SOAS University of London

Department of Politics and International Studies

Research Students in the Politics Department

Leda Betti
Leda Betti

Making Cars, Remaking People: the Italian State and the Rescaling of Class Relations in the Fiat-Chrysler Case

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

Adrian Chiu
Adrian Chiu

When public diplomacy meets China factor: The case of cross-party exchanges between Hong Kong and Taiwan since the handover

Guy Robert Eyre
Guy Eyre

Understanding everyday North Africans' ideas about halal and haram lifestyles: an ethnographic study of grassroots Muslim educational and Quranic reading circles (tajwid) in Algeria and Morocco.

Jack Joy
Jack Joy

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

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

Salman Rafi
Salman Rafi Sheikh

Intra-Ethnic Fragmentation and the Politics of De-centralising Constitutional Change in Pakistan: A Comparative Study

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

2018
  • Seyed Alavi Iran's Relations with Palestine: Roots and Development (Dr A Adib-Moghaddam)
  • Sameen Ali Staffing The State: The Politicisation of Bureaucratic Appointments in Pakistan (Dr M Nelson)
  • Inioluwa Dele-Adedeji The Mobilisation of the Boko Haram Sect (Dr P Clark)
  • Hugh Lamarque Insulating the Borderlands: Policing and State Reach in Rwanda (Dr P Clark)
  • Tahani Mustafa Transforming Security Landscapes: Security Sector Reform in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (Dr A Adib-Moghaddam)
  • Kathryn Nash From State Security to Human Security: The Evolution of Norms at the Regional Level in Africa (Dr L Vinjamuri)
  • Dominique Oliver Transforming Lebanon (Prof C Tripp)
  • Maria Rashid Affect as a Technology of Rule: Service, Sacrifice and the Pakistani Military (Dr L Khalili)
  • Lynne Wanyeki African solutions for African problems' or a 'liberal peace': the African Union (AU) and Kenya (Prof S Chan)
2017
  • Sasan Aghlani-Asl The Nuclear Policies of Iran: Islam and Strategic Thinking in the Islamic Republic (Dr A Adib-Moghaddam)
  • Richard Akum Informal Ordering, Authority and Control: Borderland Dynamics and Postwar Statebuilding in Liberia (Prof S Chan)
  • Athanasius Barkindo History, Memory and Resistance in Northern Nigeria: The Transformation of Boko Haram (Dr P Clark)
  • Emma Birikorang Emerging Regional Security Threats in West Africa: Implications for Regional Security (Dr P Clark)
  • Noga Glucksam Transitional Justice and Collective Identity: Contesting Concepts of Justice in Liberia and Uganda (Dr P Clark)
  • Hae Won Jeong Rethinking State Autonomy in Rentier State Theory (RST): A Case study of Kuwait (Dr A Adib-Moghaddam)
  • Salam Kamel The Constitution as Unfinished Business: The Making and Un-Making of Power Relations in Iraq, 2003-2010 (Prof C Tripp)
  • Lili Liu Environmental Activism and Political Intermediation: Local Flexibility in Managing Protests in China (Dr J Strauss)
  • Charles Marques Rebel Diplomacy as "Rebelcraft": Libya 2011 (Prof S Chan)
  • Goktug Sonmez The Interplay between International and Domestic Factors in Turkey's Grand Strategy-Making: Activism, Disappointment, and Readjustment (Dr F Adamson)
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)
  • Priya Kumar Diaspora 2.0: Mapping Sikh, Tamil and Palestinian Online Identity Politics (Dr F Adamson)
  • 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)