Reza Shaker is a postdoc at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (CADS) at Leiden University. As part of Project One Among Zeroes |0100|: Towards an Anthropology of Everyday AI in Islam, he studies the diverse articulations of ‘AI in Islam’ by using text data.

More information about Reza Shaker Ardekani

Reza Shaker mainly focuses on computational and social network analysis. Employing text mining techniques, he uses a wide variety of big textual datasets, user-generated content, academic content, and mainstreamed media content, e.g. scholarly papers, newspaper articles, and social media (Twitter) posts, longitudinally in order to investigate the Southeast Asian (Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore) tech-scene. In short, Reza will be tracing AI in Islam through the lens of big data. He asks how people in Southeast Asia in different periods of time have been talking about AI, their everyday encounters with technology, and how they see AI-related futures all embedded within the context of Islam.  

Before coming to Leiden, Reza gained a rich assortment of academic experiences in different disciplines at different universities. His main background is in Urban Studies. He did his bachelor's in Urbanism and first master's in Urban and Regional Planning in Iran. There he mostly focused on gentrification and inner-city revitalisation. After some years of working at a local municipality, teaching at a university, and working at an urban design/planning and architecture consultancy firm, he moved to the Netherlands and did his second master's in Urban Studies at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). There he followed an urban sociological approach towards gentrification by focusing on the class and computation practices of the new urban middle classes those who change the residential and retail landscape of inner-city neighbourhoods. He also had an eye on the native and local residents of the gentrifying/gentrified neighbourhoods those who are motley from the working class and migratory backgrounds from the Muslim-majority countries. Therefore, he did his PhD in Urban Sociology/Cultural Geography at the University of Groningen (RUG) on the everyday embodied Othering experiences of young Muslims in the Netherlands.  

Methodologically, Reza’s competencies are inclined towards (urban) ethnography. However, he has experience with both quantitative and computational social sciences. Have a look at his Google Scholar and/or LinkedIn for an overview of his academic/professional background.