Before joining the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropoogy as Guest Lecturer (Gastdozent), Omar Kasmani was a post-doctoral research associate at the Collaborative Research Centre 1171 Affective Societies at Freie Universität, Berlin. His work pursues ideas of intimacy, post-migrant be/longing and queer temporalities – a research practice that is best read across the study of religion, queer and affect theory. His current project explores the public interface of migrant religion in Berlin through critical notions of porosity and opacity. It is by such virtue also an intimate scenography of be/longing in the city.

Based on his earlier research, his first monograph Queer Companions was published with Duke University Press in 2022. Theorizing saintly affects and public formations of intimacy in contemporary Pakistan, the book explores the felt and enfleshed ways in which coming close to deceased Islamic saints bears public and world-making ramifications. Also, with the same publisher, he has recently published an edited volume entitled, Pak*stan Desires: Queer Futures Elsewhere. Omar has co-edited the book Muslim Matter (Revolver Publishing, 2016) and teaches on urban geographies, religion and queer theory with expertise in migration, Sufi life-worlds and contemporary South Asia. His published work can be accessed via his profile on Academia.

Based on earlier research, his first monograph Queer Companions: Religion, Public Intimacy and Saintly Affects in Pakistan was published by Duke University Press in 2022.

Kasmani, Omar. 2021. “Futuring Trans*: Timely Reflections.” TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 8(1): 96-112.

Kasmani, Omar. 2021. “Feeling Sufis: An Essay on Intimate Religion in Berlin.” In Paul Bramadat, Mar Griera, Julia Martinez-Ariño and Marian Burchardt(eds.) Urban Religious Events: Public Spirituality in Contested Spaces, pp. 189-202. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Kasmani, Omar. 2021. “Thin, Cruisy, Queer: Writing through Affect.” In Elisabeth Tauber and Dorothy L. Zinn(eds.) Gender and Genre in Ethnographic Writing. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kasmani, Omar. 2019. “Thin Attachments: Writing Berlin in Scenes of Daily Loves.” Capacious: Journal for Emerging Affect Inquiry, 1(3) 1-36.

Kasmani, Omar. 2019. “Pilgrimages of the Dream: On Wings of State in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan.” In Babak Rahimi and Peyman Eshagi (eds.) Muslim Pilgrimage in the Modern World, pp. 134-148. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Kasmani, Omar. 2019. “No Laughing Matter: Bani Abidi at Berlin’s Gropius Bau.” Anthropology Now, 11(1): 1-9.

Kasmani, Omar. 2019. "From your internal to my external." In Mary A. Hushlak and Monica B. Pearl (eds.) The Last Known Pose: Essays and Reflections on the Work of Qasim Riza Shaheen. Manchester: Cornerhouse Publications.

Kasmani, Omar. 2017. “Grounds of Becoming: Living among the Dead in Sehwan Sharif, Pakistan.” Culture and Religion, 18(2): 72-89.

Kasmani, Omar. 2017. “Audible Spectres: The Sticky Shia Sonics of Sehwan.” [Blog] History of Emotions - Insights into Research, October 2017, DOI: 10.14280/08241.54

Kasmani, Omar. 2016. “Fakir Her-stories: Women’s Spiritual Careers and the Limit of the Masculine in Pakistan.” [Blog] TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 26.05.2016 https://trafo.hypotheses.org

Kasmani, Omar. 2015. “Women [un-] like Women: The Question of Spiritual Authority among Female Fakirs of Sehwan Sharif.” In Michel Boivin and Remy Delage (eds.) Shrines, Pilgrimages and Wanderers in Muslim South Asia, pp.47-62. Oxon: Routledge.

Kasmani, Omar. 2012. “Of Discontinuity and Difference: Gender and Embodiment among Fakirs of Sehwan Sarif.” Oriente Moderno, XCII, 2.

Kasmani, Omar., Nasima Selim, Hansjörg Dilger, and Dominik Mattes. 2020. “Introduction: Elsewhere Affects: Politics of Engagement across Religious Lifeworlds.” Religion and Society 11 (1): 92-104.

Dilger, Hansjörg., Omar Kasmani, and Dominik Mattes. 2018. “Spatialities of Belonging. Diasporic Religious Communities in Berlin's Cityscape.” In Birgitt Röttger-Rössler and Jan Slaby (eds.) Affect in Relation: Families, Places, and Technologies. Essays on Affectivity and Subject Formation in the 21^st Century, pp. 93-114. London: Routledge

Mattes, Dominik., Omar Kasmani, and Hansjörg Dilger. 2019. “All Eyes Closed: Affective Dynamics of Sensing and Dis-sensing in Fieldwork in Religious Rituals.” In Antje Kahl (ed.) Analyzing Affective Societies: Methods and Methodologies. Abingdon: Routledge.

Mattes, Dominik., Omar Kasmani, Marion Acker, Marion., and Edda Heyken. 2019 “Belonging.” In Christian von Scheve & Jan Slaby (eds.). Affective Societies – Key Concepts. Abingdon: Routledge.

Kasmani, Omar and Stefan Maneval (eds.) 2016. Muslim Matter. Revolver Publishing: Berlin.