Dr. Arndt Emmerich is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Hertfordshire and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA), having previously served as the Programme Leader for Sociology between 2025 and 2026. In 2026, he holds the Silvia Tennenbaum Fellowship from the Hertie Foundation and is joining the Editorial Board of Cultural Sociology.
Arndt is part of the international research network ENCOUNTERS (Muslim-Jewish Encounter, Diversity and Distance in Urban Europe: Religion, Culture and Social Model), investigating social, religious, and ethnic encounters between Muslims and Jews in urban Europe, in cooperation with the University of Durham, Birkbeck, Heidelberg, Strasbourg, Sciences Po and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity. Between 2021 and 2023, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Max Weber Institute of Sociology at Heidelberg University. Prior to that, Arndt was a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and a Research Officer with the Changing Structures of Islamic Authority project at the University of Oxford.  He holds a DPhil and MPhil from the University of Oxford and a BA in Sociology from the University of Essex.

Over the past fifteen years, Arndt has acquired extensive expertise in doing qualitative field research in India and Europe, including comparative work in the UK and Germany, exploring the role of religion, ethnicity and culture in democratic institutions, and the governance of urban diversity, interfaith relations, and organisational changes within  diaspora, and migrant communities. He is currently a Guest Researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. Additionally, Arndt serves on the board of the European Sociological Association's Sociology of Religion research network and acts as a scientific advisor for the Educational Institute Maimonides in Germany.

Arndt’s research has been supported by funding bodies, including the European Research Council (ERC), the Max Planck Society, the German Research Foundation (DFG), and the Bertelsmann and Hertie Foundations. He has been awarded the 2025 Rethinking German History Prize for his article, 'Jewish-Muslim Friendship Networks: A Study of Intergenerational Boundary Work in Postwar Germany'.

His findings and commentaries have been published in academic journals such as Comparative Studies in Society and History, Cultural Sociology, Politics and Religion, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Social Compass, European Sociologist, Journal of Muslims in Europe, Entangled Religions, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Asian Survey or India Review.

He is the author of “Islamic movements in India: Moderation and its discontents” (Routledge, 2020) drawing on insights from political sociology, social movement theory and Islamic studies to analyse the ways religious groups utilise spiritual, material and organisational strategies for collective action, community development and political coaltion-building.

Reviewed in: Commonwealth & Comparative Politics; Journal of Asian Affairs; Revue des mondes musulmans et de la Méditerranée.

Featured in: Times of India, BBC, Al Jazeera, The Diplomat, New Indian Express, The News Minute, Scroll, India Today, Open Magazine, First Post, Onmanorama, Boom Fact Check, South Asia Journal.

Arndt has taught courses in cultural sociology, sociology of religion, social theory, development and migration studies and qualitative research methods. At the University of Hertfordshire, he teaches the following modules in Sociology:

• Sociology in Practice
• Crime and Culture
• Activism and Change
• Understanding the Body
• Religon, Faith and Society
• Research Methods: Doing Sociology