Loubna Haidar Youssef
Born in 1959 in Lebanon, Loubna Haidar Youssef is a lecturer at the Institute of Muslim-Christian Studies (IEIC) and the Higher Institute of Religious Studies of Saint Joseph University of Beirut (USJ), where she has taught since 1998. An anthropologist, she focuses her research on representations of death and funerary rites. Her doctoral thesis in the anthropology of religion, defended in 1992 at René Descartes University (Paris), explored the experience of death within the Shi’i community of Baalbek (Le vécu de la mort dans la communauté islamo-shi’ite de Baalbeck). She has also conducted research on places of worship and on Ashura commemorations.
A member of the multidisciplinary team of USJ’s University Observatory on Social and Economic Reality (OURSE), she has contributed to the design, fieldwork and analysis of several academic surveys. Her work also extends to the anthropology of development, particularly international aid and local development. She served as a United Nations Volunteer (1994-1998) on a programme for the rehabilitation and socio-economic reintegration of displaced people in Lebanon, before joining the Lebanese NGO Amel (1999-2004), where she worked on women’s health and psychosocial support programmes. Since 2015, she has coordinated the Bechara El Khoury Prize for Citizenship, in partnership with the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education.
She is a member of the Pluriel research group “The Making of Martyrdom (Beirut)”.
Resources related to
Anthropology of Religions
article
Experiencing a Mosque Through Photography: Islam As an Ordinary Religion
- Guillaume Chatagny
Abstract Published in 2021 in Visual Ethnography (vol. 10, no. 2) under the title "Experiencing a Mosque Through Photography: Islam As an Ordinary Religion", this article by Guillaume Chatagny, ...
article
A Fragrant Spiritual Heritage. Some Considerations on Perfumes in Islam
- Ida Zilio-Grandi
Abstract Published in volume 20 (2025) of Quaderni di Studi Arabi, this article by Ida Zilio-Grandi (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) revisits a constant of Islamic history that has attracted r...
publication
Photographing Ordinary Islam
- Guillaume Chatagny
What does Islam concretely look like within a Muslim association? This is the question addressed by sociologist Guillaume Chatagny in this book, based on fieldwork conducted between 2017 and 2021 w...
publication
Religious Tourism and Sustainability in the MENA Region
- Antonio Angelucci
Edited by Antonio Angelucci, Flavia Cortelezzi and Alessandro Cupri (Ledizioni, 2025), this volume offers a theoretical and methodological framework for religious tourism, a continuously expanding ...
article
“An Anthropology of Imamite Love among Iranian Believers”, by Sepideh Parsapajouh
- Sepideh Parsapajouh
In the volume honouring the Islamic-studies scholar Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, De la lettre à l'esprit (eds. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov and Mathieu Terrier, Brepols, 2025), Sepideh Parsapajouh, an anthropol...
publication
Women, Agency and Religion: Social and Legal Issues in the Mediterranean Public Space
- Leïla Tauil
On the two Mediterranean shores, women’s agency is articulated by new social and legal actors who face the religious factor both as an asset and as a hindrance. This book explores how female ...
videos
What does the reformation of religion mean?
Lecture given by Mohamed El Haddad as part of the Anawati Chair at the Dominican Institute of Oriental Studies in Cairo. Summary Plural Mohamed El Haddad presents his conception of religious re...
publication
Strangers with God. A Theology of Hospitality in the Three Abrahamic Religions
- Claudio Monge