourses on religion, colonial history, and political order.

Maria Birnbaum is a post-doctoral researcher of swisspeace at the University of Basel and an associate researcher at the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies (gloknos), at the Institute for Advanced Studies (IAS) at Princeton and Bern University. Working in the fields of Global Politics, Religious Studies, and Colonial History, her research examines the relationship between diversity and order with a particular focus on religion and global politics, as well as the history and politics of concepts and various regimes of knowledge and ignorance. 

She earned her Ph.D. from the European University Institute (EUI) and has held visiting fellowships at Cambridge University - the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), and the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) – Northwestern University, and Lund University as well as teaching and research positions at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), Oslo University (UiO), Ludwig-Maximilians Universität (LMU), and the University of Bern.

Her most recent publications include The Costs of Recognition (International Theory), Entangled Empire (Millennium), and Recognizing Diversity in the edited volume Culture and Order in World Politics, winner of the ISA Theory Section Prize for the Best Edited Book. Her monograph Before Recognition is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press.

She is the founder and convener of the interdisciplinary working group GLOREL (Global Epistemological Politics of Religion) at the Centre for Global Knowledge Studies (gloknos), Cambridge University.