Centre Chair
Teaching & Learning Directorate: Crisis Management Group
Research Directorate:
Research Directorate: PhD Admissions
Teaching & Learning Directorate: PGT Admission Tutor
Research Directorate: Research Seminar Series
Convener, MA Gender Studies (Middle East Pathway)
Convener, MA Transnational Queer Feminist Politics with special reference to the Middle East
Convener, MA Gender, Sexuality in Global Politics (Online)
Dr Sophie Chamas
Teaching & Learning Directorate: PGT Admission Tutor, PGT Exam Board & Scrutiny Chair, REF Coordination
Research Directorate: PhD Programme Convenor, PGT Open Days Lead
Convener, Research Degrees (MPhil/PhD) in Gender Studies
Convener, MA Gender Studies and Law
Trans_feminism; Racism, Migratism and Constructions of Europeanness; Critical European Studies; Postcolonial Studies; Critical Migration Studies; Interdependencies/Intersectionality; Diaspora Studies.
I am a feminist historian of the British Empire, focussing on the life worlds and experiences of colonised peoples. Tackling the central role of the discipline of modern history in constructing myths of the superiority of white man, my research and writing develops methodologies for analysing intersecting gender, race and class oppressions by engaging colonised peoples’ intellectual traditions.
Dr. Sophie Chamas is grounded in anthropology, her work focussing on the study of social movements, counter-culture, and political theory and discourse rooted in, focused on or related to the Middle East. Sophie is interested in thinking through the life, death and afterlife of the radical political imaginary in the Middle East and beyond. Sophie is also an essayist and writer of creative non-fiction. Her writing has appeared in Kohl: a journal for body and gender research, The State, Raseef 22, Mashallah News, Jadaliyya and The Towner, amongst other publications. Her PhD viva in Modern Middle East Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was also an Ertegun Scholar will be held in October 2019.
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.
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.
medical anthropology; anthropology of medicine, psychiatry, science, and technology; STS; mental health, trauma, social ruptures, memory, and subjectivity; refugees and displacement; Iran; the Middle East; epidemics and pandemics; COVID19; HIV/AIDS
Critical management; critical marketing; (contested) heritage marketing, management and interpretation; experiential marketing; destination branding/marketing/representation; post-conflict cultural settings; Ottoman Empire; Balkans; India
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
Military law, criminal law, international criminal law, peace and security, peacekeeping, critical legal theories
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; 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.
Narrativity; Cultural Memory; Religion and Gender; Feminist Historiography; Postcolonial theory; Postsecularism and gender; Intellectual history in the study of religions.
Analysis and measurement of poverty; the working of rural labour markets; agrarian change and rural development; the socio-economic impact of HIV/AIDS
East Africa, particularly Uganda and Sudan, West Africa; conflict and development; forced migration; refugees; humanitarian interventions
Literary and cultural studies: postcolonial studies, diaspora studies and comparative literature
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.
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 Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, international political communication; media and conflict; critical global media studies; activism and media; social movements; memory studies and oral history; diasporas and ethnic minorities.
History of modern South Asia, particularly the transition to independence; gender, family and law in colonial and post-colonial India
Bordering logics; feminism; gender and social policy; reproductive rights; girls' education; coloniality; neoliberal development; South Asia; India and Pakistan
Anti-terror laws (particularly of South Asia); law and anthropology; legal theory (particularly on theories of emergency legality); sexuality and gender identity in South Asia.
Middle East, especially Iran; gender and democratization; diasporic cultures; ‘small media’ and political change.
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.
Middle East with emphasis on the Arabian Peninsular (especially Yemen): elites, biography, memory, religion and politics
Everjoice Win is ActionAid's Programmes and Global Engagement Director.
Kaari Betty Murungi has broad experience in transitional justice processes, women’s human rights, gender, constitutionalism and governance
War and humanitarianism, racism and the security state, political economy and state formation in the Middle East, military and humanitarian logistics, Gulf Cooperation Council, Israel/Palestine.
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.
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.
Manages academic and student support in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Centre for Gender Studies, and Centre for Global Media and Communications.
Provides support for academics in Anthropology and Sociology, Gender Studies, and Global Media and Communications.