Dr Chaoqun Lian

Dr Chaoqun Lian is an assistant professor in Arabic Studies at Peking University, China. He received a BA and a MA in Arabic Studies from Peking University and completed his PhD in Middle Eastern Studies at University of Cambridge. His research focuses on language symbolism in the social world as is revealed in Arabic language planning and language policy (LPLP) and Arabic lexicography from the nineteenth century onwards. He is currently working on a book project that examines the phenomenon of Arabic language academies in the context of Arab nationalism(s) and peripherality of the Arabs in the modern world-system. Chaoqun is also planning to study metaphor and language ideology in the discourse of Arabic LPLP and to compare Arabic and Chinese LPLPs in relation to the notion of ‘Oriental bond’. He contributes to the Chinese and Arabic press regularly on political and cultural themes.

Dr Khaled Hroub

Dr Khaled Hroub’s areas of research include contemporary history and politics of the Middle East with a focus on Islamism and its political manifestations; the socio-political and cultural impact of the ‘new’ media in the Arab world; the role of public intellectual; and the Arab novel. He has published widely on Hamas and political Islam. Currently Khalid is writing a book critique of the Arab renaissance project. He also publishes weekly articles in leading Arab and world media.

Dr Khalid Almezaini

Dr Khalid Almezaini is an assistant professor at Qatar University where he teaches International Relations of the Gulf states. Before joining Qatar, Almezaini was a research fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science, and taught Middle East Politics at the universities of Cambridge, Exeter and Edinburgh. He completed his PhD from the University of Exeter in 2009. Khalid’s research interest range from International Relations of the Middle East States to foreign aid and foreign policies of the Gulf states; he is also interested the political economy and security of the Gulf States. Khalid’s forthcoming book entitled ‘Politics of Aid:  Foreign Aid Programs of the Arab Gulf States’ is to be published in 2016.

Dr Mohammad Hanini

Dr Hanini is investigating the reduced deposit share of the Islamic Banks in Palestine – Causes and Solutions. His work seeks to understand why the Islamic Finance model did not become the predominant financial model in Palestine despite the obvious attractions of its moral basis and to map possible paths to make it more successful in the future. He took his degree and MA at Al-Najah National University before completing his PhD in Islamic Banking and Financial Markets from the Arab Academy of Banking and Financial Sciences in Jordan. He has taught at Birzeit university since 2009 and from 2013-16 was the Chairperson of the Department of Public Administration at Birzeit University.

Mr Dilwar Hussain

Dilwar Hussain has research interests in social policy, Muslim identity and Islamic reform in the modern world. He is founding Chair of ‘New Horizons in British Islam’ a charity that works for reform and contextualisation of Muslim thought and practice, Director of Pacata Consulting, a Senior Programme Advisor to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and a Research Fellow at the Lokahi Foundation. Dilwar is a Trustee of the Three Faiths Forum (3FF), the Islamic Society of Britain, the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and Maslaha. He was Head of the Policy Research Centre, at the Islamic Foundation (2007-2013), a Commissioner at the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) (2006-2007) and served on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Commission on Urban Life and Faith (2005 – 2006).

Dr Saeko Yazaki

Dr Saeko Yazaki was the Outreach and Project Manager of the Centre of Islamic Studies from 2010 to 2012. Her areas of research include the mysticism and epistemology of religion, the Judaeo-Islamic tradition in al-Andalus, and their continuing relevance to the present. She is also pursuing comparative study of monotheistic and non-monotheistic faiths. In her forthcoming monograph, Islamic Mysticism and Abu Talib al-Makki: The Role of the Heart (Routledge, 2012), she addresses the complexity of the Sufi-Hanbali interaction on one hand, and the Muslim-Jewish nexus on the other, through an exploration of the religious image of the heart in the works of the tenth-century Sufi preacher, al-Makki, and specifically his book on ethics, Qut al-qulub (‘The Nourishment of Hearts’). Currently she is carrying out research on deep connections between Jewish and Muslim spirituality. Saeko has now taken up the post of Lord Kelvin Adam Smith Fellow at Theology and Religious Studies, University of Glasgow.

Dr Yonatan Mendel

Dr Yonatan Mendel completed his doctoral studies in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University. His thesis examined the history of Arabic studies in Jewish schools in Palestine/Israel from 1935 to 1985, and focused on the politicisation and securitisation of the language. Yonatan’s research deals with topics such as language policy and war, security considerations and language planning, and the interrelationship between political conflict and foreign language studies in Israel/Palestine. His book, The Creation of Israeli-Arabic: The Political History and Securitisation of Arabic Language Studies in Israeli-Jewish Society, will be published in 2014 (Palgrave Macmillan). Yonatan is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and has published widely on Israeli society and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in English, Arabic and Hebrew.

Dr Hussam Eldin Mohamed Raafat Ahmed

Dr Hussam Ahmed works under the supervision of Professor Khaled Fahmy on a research project entitled “Ruptures and Continuities: Cultural and Educational Institutions between Parliamentary (1924-1952) and Nasserite (1952-1970) Egypt.” In this project, he examines the evolution of Egyptian cultural and educational institutions under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s authoritarian rule. His research is designed to understand Nasser’s official cultural policies and assess their enduring impact on institutions in Egypt and other Arab countries, which found a model in Egyptian institutions.

Dr Nor Haslina Ja’far

Dr Nor Haslina Ja’far’s research project title is ‘Approaches to the Islamic Principles of Street Design and Multi-Cultural Characters in Malaysia: Traditional Streets as Reference’. This study addresses the concept of street design in Malaysia that is based on the Islamic design principle to satisfy the Malaysian Muslim needs. The aim of Nor Haslina’s research is to establish a multicultural street design that shapes the characters of street pattern based on Islamic design principles, which uses the multicultural aspect of the traditional streets as a model or reference.

Dr Ruhaini Muda

Dr Ruhaini Muda is a research fellow at Accounting Research Institute, Malaysia. She is presently working on research which focuses on the development of a reporting framework for value-based Islamic financial institutions. The study addresses a growing call for delivering initiatives which truly impact stakeholders and the wider community. This is only possible if these initiatives are measured and reported in ways that support entrepreneurship, social well-being, a sustainable environment and economic growth. Towards this end, Islamic financial institutions need to measure and report the impact they make through effective and enhanced collaboration with strategic partners and stakeholders. Ruhaini’s primary research interest is in the development of a sustainable social sector eco-system, with particular focus on the contributions of Islamic social capital such as zakah, waqf and sadaqa. She also works in the related area of social impact assessment and reporting.

Dr Ruba Salih

Ruba Salih is a Reader at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London. Her research interests and writing cover, the Palestine question and refugees, migration, diaspora cultures,  Islam and gender, the political anthropology of borders and states.

She is the author of Gender in Transnationalism. Home, Longing and belonging among Moroccan Migrant Women(Routledge) and of Musulmane Rivelate. Donne Islam Modernita’ (Carrocci) winner of the Premio Pozzale 2011).  Currently she is completing a manuscript on Waiting and the politics of exile among Palestinian refugees(Cambridge University Press).

Among her recent publications a co-edited (with Sophie Richter-Devroe) special issue of the journal South Atlantic Quarterly 2018 titled ‘Palestine and Self-determination beyond National Frames: Emerging Politics, Cultures, and Claims’ and  “Bodies That Walk, Bodies That Talk, Bodies That Love: Palestinian Women Refugees, Affectivity, and the Politics of the Ordinary” in Antipode, 49: 742–760. She has also co-edited with S. Richter-Devroe a special issue of the Arab Studies Journal (2014) on “Cultures of Resistance in Palestine and Beyond. On the Politics of Arts, Aesthetic and affect”.

Dr Monika Lindbekk

Dr Monika Lindbekk works as a researcher at the University of Bergen as part of the CanCode-project. The project focuses on processes of canonization and codification of Islamic law: How does Islamic law Change? Canonization and Codification of Islamic Legal Texts. https://www.uib.no/en/cancode. Her research at Cambridge investigates Egyptian courts’ adjudication of Muslim marriage and divorce law before and after the 2011 uprising. The study aims to contribute to the growing scholarly literature on the implementation of shari’a-based family codes by describing and analyzing the gender implications of religiously inspired judicial activism. A further aim is to shed light on the intersection between law and religion in this field and how legal reasoning is shaped by a modern, positivistic conception of law. At the core of this study was an analysis of judicial practise at five Cairenese family courts. To investigate how Cairenese family courts integrate various social classes into what they regard as the essence of Islam, she draws material from five family courts in different neighbourhoods in Cairo from 2011-2015.

Recent Publications:

Lindbekk, Monika. 2023. Reflections on Law, Religion, and Technology: Legal mobilization in the Area of Egyptian Paternity Law. In Combining the Legal and the Social in Sociology of Law: A Homage to Reza Banakar. Schultz, U., Hydén, H., Nelken, D. & Cotterell, R. (eds.). Oxford: Hart Publishing, p. 145-158.

Dupret, Baudouin, Adam Belkadi, Monika Lindbekk, Ayang Utriza Yakin. 2023. Paternal Filiation in Muslim-Majority Environments: A Comparative Look at the Interpretive Practice of Positive Islamic Law in Indonesia, Egypt, and Morocco. In: Journal of Law, Religion and State, 1–51.

Lindbekk, Monika and Rania Maktabi. 2023. Gender and judging in the Middle East and Africa. In: Onati Socio – Legal Series. 13, 3, p. 1036–1048.

Lindbekk, Monika and Bassam Bahgat. 2021. Blasphemy and the Cultivation of Religious Sentiments in post-2011 Egypt. In Blasphemies Compared: Transgressive Speech in a Globalised World, edited by Anne Stensvold. London: Routledge.

 Lindbekk, Monika. 2021. Conversions. In 2016: How it felt to live in the Arab World five years after the ‘Arab Spring’. Special issue of Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 21: 50-55.

 Lindbekk, Monika and Teresa Pepe. 2021. Court Trials. In 2016: How it felt to live in the Arab World five years after the ‘Arab Spring’. Special issue of Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 21: 57-66.

Dr Kassim Alsraiha

Kassim Alsraiha’s research is located at the interface between Islamic studies, contemporary intellectual history and politics of the Middle East. His work engages contemporary issues of citizenship, democratization and reformism in the Arab world, with a particular focus on the Gulf States.

He is also interested the legal history and Arab minority in the Naqab.

Kassim has published widely on the topics of religion and state, minorities, citizenship and leadership.

Dr Nader Hashemi

Nader Hashemi is the Director of the Center for Middle East Studies and an Associate Professor of Middle East and Islamic Politics at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is a Non-Resident Fellow at Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN). His research and intellectual interests lie at the intersection of political theory, international relations and comparative politics. Specifically, he has a keen interest in debates on religion and democracy, the politics of authoritarianism, democratic and human rights struggles in non-Western societies, Islam-West relations and US foreign policy. His next book project focuses on the global destabilizing effects of Middle East authoritarianism. It is tentatively titled: “How Authoritarianism is Destabilizing the Middle East *and* Our World.”

Dr Aadel Shakkour

Dr Aadel Shakkour seeks to examine how humour is reflected as a rhetorical device in the political discourse of the late president of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser. Aadel’s aim is to show how Abdel Nasser relied on humour as an essential rhetorical device to convey his political messages, promote his ideological views, and level scathing criticism against his political opponents. The study is based on the key premise through humour Abdel Nasser was able to engage in emotional manipulation of his audience, inspiring them to sympathize with his political views. This study will also rely on the use of critical discourse analysis (CDA) tools.

Dr Shakkour intends to discuss the following questions: how Nasser in his speeches rely on humour as an essential rhetorical device to convey his political messages, promote his ideological views, and level scathing criticism against his political opponents; how Nasser will turn to humour to emotionally arouse and manipulate his audience, thus increasing his popularity and strengthening his support.

The study corpus draws on examples from Abdel Nasser’s speeches in which humour as a rhetorical device is a salient feature. While some of his speeches are extremely long, many consist of no more than a few lines. The study is based on the recorded speeches, gather mainly from online media. Despite the importance of these speeches, they have yet to be collected and concentrated in a comprehensive book.