Dr Adam Hanieh

Adam Hanieh is Director of the SOAS Middle East Institute, MBI Jaber Chair of Middle East Studies and Professor in the Development Studies Department at SOAS, University of London. 

Prior to joining SOAS, he was a Professor and Joint Chair in Middle East Studies at the University of Exeter and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. Hanieh serves on the Board of Directors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and is a Research Fellow at the Transnational Institute (TNI), headquartered in Amsterdam.

Hanieh's current research looks at the interplay of fossil fuels, capitalism, and the climate emergency, with a particular focus on the Gulf states of the Middle East. He is the author of four monographs, including Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which won the 2019 British International Studies Association IPE Group Book and Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market, which came out with Verso Books in 2024 and was co-winner of the 2025 Best Book by an International Scholar, Global and Transnational Section of the American Sociological Association. 

• Political Economy of Development
• Energy Transitions and Climate Change
• Middle East, especially the Gulf Cooperation Council
• China-Middle East relations