Farhan Samanani

Farhan Samanani is a Social Anthropologist working at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen, Germany. Born in Canada, he has a Master’s degree in Migration Studies from Oxford University and a PhD from Cambridge University, where he was a Gates Scholar. Farhan’s research focuses on how difference is negotiated in diverse communities, and he has worked with organizations such as The World Bank, The Runnymede Trust, and a range of local community organizations putting his research into action. His writing has appeared in Aeon and the Huffington Post.

His first book, How To Live With Each Other: An Anthropologist’s Notes on Sharing a Divided World, was published by Profile Books in 2022. It looks to diverse cultures across the world, and to the everyday life of ordinary citizens for lessons in how we might overcome our splintering political and social divides.

Photo courtesy of Dörte U. Engelkes