Women & gender in the Middle East; women’s movements and feminism in Middle East; secularism and Islamism; transnational migration, diaspora mobilization; gendering violence, war and peace; history of Iraqi women; impact of sanctions, war and occupation on Iraqi women, Iraq.
International feminist legal theories; International Law especially laws on the use of force; collective security; political and legal theories; law of the sea; gender and conflict
Gender, Islam and modernity in the Middle East and Europe; Islamic feminism, secular and religious women’s movements in the Middle East, transnational migration and gender; multiculturalism and citizenship; Islam in Europe, globalization; disapora and refugee studies; the Palestine question.
Muslim Family law in the UK and Europe, Family Law, Multiculturalism, Citizenship, Islamic Jurisprudence and Human Rights, Feminist and Critical Social and Political Theories, Issues concerning the rights of Muslim women and Gender Equality.
Feminist Economics; Gender and Employment; Care and Social Reproduction; Aid, Debt and International Financial Institutions; Macroeconomic Policies and Employment; Commodities, Agriculture and Rural Development; Research Methods; Qualitative Methods; Middle East; Palestine; Jordan; Egypt; East Africa; Tanzania; Uganda.
African film and video (particularly their intersection); filmic mediations of African performance arts (music, dance, theatre); literary adaptation in Africa; contemporary film theory and 'World Cinema'; exile/immigration and violence in relation to African screen media; structures of film production, distribution, and exhibition in Africa; use of African languages in film
Modern and Contemporary Japanese history. Social and cultural history of the 20th century, especially the intersection of consumer capitalism and historical memory.
Africa; Horn of Africa; refugees and forced migration; post-conflict social integration; violence and conflict analysis; humanitarianism and humanitarian assistance; globalisation, transnationalism, diasporas and remittances; famine and food security; livelihoods in emergency contexts.
Law and Society of South Asia (esp. Pakistan), South East Asia (esp. Indonesia) and West Africa (esp. Senegal); Islamic Law; Legal and Social History; Legal and Social Anthropology; Gender, Sexuality and the Law; Colonialism and Slavery in the 18th and 19th Centuries; Marxism; Critical Theory; Law of Tort; Global Law/Governance; Cold War Studies.
Violence and conflict, governance, post colonial state building, Muslim societies, sexualities, (reproductive) health, migration, and community development/transformative education - all explored through a gendered lens. Central Asia, Latin America but currently focus mainly on West and East Africa.
Modern Thai Cultural Studies, Cinema and Literature; gender studies with reference to Thailand; literary criticism and South East Asian Literatures in a comparative context; Western film set in South East Asia
Narrativity; Cultural Memory; Religion and Gender; Feminist Historiography; Postcolonial theory; Postsecularism and gender; Intellectual history in the study of religions.
Music of southern Africa and the African Horn (Sudan); advocacy ethnomusicology; sound/music, memory and place; forced migration, cultural mapping and borderland identities; human rights and development
Political violence, wars and counterinsurgencies, the political economy of military mobilities, refugees and humanitarian regimes, the politics of logistics and transport, Middle East, Israel/Palestine.
Women and gender in China; gender and work; sexuality and organizations; migration; gender and intergenerational relations; ageing and family transitions; unemployment; social policy and welfare reforms in China.
Middle East, especially the Arab world; international political communication; Arab cultural politics; Arab cultural studies; memory studies and oral history; Islamist movements; social movements and media; diasporas; ethnic minorities; transnational movements and communications.
International trade, global commodity chains; production networks and industrial systems; informality and processes of labour informalisation; inequality and social structures of oppression; gender, feminisms and reproduction; the political economy of the garment industry; the political economy of India
Modern Indonesian cinema and literature; queer studies and sexuality in Indonesia; representation of genders and sexuality in Southeast Asian film and literatures; traditional Malay literature
Classical and modern Arabic literature and culture, with emphasis on narrative and storytelling, comparative narratology and critical theory, and gendered thinking and discourse.
The Indian Community in South Africa; Politics and identity in South Africa; African and Asian Communities in Britain; Political and cultural issues in Diaspora Studies; Historical anthropology; Philosophical issues in anthropology.
Purewal’s interests fall within two areas, both with a distinctive Punjab (India and Pakistan) focus. The first is on feminist scholarship and gender in South Asia, including female feticide and routes and barriers to girls’ education. The second area is the sociology of religion. Purewal was the principal investigator on a large project under the Religion and Society programme (AHRC and ESRC) on popular religious practices and contemporary transgressions of religious boundaries in South Asia focusing specifically on the region of Punjab across India and Pakistan.
International relations theory, critical theory (especially postcolonial and queer theory), comparative political thought, gender and sexuality, South Asia
Contract, legal history, British overseas rule and the law especially in relation to the leased territory of Weihaiwei and to ethnic Chinese communities in Hong Kong and South East Asia, law and society in South East Asia, traditional Chinese law
Nineteenth and twentieth century social and intellectual history, particularly of the Bombay Presidency; communalism and nationalism in India; debates around secularism and religious intolerance
Southeast Asian arts, aesthetics, literatures and cultural histories, with a focus on Cambodia, from the Angkorian to the post-Angkorian to the contemporary; Theravadin Buddhist arts, literatures and ritual; cultural heritage; sexual difference; deconstruction; memory and textuality.
Urdu language and literature; post-colonial literature and theory; gender studies; South Asian literatures in English; feminism in a Third World context; gender and politics in Pakistan
I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London. I am also a Teaching Assistant at the Centre as well as the Department of Politics and International Studies. My PhD research examines the 'everyday' politics of women in right-wing movements specifically looking at Hindu Nationalism in India and Israeli Zionist settlers in the West Bank, Palestine. I am broadly interested in the intersections of international relations, political theory, critical geography, and gender/feminism. I am also a published photographer and work towards bringing visual methods/methodologies into my academic research.
Dr Honarbin-Holliday is a practicing artist and works interdisciplinary exploring the intersections of gender, identity, and education. She is the author of Becoming Visible in Iran: Women in Contemporary Iranian Society (2008). She has exhibited her video and fired clay installations in Iran, Britain, Mexico, and the United States and is the recipient of the 2007 national award from the Art and Culture Secretariat at Tehran Municipality. Dr Honarbin-Holliday is currently working on a new book for I.B. Tauris titled Masculinities in Urban Iran.
Dr. Latif Tas is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS, University of London. For the period of 2017-2019, he will also be Assistant Professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University (New York). His work is interdisciplinary and focuses on the politics of justice, legal and political anthropology, diaspora mobilization, transnationalism, gender, citizenship, social movements, conflict and peace in Europe and Middle East, especially with reference to Turkey, Kurds, the Ottoman Empire, the UK and Germany.
Leila Zaki Chakravarti trained as an anthropologist at the American University in Cairo. She worked as a shop-floor operative in an Egyptian garment assembly factory as fieldwork for her PhD at SOAS. She is currently publishing her thesis and related papers on the intersection of class, gender and religion within workplace politics on the globalised shop-floor. She is also exploring new research avenues into issues of gender identities and local politics in the 'workplaces' of football, encompassing both professional clubs and informal urban street games, in post-Arab Spring Egypt.
Modernity; secularism; citizenship; legal pluralism; colonialism; Islamic law; Mediterranean and Maghreb studies; histories of gender, sexuality, the family in the Middle-East and North Africa; French Second Empire and Third Republic; 19th-20th centuries.
My research continued my interest in cultural memory through Iranian Jewish literature. The literary production of exiled Iranian Jewish women appears in the anthology I edited: If Salt has Memory (Five Leaves: 2008).
Dianne Otto is Francine V. McNiff Chair in Human Rights Law and Director of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities (IILAH) at Melbourne Law School and a Professorial Research Associate at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS.
