A new global order? Implications of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran for the Middle East, China, and Southeast Asia

Asma Abdi is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Exeter and incoming Lecturer in Global Political Economy at the University of Manchester. Her research sits at the intersection of global political economy, feminist theory, and de/postcolonial approaches. She has published on social reproduction, informality, gender, and the political economy of war and sanctions in Iran. Her work has received several awards, including the 2025 Political Studies Association Elizabeth Wiskemann Prize and the 2025 Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize for the best PhD dissertation on a Middle Eastern topic.

Adam Hanieh is Director of the SOAS Middle East Institute, MBI Jaber Chair of Middle East Studies, and Professor in the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. Previously, he held a joint professorship in Middle East Studies at the University of Exeter and Tsinghua University. He serves on the Board of Directors of MERIP and is a Research Fellow at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam. His recent book, Crude Capitalism (Verso, 2024), co-won the 2025 American Sociological Association award for Best Book by an International Scholar.

Froilan T. Malit, Jr. is an ESRC-UBEL PhD candidate at SOAS researching Global South migration and diplomacy in the Asia–Middle East region. A Gulf-Asia migration specialist, his work focuses on international relations, labour rights, and the political economy of migration. He is a visiting fellow at the American University in Dubai and an associate researcher at GLMM. He has worked with organisations including the ILO and IOM, published widely, and holds degrees from Cambridge, Oxford, and Cornell.

Steve Tsang is Professor of China Studies and Director of the SOAS China Institute, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He previously led the China Policy Institute and the School of Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Nottingham, and spent 29 years at Oxford University. He has authored or edited numerous books. His recent work with Olivia Cheung, The Political Thought of Xi Jinping (2024), examines contemporary Chinese political ideology; their next book on China’s global strategy appears in 2026.

Stephen A. Murphy is Director of the Centre of South East Asian Studies and Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art at SOAS. His research focuses on the art and archaeology of Buddhism and Hinduism in first-millennium Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand and Laos. He also works on maritime connectivity and museum issues including restitution and curation. His recent book, Buddhist Landscapes of the Khorat Plateau (2024), examines archaeological and art historical evidence of early Buddhism in the region.