Esra Tunc

Office: AL-672 | Email: [email protected] | Website: www.esratunc.com

Esra Tunc is an Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion at San Diego State University. A scholar of religion, capital, and multibeing relations, her work examines “Islamic” and “ethical” financial technologies while exploring relationalities grounded in care and solidarity. Her first book project, “Technically Relational: Capitalism and American Islam,” investigates how American Muslims engage financial techniques and technologies while reconfiguring communal and cosmological relationalities. Her research also explores how seeds and water transform soil, soul, and community amid extractive economies and technological expansion in American Muslim contexts.

Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Religion Compass, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Islam in North America, and The Muslim World, among other publications. It has also received support from a range of organizations, including the Social Science Research Council, the Lake Institute on Faith and Giving, and the Center for Islam in the Contemporary World. She has also been selected as a Young Scholar in American Religion (2026–2028) by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture. 

Prior to joining the faculty at San Diego State University, she held a postdoctoral appointment at the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2022 and her M.A. from New York University in 2017, both in religious studies.

She co-chairs Religion and Economy Unit and serves on the steering committee of the Contemporary Islam Unit at the American Academy of Religion. She also serves on the editorial board of Religious Studies Review and on the board of Feminist Studies in Religion (electronic branch).