While it is widely accepted that conflict and large-scale migrations over the past century, of minorities and Muslims, has led to 'decosmopolitanisation' of Muslim Asia’s cities, we have also seen that interreligious relations actually persist, but often unrecognised, in older and newer diasporic contexts, and in appeals to a shared urban heritage. The historic presence of ethno-religious minorities in Muslim Asia’s urban centres is also a source of intellectual activity, political debate, and cultural imagination in the region. Influential actors–merchants, intellectuals, artists, and politicians - advance geographical imaginaries that contest both modern conceptions of the secular nation-state as well as sectarianised notions of culture and polity. The cultural basis for such imaginaries is often to be found in historical and cultural imaginings of Asia’s cities which have been ‘branded’ by national and international actors as ‘cultural heritage’ sites. This comparative research programme proposes to analyse the ways in which both everyday living and projects of the imagination invoke urban imaginaries, and the extent to which these transcend (or reinforce) religious, sectarian, national and ethnic boundaries. It will deliver a novel approach to the significance of urban heritage to politics and culture in Muslim Asia, challenge one-dimensional understandings of Muslim-non-Muslim relationships, and respond to an urgent need for younger generations of the diasporas understudy to have access to material relating to their backgrounds.Afterlives will research the persistence or avoidance of interreligious relations between Muslims and non-Muslims and the modes by which these elicit or invoke shared urban sensibilities. We will conduct ethnographic fieldwork amongst migrant minority and Muslim communities in London, New York, Vienna, Jerusalem, Istanbul and Vienna and in 3 of the 4 selected cities. The project will document the vitality of legacies of cosmopolitan urban living and the role in these of diasporic communities, and analyse in Muslim Asia how projects of heritage reproduce social boundaries (e.g. between diasporic and settled communities, and urban and non-urban/ not fully urban citizens). Doing so will develop a new and different approach to interreligious relationships that illuminates the importance of shared attachment to urban centres, and enables greater sensitivity in future interventions in the field of tangible and intangible heritage preservation and restoration. First, the project will generate empirical data on the temporal and geographic dispersal of the cities under-study. We will map flows of people through space and time by conducting textual, archival and visual research in countries of origin and sites of migration. Second, Afterlives will investigate how projects of imagination relating to historic centres are produced and sustained, and explore how they point to diversity in Muslim Asia's cultural imaginaries. To do so we will investigate emergent configurations of culture, history, identity and geography in Muslim Asia by exploring the significance of relationships and exchanges between Muslim and ethno-religious minorities to imagination in the region today. We will: interview key actors in the production of imaginaries, focusing especially on cultural elites (intellectuals, musicians, artists, poets, politicians and activists); record the genres (visual, literary, musical, culinary) where such imaginations are generated and sustained and explore ethnographically the sites (digital, political, scholarly, and social) in which they are performed and consumed; explore the implications of architectural reconstruction on such imaginaries by visiting key sites, and interview relevant heritage specialists, local and national policy-makers, pilgrims/tourists, and custodians; trace the use in projects of imagination of knowledge about tangible and intangible heritage preservation. Third, given declining levels of religious diversity in urban centres, it is oft assumed that Silk Road-era commercial relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim merchants are no longer of relevance. Yet our recent fieldwork suggests otherwise: Muslim and Sikh traders from Afghanistan interacted from the 1980s onwards in London and Moscow, for example. To explore such interreligious commercial relationships we will carry out in-depth ethnographic work with diasporic merchants in key trading sites - markets, shops and warehouses - and explore documentary and archival material in the form of autobiographies of merchants and company records. Fourth, to research the 'doing' of connectivity, and the role played by tacit modes of acting across lines of difference in sustaining cultural and religious sensibilities of urban living, we will focus on specific practices, rituals, and expressions of sociality in diaspora communities. We will ask if gender, migration histories, generation, and class position influence the distribution of this skill, exploring the role it has played in facilitating and constraining legacies of collective urban living in diasporas. Beyond our partners, we will share findings with organisations that implement heritage projects (e.g. Aga Khan Foundation, UNESCO, UN Habitat, and Ministry of Culture, Afghanistan), that manage diaspora-homeland relations (e.g. Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Afghanistan;) that work on regional conflicts (e.g. Foreign and Commonwealth Office); also with the communities under study and broader publics. The data collated is largely gathered through individuals with members of diaspora Afghans from a variety of religious backgrounds, including those identifying as Muslim, Sikh, Hindu and Jewish. The study focuses on diaspora settings in which these communities are especially established, notably London and New York. Individuals were selected to be interviewed on the basis of their playing an active role in the life of the communities and also on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by the researcher. The data also includes a discussion of the ethnographic work undertaken by the researcher in the form of a series of reports. Included also are notes in a book on Afghanistan's Hindu community (translated from Persian).

The latest population figures produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 28 June 2018 show that an estimated 534,800 people live in Bradford District – an increase of 2,300 people (0.4%) since the previous year.

Bradford District is the fifth largest metropolitan district (in terms of population) in England, after Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester although the District’s population growth is lower than other major cities.

The increase in the District’s population is largely due to “natural change”- there have been around 3,300 more births than deaths, although this has been balanced by a larger number of people leaving Bradford to live in other parts of the UK than coming to live here and a lower number of international migrants. In 2016/17 the net internal migration was -2,700 and the net international migration was 1,700.

A large proportion of Bradford’s population is dominated by the younger age groups. More than one-quarter (29%) of the District’s population is aged less than 20 and nearly seven in ten people are aged less than 50. Bradford has the highest percentage of the under 16 population in England after the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Slough Borough Council and Luton Borough Council.

The population of Bradford is ethnically diverse. The largest proportion of the district’s population (63.9%) identifies themselves as White British. The district has the largest proportion of people of Pakistani ethnic origin (20.3%) in England.

The largest religious group in Bradford is Christian (45.9% of the population). Nearly one quarter of the population (24.7%) are Muslim. Just over one fifth of the district’s population (20.7%) stated that they had no religion.

There are 216,813 households in the Bradford district. Most households own their own home (29.3% outright and 35.7% with a mortgage). The percentage of privately rented households is 18.1%. 29.6% of households were single person households.

Information from the Annual Population Survey in December 2017 found that Bradford has 228,100 people aged 16-64 in employment. At 68% this is significantly lower than the national rate (74.9%). 91,100 (around 1 in 3 people) aged 16-64, are not in work. The claimant count rate is 2.9% which is higher than the regional and national averages.

Skill levels are improving with 26.5% of 16 to 74 year olds educated to degree level. 18% of the district’s employed residents work in retail/wholesale. The percentage of people working in manufacturing has continued to decrease from 13.4% in 2009 to 11.9% in 2016. This is still higher than the average for Great Britain (8.1%).

This data collection consists of semi- structured interviews conducted between 2013 and 2015 with a cross-section of religious and political activists in Belfast, Bradford, Dublin and London exploring attitudes to martyrdom and self-sacrifice since 1914. The research project examined the development of the concept of martyrdom and sacrificial death in Britain and Ireland since the outbreak of the First World War. It proceeded through archival, library and web-based research on historic sources, including books and pamphlets, newspapers and online databases, supplemented as necessary by site visits. The leadership activities sought to integrate key insights from other relevant GU projects, exploring both various understandings of religion and quasi-religion, and weighing their importance against other non-religious factors. Work proceeded by means of telephone interviews with researchers leading to an initial working paper. User responses were gathered through two seminars and the project website; and selected researchers attended a symposium intended to distil insights and implications for users and to present them in an accessible form. A widely-circulated hardcopy summary of the outcomes together with online video resources was made available to users, who were invited to attend one of a series of dissemination seminars to be held at various locations around the UK. The leadership interviews and accompanying documentation are also deposited in the UK Data Archive in the collection 'Religion martyrdom and global uncertainties - Part 1: Leadership interviews' (see Related Resources). The data was collected in semi-structured interviews, which were subsequently transcribed. The Belfast, Bradford and Dublin interviews were conducted by the Belfast-based Institute for Conflict Research, who were contracted as consultants on the project - the Belfast ones by John Bell and the Bradford and Dublin ones by Neil Jarman The London interviews were conducted by Gavin Moorhead, the project Research Associate. All three interviewers followed a structure developed by the PI and discussed with them in advance. The PI also sat in on a selection of interviews. The objective was to achieve a sample of equal proportions of Catholics, Muslims and Protestants across the four case study sites, taking into account the relative numbers of each group in the four cities. Thus Protestants make up the majority of the Belfast sample, Catholics predominate in Dublin, Muslims in Bradford. These identifications were made on the basis of community background not active religious practice, although interviewees were asked to about their religious practice (or absence of it). A parallel objective was to ensure that at least a third of interviewees were women. The eventual distribution of 46 interviews (including one double interview) was Protestant 13, Muslim 16, Catholic 17; Male 30; Female 16. No attempt was made to achieve an even age distribution, as this was thought to be unrealistic in a limited sample alongside the other sampling requirements: it will be noted that the Catholic and Protestant interviewees were in general older than the Muslim ones. Interviewees were identified through existing contacts and networks and through some 'snowballing'. The researchers received valuable assistance from Dr Muhammad Ilyas in approaching Muslim interviewees in London.

Transnational practices in local settings: Experiences of local citizenship among Bangladesh-origin Muslims in London and Birmingham is a project funded by the ESRC, investigating the relationship between local and transnational citizenship experiences among Bangladesh-origin Muslims in the diaspora in London (Tower Hamlets and Luton) and Birmingham. The access to education, employment, housing, healthcare and local political processes was examined. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Bengali families in the form of same-sex parent/child dyads in Tower Hamlets, Luton and Birmingham. The use of same-sex parent-child dyads will help draw out generational dimensions and focus the issues of continuity and change over time. oral history interviews and civil society interviews were conducted in each location, producing a total of interviews, complemented by ethnographic observation with the Bangladeshi community in both field sites. NVivo software was used for data analysis.'Transnational citizenship' (Baubock, 1994; Fox, 2005) has been conceptualised to reflect the processes through which political identity transcends the nation-state (Basch et al, 1994). However, the degree to which political identities that cross borders may be informed by political identities within borders remains a matter of considerable academic debate. It has been argued, for example, that transnational ties represent an impediment to the formation of national and local identifications; a danger to citizenship and integration in countries of settlement (Snel et al, 2006). Others argue that the reverse may also be true. The concept of 'political opportunity structure' has come to suggest that transnational practices take place in local settings; shaped by the particular opportunities and constraints present in different localities (Guarnizo and Smith, 1998; Mahler, 1998). This deviates from the majority of the literature on Muslim transnational relations in particular, in which the focus is very often on the characteristics of the population, or the characteristics of Islamic culture, in a way that ignores "the role of social and political circumstances in shaping how people make sense of the world and then act upon it" (Kundnani, 2014, p.10). This project considers the relationship between the local and transnational citizenship experiences of Bangladesh-origin Muslims in London and Birmingham. It investigates local experiences of citizenship in relation to a) different histories of settlement, b) different population profiles in terms of ethnic concentration, age, gender, socio-economic background, length of residence and naturalization status, and c) the different social and political environments of the two cities. The project will examine how these local political identities influence processes of transnational engagement, and consider how transnational identities and relationships in turn inform local political subjectivity. It will draw on the insights of 'political opportunity theory' but depart from it in two key respects. First, previous work has tended to construct migrant populations as homogenous groups and this project will devote greater attention to considering how issues play out differently according to gender, generation and class. Second, it will move beyond characterisations of citizenship based on 'formal status' to consider more 'substantive' dimensions of socio-political engagement - the social, cultural, political, or symbolic 'acts' that legal status may or may not make possible (Isin and Nielsen, 2008). This includes examination of access to education, employment, housing, healthcare and local political processes. In each location, 30 in-depth semi-structured interviews will be conducted with 15 Bengali families in the form of same-sex parent/child dyads. The use of same-sex parent-child dyads will help draw out generational dimensions and focus the issues of continuity and change over time. In addition, 5 oral history interviews and 5 civil society interviews will be conducted in each location, producing a total of 80 interviews, complemented by ethnographic observation with the Bangladeshi community in both field sites. In the context of the on-going 'War on Terror', and an increasing political and media focus on a security threat that is 'home grown', the transnational practices of British Muslims have generated particular concern. This has fed into a range of recent policy proposals with respect to the treatment of British subjects who engage in transnational activities the Government does not support, and brings the constitutionally protected activities of a large number of people under increasing surveillance (Kundnani, 2014). In popular debate and the practice of public policy, therefore, transnational ties may affect local experiences of citizenship, but more research is needed to understand how transnational activity is situated in local social, cultural and political milieu. In each location, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Bengali families in the form of same-sex parent/child dyads in Tower Hamlets, Luton and Birmingham. The use of same-sex parent-child dyads will help draw out generational dimensions and focus the issues of continuity and change over time. In addition, oral history interviews and civil society interviews were conducted in each location, producing a total of interviews, complemented by ethnographic observation with the Bangladeshi community in both field sites. Data was collected in three locations. In Tower Hamlets 15 Dyad interviews, 5 Oral history interviews and 5 Civil Society interviews - total 25. In Luton, 10 Dyad interviews, 3 oral history interviews and 3 Civil Society interviews - total 16. In Birmingham 20 Dyad interviews, 6 Oral history interviews and 8 Civil Society interviews - total 34. In each location, in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with Bengali individuals in the form of same-sex parent/child dyads. In addition other forms included, oral history interviews and civil society interviews, producing a total of 113 interviews (with 180 people), complemented by ethnographic observation with the Bangladeshi community in all three field sites. 67 dyads (134 people), 24 narratives and 22 Civil Society. All were anonymised and transcribed. NVivo software was used for analysis.

This interview is part of the Women, Risk and Aids Project (1989-90) archive which was created as part of the Reanimating Data Project (2018-20).Anonymised transcript of an interview with Anita. She is from a Muslim family, and though her parents are fairly liberal and westernised, they've been much stricter with her than with her older sister. Anita is allowed to date at the moment, but her partner would also have to be Muslim - she isn't too concerned about relationships right now. She has mixed feelings around having an arranged marriage in the future and wouldn't to do it for the sake of it. Anita is worried about sexual experiences before marriage, as there are particular customs in Muslim culture around virginity that she would need to adhere to. She has some interesting thoughts on the ways that pleasure, marriage and religion intersect, and the expectations that are placed on Muslim wives. Sex education at her secondary school wasn't taken too seriously by Anita, as she could never imagine being old enough to need that sort of information. She would have liked to have been taught about the emotional aspects of relationships too. Anita isn't sure what she would like to do in the future, but doesn't want marriage or children until much later on.