Yafa Shanneik is Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Department of Theology and Religion, University of Birmingham. Her research focuses on agency and authority of women in Shi'i and Sunni Muslim communities in the Middle East and their transnational links to Europe. She was awarded three British Academy grants to examine understandings of gender relations and women's resistance to patriarchal gender norms among Syrian and Iraqi refugees in both the Middle East and Europe.

• Preface; Introduction; 1. Trajectories of Shiʿis in the Gulf and their presence in Europe; 2. The rites of mourning within Shiʿi Islam; 3. Performing the sacred: emotions, the body, and visuality; 4. Aestheticisation of politics: the case of taṭbīr; 5. Fatima's apparition: power relations within female ritual spaces; 6. The power of the word: the politicisation of language; 7. Conclusion.

'Shanneik presents a well-researched multi-sited ethnographic study that brings together local and transnational trajectories in the lives of Twelvers Shia women who follow ayatollah al-Shirazi. The study offers an original approach to research on women and resistance by theorizing social agency through the examination of ritual performance and material culture.' Ingvild Flaskerud, University of Oslo