SOAS University of London

Department of Politics and International Studies

Research Students in the Politics Department

Sasan Aghlani
Sasan Aghlani

‘National Interest’ as a Catalyst for Change in Islamic Laws of War - A Genealogy of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Policies towards Nuclear Weapons

Sabiha Allouche
Sabiha Allouche

(working title) Un-doing Lebanon’s myth of ‘sexual freedom’: an empirical examination of the intimate life of non-married men and women in contemporary urban Lebanon

Julie Broome
Staff Silhouette

The impact of international and domestic prosecutions in post-conflict or post-authoritarian countries on the establishment of the rule of law

Catherine Craven
Catherine Craven

Exploring changes in the international community's representation and engagement of the Sri Lankan Tamil diaspora after the end of the Sri Lankan civil war (working title)

Guy Eyre
Guy Eyre

Understanding everyday Moroccans’ ideas about halal and haram lifestyles: a study of grassroots Muslim educational and Quranic reading circles in Morocco.

Wei-Lun Huang
Staff Silhouette

A Network Power Analysis of India’s State-Business Relations in PTA Policymaking: The Case of the India-Sri Lanka FTA

Jack Joy
Jack Joy

The Spectacle of Resistance: Repertoires of Power in the Discourse of Hizbullah [working title]

Kathryn Nash
Kathryn Nash

The Evolution of Conflict Resolution Norms at the Regional Level in Africa: From State Security to Human Security

Ibrahim Nyei
Ibrahim Nyei

Decentralisation reforms and the implications for power and authority relations in a centralised unitary state. A study of decentralisation reforms in Liberia

Behar Sadriu
Staff Silhouette

Broadcasting ‘Soft Power’: Rhetoric and Networks as tools of Turkey’s Foreign Policy in the Western Balkans

Goktug Sonmez
Goktug Sonmez

The Interplay between International and Domestic Factors in Turkey’s Grand Strategy-Making: Interest-Driven Behaviour vs. Value-Driven Ambitions

L. Muthoni Wanyeki
Muthoni Wanyeki-l

‘African solutions for African problems’: the question of member states’ compliance with the African Union using Kenya as a case study

Further information about the Department's PhD programme can be found here.

Recently awarded PhD theses

2016
  • Indre Balciate A borderless village: mobility and belonging in Phlong Karen transborder lives between Hpa-an area, Myanmar, and Greater Bangkok, Thailand (Prof L Khalili)
  • Catherine Huser 'We don't know if we have a right to live': The Impact of Global Protection Norms in the Micro Spaces of Armed Conflict (Prof S Hopgood)
  • Amir Khnifess Israel and the Druze Political Action: Between Politics of Loyalty and Politics of Violence (Prof C Tripp)
  • Merve Kutuk Locating Muslim Women: Consumption, Activism and Contention in Turkey (Prof S Ismail)
  • Marwa Mamdouh Mohamed Ali Salem The Feeble Giant: Analysing Egypt's Africa Policies (Dr T Young)
  • Najia Mukhtar Approaching Religious Difference Differently: Counter-Dominant Agents in Contemporary Pakistan (Dr M Nelson)
  • Anna Rader Verification and Legibility in Somaliland's Identity Architecture (Prof L Khalili)
  • Benjamin Schuetze US and European Democracy Promotion in Jordan: The Reinforcement of Authoritarianism (Prof C Tripp)
  • Gerasimos Tsourapas Trading People, Consolidating Power - Emigration & Authoritarianism in Modern Egypt (Prof L Khalili)
  • Andrea Valente Explaining Energy Security Cooperation in Southeast Asia: Examples from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand (Prof L Saez)
2015
  • Waleed Almusharaf Abdelrahman Colonialism, Liberalism, Islamism:  The Governmentalization of Islam and the Case of Turabi and the Sudanese Islamist Movement (Prof A Adib-Moghaddam) 
  • Peter Brett The Judicialisation of Political Order in Southern Africa (Dr T Young)
  • Margarita Dimova Dealing with the State: Perspectives from the Heroin Trade in Kenya (Dr P Clark)
  • James Eastwood The ethics of Israeli militarism: soldiers' testimony and the formation of the Israeli soldier-subject (Prof L Khalili)
  • Freya Irani A Primary Concern With Domestic Conditions: Legal Representations of the National Economy and the Uneven Extraterritorial Extension of U.S. Antitrust and Labor Laws, 1945-2010 (Dr M Laffey)
  • Marco Jowell An Institutional Analysis of Peacekeeping Training Centres in Africa (Prof S Chan)
  • Myung Ja Kim Diaspora and Divided Homeland: Geopolitics and Nation-Building Policies toward the Zainichi Diaspora (Dr F Adamson) 
  • Bala Mohammed Liman Conflict and Identity in Nigeria: An Emerging Culture of Conflict in Northern Nigeria (Dr T Young)
  • Jamil Mouawad The Negotiated State: State-Society Relations in Lebanon (Prof C Tripp) 
  • Khaled Shaalan The Political Agency of Egypt's Upper Middle Class: Neoliberalism, Social Status Reproduction and the State (Prof C Tripp)
  • James Sunday In the Shadow of the Pyramids - Power, Politics and Participation in Contemporary Egypt (Prof C Tripp)
  • Jeremy Taylor "Japan is Back", Japan's (Re)Engagement in Africa: The Case of South Sudan (Dr Y Kobayashi)
2014
  • Mehmet Osman Cati The Political Economy of Syrian Foreign Policy 1949-1963 (Prof C Tripp)
  • Felix Conteh Governance Reforms in Sierra Leone: An Analysis of the Conception, Design and Implementation of the Decentralization Programme and its Impacts 2004-2012 (Dr T Young)
  • Samuel Sami Everett Maghrebinicite 1981-2012: affective belonging from the margins of North African Jewish experience in ile-de-France (Prof L Khalili)
  • Igor Rogelja The Production of Creative Space in Taiwan and China (Prof J Strauss)
  • Cornelia Schiller China and Madagascar: Engagement, Perceptions, and Developmental Effects (Dr T Young)
  • Hagar Taha The Local Element of Peace: Role of Indigenous Civil Societies in Intervention and Conflict Resolution - Cases of Darfur (Sudan) and Somaliland (Northern Somalia) (Prof S Chan)
2013
  • Benedetta de Alessi The war-to-peace transition of the SPLM/A into the SPLM during the implementation of the Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Prof S Chan)
  • Sana Alimia The Quest for Humanity in a Dehumanised State: Afghan Refugees and Devalued Citizens in Urban Pakistan, 1979-2012 (Dr M Nelson)
  • Mehmet Ugur Ekinci The Primacy of Foreign Policy in the Accommodation of Minority Claims in the Late Ottoman Empire and Republican Turkey: A Study on the Armenian and Kurdish Questions (Dr F Adamson) 
  • Alexander Evans The Changing Political Rhetoric of Kashmiri Identity, 1990-2001 (Dr M Nelson)
  • Silvia Ferabolli Rethinking the idea of the doomed Arab region  (Prof C Tripp)
  • Sambaiah Gundimeda Mapping Dalit Politics in Contemporary India: A Study of UP and AP from an Ambedkarite Perspective (Dr R Bajpai)
  • Abdullai Harroon Ghanaian Political Thought on the Governance of the Formal State and that of Chieftaincy : With Special Reference to Dispute, Conflict and Thought in Dagbon (Prof S Chan)
  • Stephen Marioghae Itugbu Nigeria's Foreign Policy under Olusegun Obasanjo: Process, Ethics, and the Example of Darfur (Prof S Chan)
  • Daniel Large Fantastic Invasion': the politics of international intervention in Sudan (Prof S Hopgood)
  • Zaad Mahmood Globalisation, Policy Convergence and Labour Market: the political economy of reforms (Prof L Saez)
  • Mark Sedra Security Sector Reform in Conflict-Affected Societies (Prof C Tripp)
  • Shirin Shafaie Contemporary Iranian War Narratives: A Dialectical Discourse Analysis (Prof A Adib-Moghaddam)
  • Konstantinos Tsimonis "Let the Party Assured, let the Youth Satisfied" Political Representation and Mass Organizations in the People's Republic of China: the case of the Communist Youth League (Prof J Strauss)
  • Alexej Ulbricht Multicultural Immunisation: liberalism, community, and difference (Prof S Chan)
  • Elian Weizman Hegemony, Law, Resistance: Struggles Against Zionism in the State of Israel (Prof L Khalili)