Staff

Hassan Hakimian

Director

Human Resources; Demography; Trade Policy & Regional Integration; Energy and Natural Resources with reference to the MENA region.

• Tel: 020 7898 4475
• Email: hh2@soas.ac.uk

Louise Hosking

Executive Officer

• Tel: 020 7898 4330
• Email: lh2@soas.ac.uk

Vincenzo Paci

Events and Magazine Co-ordinator

• Tel: 020 7898 4490
• Email: vp6@soas.ac.uk

Aki Elborzi

Administrative Assistant

• Email: ae6@soas.ac.uk

Megan Wang

Co-ordinating Editor, The Middle East in London Magazine

• Email: mw60@soas.ac.uk

Shahla Geramipour

Designer, Middle East in London Magazine

Graphic designer for the LMEI's bi-monthly magazine The Middle East in London.

• Email: sg66@soas.ac.uk

Muhammad A S Abdel Haleem, OBE

Member

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4325
• Email: ha4@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 427
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 12:00-13:00/Wednesdays 12:00-13:00

Ibrahim Abosag

Member

Cross-cultural marketing, international consumer behaviour.

• Tel: 020 7898 4223
• Email: ia9@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 584
• On Sabbatical:Term 2

Reem Abou-El-Fadl

Member

Nationalism in the Middle East; Foreign Policy Making in the Middle East; Egyptian Politics and History; Turkish Politics and History; Arab-Israeli Conflict

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4713
• Email: ra47@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 4410
• Office Hours: By appointment
• On Sabbatical:Terms 1 & 2, 2017/18

Gilbert Achcar

Member

Political economy and sociology of globalisation; global power structure and grand strategy; empire theory and US hegemony; politics and development of the Middle East and North Africa; sociology of religion; Islam and Islamic Fundamentalism; social change and social theory.

• Tel: 020 7898 4557
• Email: ga3@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 292b
• Office Hours: Mon. 2-4

Fiona Adamson

Member

International Relations Theory; International Security; Migration and Diaspora Mobilization; Globalisation and Global Governance; Transnational Identity Movements

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4683
• Email: fa33@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 212
• On Sabbatical:Terms 1 & 2 2016/17

Arshin Adib-Moghaddam

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4747
• Email: aa106@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 216
• Office Hours: Thursdays 4pm - 6pm

Dominique Akhoun-Schwarb

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4152
• Email: da4@soas.ac.uk

Ayse Berna Akca

Member

• Email: aa110@soas.ac.uk

Nadje Al-Ali

Member

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.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4547
• Email: na@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 452A
• Office Hours: Mondays 11-12 and Wednesdays 4-5pm

Abdul Hakim Ibrahim Al-Matroudi

Member

Islamic  Law

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4303
• Email: aa88@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 416

Randa Alami

Member

• Email: ra38@soas.ac.uk
• On Sabbatical:Academic Year 2016/17

Tony Allan

Member

Analysis of water resources in semi-arid regions and the role of global systems in ameliorating local and regional water deficits. Established the concept of Virtual Water. Was awarded the Stockholm Water Prize in 2008 in recognition of his contribution to water science.

• Email: ta1@soas.ac.uk

Lori Allen

Member

Palestine and the Middle East; human rights; nationalism; the United Nations; investigative commissions; political epistemologies; revolution;  anthropology of violence; political anthropology; historical anthropology

• Tel: 020 7898 4491
• Email: la22@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 588
• On Sabbatical:On research leave, 2016-17

Ahmad Alkhashem

Member

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4208
• Email: aa40@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 434
• Office Hours: Tuesday and Wednesday: 10-11am

Atef Alshaer

Member

Linguistics, Arabic Literature and history and Politics of the Arab World. Lecturer in Arabic Language and Culture at the University of Westminster.

My research interests include language, politics and literature of the Arab world in particular. In Arabic culture, political discourses tend to draw on rich political and literary traditions which are used by various groups in different ways. I have researched, alongside other scholars, a number of interrelated themes, including nationalist and Islamist discourses and their interrelations in Palestine, political poetry, avant-garde classical and modern Arabic poetry, the politics and culture of movements such as the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and the Lebanese movement Hizbullah; language and national identity in the Palestinian territories and postcolonial ideas and their relevance to Palestinian conditions and Arab narratives in general.

• Email: aa134@soas.ac.uk / a.alshaer@westminster.ac.uk

Keya Anjaria

Member

The Novel; 20th Century Turkish Literature; Turkish Cinema; World Literature; Comparative Literature;  20th Century Literary Criticism; Modernity and Modernization in late 19th and 20th Century Turkey.

• Email: ka13@soas.ac.uk
• Office Hours: Tuesday 9:00am -10:45am in room 420

Peter Austin

Member

Typology, morpho-syntax, language documentation and description, historical linguistics, Lexical-Functional grammar, computer-aided linguistic analysis, Austronesian languages, Australian Aboriginal languages

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4586
• Email: pa2@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 364
• Office Hours: Tuesday 12-1pm and Wednesday 12-1pm

Mashood Baderin

Member

Islamic Law, International and Comparative Human Rights Law, Public International Law, Human Rights & Islamic Law, especially interaction between International Law, Human Rights Law, and Islamic Law in Muslim States. Appointed as Independent Expert on the Situation of Human Rights in the Sudan by the UN Human Rights Council at its 19th Session on 23rd March 2012.

• Tel: +44 (0)207 898 4715
• Email: mb78@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S135
• Office Hours: Monday & Tuesday 17:15 - 18:15

Hannah Bargawi

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4496
• Email: hb19@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 476
• Office Hours: https://hannahbargawi.youcanbook.me/

Teresa Bernheimer

Member

Islamic History to 1200; social history of elites in early Islam, especially 'Alid family; documentary and material evidence from Late Antiquity to early Islam; origins and development of Shi'ism; early Islamic Iran

• Tel: 020 7898 4605
• Email: tb31@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 306

Doris Behrens-Abouseif

Member

Architecture of Cairo, the art and archaeology of Turkey, Iran and the Near East

• Email: da30@soas.ac.uk

Brenna Bhandar

Member

Indigenous rights, law and colonialism, post-colonial, feminist and critical legal theories.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4540
• Email: bb29@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S331
• Office Hours: Tuesday 13:00-14:00 & Wednesday 16:00-17:00

Dominika Blachnicka-Ciacek

Member

Dr. Dominika Blachnicka-Ciacek is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies.

• Email: db34@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 221

Helen Blatherwick

Member

Classical Arabic literature, Popular literature, Comparative literature

• Tel: 020 7898 4385
• Email: hb20@soas.ac.uk

Senija Causevic

Member

Critical management; critical marketing; (contested) heritage marketing, management and interpretation; experiential marketing; destination branding/marketing/representation; post-conflict cultural settings; Ottoman Empire; Balkans; India

• Tel: 0207 898 4514
• Email: sc83@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 549
• Office Hours: By Appointment

Monik Charette

Member

Phonology, morpho-phonology, stress systems, vowel harmony, syllabic structure, word-structure, Altaic languages, Turkish, French

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4647
• Email: mc@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 369
• Office Hours: By appointment

William Gervase Clarence-Smith

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4608
• Email: wc2@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 313
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 3-4pm

Maha Collinson

Member

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4409
• Email: mc86@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 446
• Office Hours: Monday 15:00-16:00 / Tuesday 16:00-17:00

Anna Contadini

Member

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4458
• Email: ac24@soas.ac.uk
• Room: B306
• Office Hours: By email appointment

Bhavna Davé

Member

Kazakhstan: politics of language, ethnicity and nationalism in post-Soviet countries

• Tel: 020 7898 4734
• Email: bd4@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 224
• Office Hours: Thursdays 3-5pm
• On Sabbatical:Term 1 2016/17

Yorgos Dedes

Member

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4344
• Email: gd5@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 424
• Office Hours: Friday 15:00 - 17:00

Sorour Dundon

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4365
• Email: sd14@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 420
• On Sabbatical:On leave 2015-16

Tamar Drukker

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4347
• Email: td4@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 446

Ian D Edge

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4665
• Email: ie1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S342
• Office Hours: Monday 12:00 - 14:00

Ayman El-Desouky

Member

Comparative Literature, 19th and 20th Century Arabic Literature, hermeneutics, modern philosophy and theory.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4355
• Email: ad48@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 423
• On Sabbatical:On leave 2015-16

Heather Elgood, MBE

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4445
• Email: he2@soas.ac.uk
• Room: B310
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 2-5pm or by email appointment

Nada Elzeer

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4340
• Email: ne5@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 432

Jonathan Ercanbrack

Member

Financial laws of Arab state jurisdictions; Islamic financial law; legal change and globalisation.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4095
• Email: je6@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S225
• Office Hours: Wednesday 15:00 - 17:00

Hannah Erlwein

Member

• Email: he4@soas.ac.uk

Narguess Farzad

Member

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4346
• Email: nf1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 440
• Office Hours: Wednesday 12-2pm or by appointment

Bassam Fattouh

Member

Management in Middle East and North Africa (MENA), managerial systems and management of renewable and non-renewable resources in the Middle East (MSc), and Islamic banking and finance.

• Tel: 020 7898 4053
• Email: bf11@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 526
• Office Hours: By appointment

Nicholas H D Foster

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4666
• Email: nf4@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S133
• Office Hours: Wed 4.30pm-6.30pm by appointment (use link below)

Nelida Fuccaro

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4618
• Email: nf2@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 308
• Office Hours: Mondays 2-4pm

Andrew R George

Member

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4335
• Email: ag5@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 414
• Office Hours: Tuesday 4-5pm/Friday 2-3pm

Katharina Graf

Member

Anthropology of food, gender, urban space, material culture, knowledge reproduction, food security, risk and uncertainty, Middle East and North Africa (especially Morocco).

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4414
• Email: kg38@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 569

Adel Hamaizia

Member

Adel Hamaizia is a DPhil Candidate at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, and a Senior Teaching Fellow in the Department of Financial and Management Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research focuses on the Political Economy of the Maghreb. His special interests are MENA-oriented and include regional integration; energy policy; economic diversification; private sector development; rentier states; state-business relations; and the development of institutions.

• Email: ah102@soas.ac.uk

Mona Hammad

Member

• Email: mh102@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 434
• Office Hours: Thursdays 12noon-2pm

Marlé Hammond

Member

Senior Lecturer in Arabic Popular Literature & Culture.  

• Tel: 020 7898 4518
• Email: mh93@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 438
• Office Hours: Wednesday 2-3pm; Friday 11am-12pm

Vanja Hamzić

Member

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.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4501
• Email: vh1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S336
• Office Hours: Monday 15:30-17:30
• On Sabbatical:Term 2 (2017/18)

Adam Hanieh

Member

Political economy of labour migration, class and capitalism in the Middle East. With a focus on the the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Palestine, and the dynamics of regional accumulation.

• Tel: 020 7898 4784
• Email: ah92@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 4419
• Office Hours: Mon. 3 - 5
• On Sabbatical:Term 2 & 3 (2017/18)

Jane Harrigan

Member

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4537
• Email: jh66@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 281

G R Hawting

Member

• Email: gh@soas.ac.uk

Catherine Hezser

Member

Judaism in Hellenistic and Roman times; rabbinic literature; social history of Jews in late antiquity; American Jewish history and literature, Jewish identity, gender studies

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4633
• Email: ch12@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 335
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 10-11am & Thursdays 10-11am

Almut Hintze

Member

Professor Hintze takes an interest in all aspects of Zoroastrianism, the religion of pre-Islamic Iran.

• Tel: 020 7898 4598
• Email: ah69@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 334
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 12-1pm (and by Appointment)

Stephen Hopgood

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4738
• Email: sh18@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 220
• On Sabbatical:2016/17

Erica Hunter

Member

Eastern Christianity; Syriac Christianity in the Middle East, with particular reference to Iraq; Syriac Christianity in medieval Central Asia and China

• Tel: 020 7898 4663
• Email: eh9@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 333
• Office Hours: By Email Appointment

Bruce Ingham

Member

General descriptive linguistics, Arabic, Persian, North American Indian languages, dialects and oral literature of the Arabian Peninsula - in particular the dialects of the Arabian bedouin, covering the dialects of the Al Dhafir, Mutair, Al Murrah and Rwalah tribes; Lakota (Siouan), Cree (Algonquian)

• Email: bi1@soas.ac.uk

Salwa Ismail

Member

Urban politics and state-society relations in the Middle East; the study of Islamism; Islamist movements; modern Arab and Islamic political thought; political ethnography.

• Tel: 020 7898 4740
• Email: si1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 204
• On Sabbatical:Term 2 2016/17

Ceyda Karamursel

Member

Lecturer in the Department of History

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4602
• Email: ck17@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 324
• Office Hours: Wednesday 1:00pm - 3:00pm or by appointment

Massoud Karshenas

Member

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4535
• Email: mk@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 268
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 12pm-2pm
• On Sabbatical:Term 1

Hugh N Kennedy

Member

Medieval history of Arabic-speaking lands.

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4251
• Email: hk1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 436
• Office Hours: Tues.2.30-3.30/Thurs.11.30-12.30/Email appointment

Laleh Khalili

Member

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.

• Tel: 020 7898 4735
• Email: lk4@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 210
• Office Hours: By appointment only
• On Sabbatical:Terms 1 & 2 2016/17

Hagar Kotef

Member

Political Theory; postcolonial, feminist, and critical theory; political violence; liberal thought; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; movement and mobility; the formation of political identities.

• Tel: 020 7898 4652
• Email: hk11@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 254
• Office Hours: By appointment

Karima Laachir

Member

Literary and cultural studies: postcolonial studies, diaspora studies and comparative literature

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4336
• Email: kl19@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 365
• Office Hours: Fridays 12-1.30pm

Mark Laffey

Member

International theory; hierarchy and world history; historical sociology; postcolonialism; foreign policy analysis; ideas, culture and ideology.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4744
• Email: ml23@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 225
• Office Hours: Term 2 Tuesdays 4-6pm

George Lane

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4285
• Email: gl1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 303
• Office Hours: Mondays 1.30-4pm or by email appointment

Christopher Lucas

Member

Historical linguistics, Arabic linguistics, the syntax–semantics interface, pragmatics, philosophy of language, Dynamic Syntax, Relevance Theory, Arabic language, Afro-Asiatic languages

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4318
• Email: cl39@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 447
• Office Hours: Mondays 2-3pm/Tuesdays 2.30-3.30pm

Martin W Lau

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4657
• Email: ml1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S337
• Office Hours: Monday 13:30 - 15:30
• On Sabbatical:Term 1,2 & 3 (2016/17 & 2017/18)

Makeen F Makeen

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4502
• Email: mm76@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S234
• Office Hours: Tuesday 13:30 - 15:30
• On Sabbatical:Term 2 & 3 (2017/18)

Derek Mancini-Lander

Member

Cultural and social history of the late medieval and early modern Persianate world; urban and local history in Iran; space, memory, and narrative in Persian historiography; shrine-centered religiosity; Safavid history

• Tel: 020 7898 4609
• Email: dm40@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 311
• Office Hours: Mondays, 3.15-4.45pm

Fadi Bassam Mansour

Member

• Email: fm17@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 420
• Office Hours: Tuesday 3-5pm

Thomas Marois

Member

Political Economy; Emerging finance capitalism; Privatization; Alternative development; Banking, finance, and development; Mexico, Turkey, other emerging capitalisms; State-capital-labour relations; State theory; Internationalization.

• Tel: 0207 898 4503
• Email: tm47@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 293
• Office Hours: Weds 12:00 to 14:00
• On Sabbatical:Terms 2 & 3 (2017/18)

Gamon McLellan

Member

• Email: gm29@soas.ac.uk

Dina Matar

Member

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.

• Tel: +44 (0)207 898 4696
• Email: dm27@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 575
• Office Hours: Mondays 1-3pm

Nima Mina

Member

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4315
• Email: nm46@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 422
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 10:00 - 11:00 / Thursdays 10:00-11:00

Shabnam Mirafzali

Member

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4314
• Email: sa95@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 429
• Office Hours: Monday 09:00-11:00 / Tuesday 09:30-12:00

Krikor Moskofian

Member

West Armenian language and literature

• Email: km48@soas.ac.uk

Ramin Nassehi

Member

Ramin has won the awards for Best Fractional Teacher in the Economics Department for two consecutive years (2014/2015 & 2015/2016) and has been awarded the Director's Teaching Prize for Innovative and Inspirational Teaching in 2016/17

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4542
• Email: rn26@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 282
• Office Hours: Fridays: 14:00 to 16:00

Scott Newton

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4658
• Email: sn21@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S330
• On Sabbatical:Term 1 (2017/18)

Matthew J Nelson

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4742
• Email: mn6@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 218
• Office Hours: Thurs. 3.30-5.30

Kerem Nisancioglu

Member

Eurocentrism; international historical sociology; World History; historical materialism; postcolonialism; critical race theory; the Ottoman Empire; Turkey; the Middle East

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4728
• Email: kn18@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 477
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 3pm - 5pm

Wael Odeh

Member

• Email: wo4@soas.ac.uk

Mikael Oez

Member

• Email: mo14@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 334
• Office Hours: Fridays 5-7pm

Simon O'Meara

Member

Islamic architecture and urbanism; sociological dimensions of the art and architecture of North Africa, especially Morocco; architectural and visual theory; Islamic studies.

• Tel: 020 7898 4559
• Email: so20@soas.ac.uk
• Room: B302
• Office Hours: Wednesdays 1:30-2:45pm

Caroline Osella

Member

• Tel: + 44 (0)20 7898 4427
• Email: co6@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 582
• Office Hours: Thursday 3.15 to 4.45

Wen-chin Ouyang

Member

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4348
• Email: wo@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 435

Ian Sanjay Patel

Member

Ian Sanjay Patel is Senior Teaching Fellow in the Politics and International Relations Department. Prior to this he was an Associate Lecturer at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London.

• Tel: 0207 898 4391
• Email: ip7@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 4414
• Office Hours: Fridays 2:30 - 4:30

Dan Plesch

Member

Applied International Relations, weapons of mass destruction, diplomacy, globalisation and corporate accountability, globalisation and democracy, globalisation and energy, the role of international non-governmental organisations, the United Nations and the Nazis.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4841
• Email: dp27@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 4417
• Office Hours: By appointment

Marina Pyrovolaki

Member

Arabic Historiography (Popular/Scholarly), Crusades, Arab-Byzantine Relations, Early Islamic History.

• Email: mp52@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 306
• Office Hours: Fridays 1-2pm and 5-6pm

Sahar Rad

Member

Dr Sahar T. Rad is a development economist focusing on the political economy of international development, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa. She holds a PhD in development economics from SOAS. Her areas of research and work include international trade and investment, conflict and economic development, political transition and economic transformation, political economy of institutions, and the global development architecture. Dr Rad has taught international economics, political economy and development economics at King's College London, SOAS and the University of Westminster, and has also worked as a senior economist in several international development organisations, including the United Nations, the International Labour Organisation, and the African Development Bank.

• Tel: 020 7898 4145
• Email: st54@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 548
• Office Hours: Thursday 12 - 2

Moriel Ram

Member

Dr. Moriel Ram is a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Politics and International Studies.

• Email: mr45:soas.ac.uk
• Room: 221
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 10am - 11am

Scott Redford

Member

Art, archaeology, and architecture of Anatolia, the eastern Mediterranean, and SW Asia from the 11-14th centuries with a special interest in landscape, urbanism, and ceramics

• Tel: 020 7898 4469
• Email: sr63@soas.ac.uk
• Room: B303
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 3-5pm and by appointment

Kirsty Rowan

Member

• Email: kr2@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 369

Mohamed I Said

Member

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4353
• Email: ms15@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 425
• Office Hours: Mon. 2-3pm/Tues. 2-3pm/Thurs. 2-3pm

Dara Salam

Member

Dr. Dara Salam is a Teaching Fellow for the Department of Politics and International Studies.

• Email: ds68@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 221
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 1pm - 3pm

Muaadh Salih

Member

Computer-assisted language learning; orality and oral literature of the Gulf; Arabic language pedagogy

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4354
• Email: ms1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 429
• Office Hours: Mondays 10am-12noon

Ruba Salih

Member

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.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4245
• Email: ruba.salih@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 471
• On Sabbatical:On leave until January 2016

Iain Scobbie

Member

Public international law, especially its relation to the Israel/Palestine situation; theory of international law; international humanitarian law; the law and practice of the International Court of Justice

• Email: is17@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S224
• Office Hours: By appointment

Mandana Seyfeddinipur

Member

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4588
• Email: ms123@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 346

Mustafa Shah

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4341
• Email: ms99@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 434a
• Office Hours: Email for an appointment

Ayman Shihadeh

Member

Medieval Arabic Intellectual History; medieval Arabic philosophy; medieval Islamic theology, especially kalam; ethical theory; the Islamic manuscript tradition.

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4343
• Email: a.shihadeh@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 426

Colin Shindler

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4358
• Email: cs52@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 418

Amrita Shodhan

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4627
• Email: as115@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 307
• Office Hours: Wednesdays 2-4pm

Renate Söhnen-Thieme

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4293
• Email: rs2@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 376

Stefan Sperl

Member

Arabic Literature Classical and Modern; Comparative Literature; Qur’an and Hadith Studies; Islamic Art; Sufism and Neoplatonism; Refugee and Exile Studies

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4338
• Email: ss6@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 433

Savitri Sperl

Member

• Email: ss107@soas.ac.uk

Sarah Stewart

Member

Lecturer in Zoroastrianism, with particular reference to the living tradition in Iran and India.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4270
• Email: ss7@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 331
• On Sabbatical:2015/16

Farooq Suhleria

Member

Dr. Suhleria is a Teaching Fellow for both Development Studies and the Department of Politics and International Studies.

• Email: ms161@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 221
• Office Hours: Frid. 3-4

Nimer Sultany

Member

Public Law; Legal and Political Theory; Comparative Constitutionalism; Public International Law and Human Rights Law.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4729
• Email: ns30@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S228
• Office Hours: Thursday 10:00 - 12:00

Tanja Tolar

Member

Art and architecture of the Islamic world; Cross-cultural dimensions of Islamic material culture; Glass and Ceramics of Islamic lands; Orientalism.

• Email: tt30@soas.ac.uk
• Office Hours: Mondays & Thursdays 1-2pm in B306

Tania Tribe

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4462
• Email: tt10@soas.ac.uk
• Room: B406
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 4-5pm

Charles R H Tripp

Member

Middle East: states and ideologies, war, Islamic political thought

• Tel: 020 7898 4748
• Email: ct2@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 214
• Office Hours: Wednesdays 10- 12

Leslie Vinjamuri

Member

International Organisation; International Politics of International and Transitional Justice; Religion, Human Rights and International Relations Theory; International Diplomacy and the Use of Force; International Diplomacy and Transitional States.

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4758
• Email: lv@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 213
• Office Hours: Wednesdays 10am - 12 noon
• On Sabbatical:Term 2 2016/17

Gabriele vom Bruck

Member

Middle East with emphasis on the Arabian Peninsular (especially Yemen): elites, memory, religion and politics

• Tel: 020 7898 4408
• Email: gb19@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 585
• Office Hours: By appointment

Burzine K Waghmar

Member, London Middle East Institute

Indo-Iranian History, Historical Geography and Philology (Avestan, Old Persian, Parthian, Pahlavi, Sanskrit, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Urdu, Pashto, Balochi and Kashmiri); Languages and Religions of Late Antiquity and the Silk Road (Bactrian, Khotanese, Sogdian, contacts among Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism and early Islam); Pakistan studies (Ancient and early Medieval History, Dardic and Nuristani dialectology, ethnography and topography of NWFP, FATA, Northern Areas and Trans-Karakoram Tract); Pakistani minorities; HUMINT counterterrorism and linguistic analysis; South Asian Muslim psycho-sociology; Muslim non-Muslim relations (Iran, Pakistan, Bangladesh).

• Email: bw3@soas.ac.uk
• Office Hours: Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays

Yair Wallach

Member

• Tel: +44(0) 20 7898 4337
• Email: yw11@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 415
• Office Hours: Thursdays 2-4pm

David Wearing

Member

David's research focuses on British foreign policy in the Middle East. He writes regularly for the Guardian and other publications on domestic politics and international affairs.

• Email: david_wearing@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 221
• Office Hours: By appointment

Ilana Webster-Kogen

Member

Ethiopian music; Music in Israel/Palestine; Biblical cantillation; migration and nationalism; music and gender

• Tel: 0207 898 4334
• Email: iw4@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 503
• Office Hours: Tuesdays 3-5pm

Mark Weeden

Member

Hittite, Akkadian language and literature in Syria

• Tel: +44(0)20 7898 4328
• Email: mw41@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 421
• Office Hours: Monday 11am-12pm; Thursday 12-1pm

Philipp Wirtz

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4773
• Email: pw10@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 306
• Office Hours: Mondays 2-3pm

Lynn Welchman

Member

• Tel: +44 (0)20 7898 4672
• Email: lw10@soas.ac.uk
• Room: S235
• Office Hours: Thursday 10:30 - 12:30

Owen Wright

Member

• Email: ow@soas.ac.uk

Veli Yadirgi

Member

• Email: vy1@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 289
• Office Hours: Monday: 2-4pm

Tahir Zaman

Member

Refugees and forced migration with particular reference to Iraq and Syria, transnationalism, diaspora contributions to conflict transformation and peace-building, sociology of religion, and faith-based humanitarianism.

• Email: tz3@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 296
• Office Hours: Monday 4 - 5pm

Katherine P Zebiri

Member

• Tel: 020 7898 4342
• Email: kz@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 441

Cosimo Zene

Member

Anthropology of religion, theory in the study of religions, continental philosophy, Gramsci and religion, intercultural and inter-religious dialogue, minorities (Dalits), mysticism and heresy, non-Western Christianities, Mediterranean anthropology; South-Asia (India, Bangladesh), Sardinia, world philosophies.

• Tel: 020 7898 4783
• Email: zc@soas.ac.uk
• Room: 340

Rafeef Ziadah

Member

Rafeef Ziadah is Lecturer in Comparative Politics of the Middle East. Prior to this she was Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the SOAS Politics and International Studies department with the 'Military Mobilities and Mobilising Movements in the Middle East' project

• Tel: 020 7898 4539
• Email: rz2@soas.ac.uk

Alanoud Al-Sharekh

Research Associate

Dr Al-Sharekh conducts research on socio-political, cultural and security issues in the Arabian Gulf, and is a board member of several academic and non-governmental organisations, as well as directing the Abolish153 campaign to end honour killing legislation in Kuwait and the GCC, and the ‘Friends who Care’ project for young girls (under 21) at risk within Kuwait’s social care system.

She has been Consultant Researcher on gender and citizenship at the Supreme Council for Development and Planning in Kuwait, Senior Fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Senior Political Analyst at the Kuwait National Security Bureau and a gender politics consultant for UNIFEM, Freedom House and the UNDP on academic and social outreach projects in Kuwait and the GCC.

She holds a BA from King’s College, London and a Master’s and PhD from the SOAS, University of London. Her teaching posts include Kuwait University, Gulf University of Science and Technology, the Arab Open University, visiting lecturer at Uppsala University, Sweden, and Fulbright Scholar on Women and Islam at Whittier College, USA. She has published several books and articles on gender and kinship policies in the GCC, including The Gulf Family, and Popular and Political Cultures of the GCC, examining the persistent importance of family and tribe in modern Gulf politics and society. Her work won the Arab Prize for best publication in a foreign journal for 2013-2014, and the Voices of Success Kuwait Award in 2012.

• Email: aalsharekh@gmail.com

George Joffé

Research Associate

George Joffé teaches at the University of Cambridge on the international relations of the Middle East and North Africa and on political theory and North Africa at King's College, London. Dr Joffé has been engaged in research and teaching on these regions since 1978 and has published widely on them in academic journals and books as well as editing six books on these and similar subjects. He provides briefings on states in the region for the LMEI and is a member of the Editorial Board of the LMEI’s The Middle East in London magazine. He was formerly deputy-director and acting-director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House).

• Email: email@georgejoffe.com

Hamid Keshmirshekan

Research Associate

Hamid Keshmirshekan is an art historian, critic and Senior Lecturer at the Advanced Research Institute of Art (ARIA), Iranian Academy of Arts. From 2004 to 2012, he was the Associate Fellow at the KRC, Faculty of Oriental Studies and History of Art Department at Oxford University. His interests are twentieth and twentieth-first century art from the Middle East, with particular attention to the recent developments in art practice and its relation to the context. Dr Keshmirshekan has taught art history and criticism in British and Iranian universities and has organised several international conferences and events on aspects of modern and contemporary Iranian and Middle Eastern art, and has contributed extensively to various publications. His latest publications include Koorosh Shishegaran: The Art of Altruism (2017), ‘Standardisation and the Question of Identity: On the Dominant Discourses on Contemporary Middle Eastern Art’ (2015), Contemporary Art from the Middle East: Regional Interactions with Global Art Discourses (ed.) (2015), Hunar-i mu’asir-i iran, risheh-ha va nazar-gah-hay-i nuvin (2015), Contemporary Iranian Art: New Perspectives (2013), ‘Reclaiming Cultural Space: Artist’s Performativity versus State’s Expectations in Contemporary Iran’ (2013).

• Email: hk5@soas.ac.uk

Helen Lackner

Research Associate

Helen Lackner worked as a consultant in social aspects of rural development for four decades in over thirty countries, mostly in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. She has been involved in Yemen since the early 1970s where she lived in all three Yemeni states for over 15 years. She now focuses on analysis and writing, trying to promote commitment to equitable development and peace in Yemen. Her most recent publications include Yemen’s Peaceful Transition from Autocracy: could it have succeeded? (International IDEA 2016) and Understanding the Yemeni Crisis: the transformation of tribal roles in recent decades (Durham, Luce Fellowship Paper 17, 2016). She is currently working on Yemen in Crisis: the role of neoliberalism and autocracy to be published by Saqi in 2017.

• Email: helenlackner@gmx.com

Corinna Mullin

Research Associate

Dr Corinna Mullin has been based for the past five years at the University of Tunis, as a Visiting Assistant Professor in International Politics. In the fall of 2017, she will be joining the Political Science Department at John Jay College, The City University of New York.  Her research interests include genealogies and political economy of “national security”, anti-/post-/de-colonial theories and struggles, empire, knowledge production, and critical race theory, with a focus on North Africa and West Asia. Prior to moving to Tunisia, Dr. Mullin was a lecturer in Comparative Politics of the Middle East at SOAS. She is a Research Associate at the LMEI, where she has taught the Government and Politics of the Middle East summer course for the past five years.

• Email: cm39@soas.ac.uk

Sharri Plonski

Research Associate

Dr Sharri Plonski is a part-time lecturer and researcher at SOAS, University of London. Her research sits at the nexus of critical political geography, border spaces and community struggles in Israel/Palestine, with her current projects range from investigations into the ontology of global transport corridors, political settlements in borderland contexts and (settler) colonial relations in the Middle East. Dr Plonski’s first book will be published in 2017 as part of the new SOAS Palestine Studies Book Series with I.B. Tauris, under the title Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space.

• Email: sp46@soas.ac.uk

Hamid Pouran

Research Associate

Before joining the LMEI as a research associate, Hamid Pouran was Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF) Visiting Fellow in Iran’s Environmental Sustainability at the LMEI's Centre for Iranian Studies and senior research associate at Lancaster University. He was part of the Transatlantic Initiative for Nanotechnology and the Environment (TINE), an international scientific consortium of UK and US universities to better understand fate and behavior of nanomaterials in the environment.

Dr Pouran was the convener of SOAS Centenary Conference, Environmental Challenges in the Middle East and North Africa. He was also scientific consultant for a BBC World documentary called Dust Storms. This documentary had major inputs from NASA, USGS and UNEP. He was also guest visiting scholar at Princeton University in 2017.

Tom Selwyn

Professorial Research Associate

Tom Selwyn is a Professorial Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology and the London Middle East Institute. He was awarded an Emeritus Professorial Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Foundation in 2014. He is widely published in the field of the anthropology of tourism/pilgrimage with regional interests in Palestine/Israel and Bosnia-Herzegovina. He directed/co-directed four major research and development projects in Palestine and Bosnia-Herzegovina for the European Commission between 1995-2005; founded the MA in the Anthropology of Travel, Tourism, and Pilgrimage at SOAS in 2010; and was awarded the Lucy Mair medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute in 2009. Recent publications include 'The Future of Palestinian Tourism' in Isaac,R., CM Hall, F. Higgins-Desbiolles (eds), 2016, Power and Politics of Tourism in Palestine, London, Routledge; 'Tourism and Sight Prevention' in Andrews, H.(ed) 2016, Tourism and Violence, London, Routledge; 'The Rise and Fall of Orientalism in Travel, Tourism, and Pilgrimage: Report from Palestine/Israel', Tourism, Culture, and Communication, 17, 2017.

• Email: ts14@soas.ac.uk

John Waterbury

Professorial Research Associate

John Waterbury became the 14th President of the American University of Beirut in January 1998 and retired from the presidency in July 2008. Before joining AUB, Dr Waterbury was, for twenty years, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Dr Waterbury has published widely on the political economy of the MENA region, most recently in The Political Economy of the Middle East, co-authored with Alan Richards. He has also focused since the 1970s on issues of transboundary water resources and the collective action problems that they entail. In 1979 Syracuse University Press published his The Hydropolitics of the Nile Valley, and in 2003 Yale University Press published the sequel, The Nile Basin: National Determinants of Collective Action.

• Email: waterbury@aub.edu.lb

Elian Weizman

Research Associate

Elian is the deputy director of the CBRL Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem. Her research interests are the intersection between resistance, law and violence in the Israeli context. Her current research focuses on resistance practices of anti-Zionist Jewish Israelis in contemporary Israel; on cause lawyering as resistance; and on critique of ‘non-violence’ as a strategy of resistance. Additionally, she (co)coordinates a project on the politics of knowledge production in settler colonial contexts, with particular reference to knowledge produced and disseminated on the Israeli state and society. She is also interested in settler colonialism; Zionism in/and the contemporary Israeli state; and law and/in society. She holds a PhD (2013) from the Department of Politics and International Studies at SOAS. 

• Email: deputydirector@kenyon-institute.org.uk; elian.wei@gmail.com

Sami Zubaida

Professorial Research Associate

Sami Zubaida is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck, University of London and has held visiting positions in Cairo, Istanbul, Beirut, Aix-en-Provence, Berkeley CA, Paris and New York.  His research interests include Middle East Politics, Religion and Law, Nationalism, Food and Culture. Professor Zubaida is a regular contributor to the LMEI’s The Middle East in London magazine and has published extensively on the Middle East, most recently an article in openDemocracy on Islam and Reform.  He is also a Professorial Research Associate of the Food Studies Centre, SOAS and has published widely on food and culinary cultures including 'Drink, meals and social boundaries', in Jakob A. Klein and Anne Murcott (eds), Food Consumption in Global Perspective: Essays in the Anthropology of Food in Honour of Jack Goody (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and A Taste of Thyme: Culinary Cultures of the Middle East (ed. with Richard Tapper, Tauris Parke, 2001).

• Email: s.zubaida@bbk.ac.uk