Dr. Reyhan Şahin

Dr. Reyhan Şahin, also known to many under the pseudonym “Lady Bitch Ray”, is an academic, political activist, book author, performance artist, rapper, fashion designer, journalist, speaker and educational consultant. She studied Linguistics, German Studies and Educational Science in Bremen and completed her doctorate in Linguistics/Language Science in 2012 on the meaning system of the Muslim headscarf in Germany. Her comprehensive dissertation “The meaning of the Muslim headscarf” was awarded the German Study Prize in 2013. She then carried out her postdoctoral project on the (self-)presentation and religiosity of Muslims in social media from 2014 to 2017. She has currently been researching the connections between racism, anti-Semitism, the New Right, right-wing extremism, nationalism, intersectionality, anti-Muslim racism, anti-evitational (and anti-Kurdish) racism, Islam and gender as part of her habilitation since 2018. Since 2020, she has also been writing and performing spoken word texts on topics such as anti-racism, feminism, remembrance culture and memorial work, intersectionality and sexuality.