Postdoctoral Fellows (2017-2018)
The ACSS Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is a 9-month fellowship program aimed at enabling young researchers, up to three years out of the PhD, to pursue their research and publishing plans, become part of Arab research networks and plan a research career in the Arab region.
Fellowships are awarded competitively to junior scholars who are citizens or nationals of an Arab country and show high-quality academic credentials and promise. There is a special interest in attracting foreign-trained Arab scholars back to the region. The ACSS postdoctoral fellow should be affiliated with a research institution in the Arab region during the period of the fellowship and should have an academic mentor at this institution.
Fellowships are awarded competitively to junior scholars who are citizens or nationals of an Arab country and show high-quality academic credentials and promise. There is a special interest in attracting foreign-trained Arab scholars back to the region. The ACSS postdoctoral fellow should be affiliated with a research institution in the Arab region during the period of the fellowship and should have an academic mentor at this institution.
Below are the Selection Committee members and fellows of the 2017-2018 cycle.
Selection Committee (2017-2018)
Alaa El-Shazly is Professor of Economics at Cairo University. He earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Manchester. His areas of interest include the economics of uncertainty and information, quantitative methods in economics and finance, financial engineering and computation. He is the author of articles in international scientific journals and edited volumes. Prior to his academic career, he held economist positions at the National Investment Bank, Central Bank of Egypt, and the World Bank. His work experience lies at the intersection of economics, quantitative methods, and computer science. He also served as a board member of the Central Bank of Egypt and collaborated with the Egyptian Banking Institute in running specialized programs for practitioners in the banking and finance industry. El-Shazly is a recipient of awards in academia, industry, and sports.
Fadia Kiwan is Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph University of Beirut. She was director of the postgraduate program of political science in 2000, then founder of the Institute of Political Science in 2002 at the same University. As a researcher, she has published several books and hundreds of articles. She is very active in the field of advocacy for human rights, women’s rights, quality of education, democratization, and sustainable development. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Program at UNESCO since 2013. She currently serves as its Chairperson. As a member of the Executive Board of the National Commission for Lebanese Women since 2003, she represents Lebanon in the Executive Board of the Arab Women Organization. She is also the representative of Lebanon in the Permanent Council of the Francophonie.
Islah Jad (Hossneya Gad) is an Associate Professor, currently linked to Qatar University, International Affairs Department since 2014. Jad is a lecturer on gender issues and politics at the Women's Studies Institute and Cultural Studies Institute of Birzeit University, where she was its director from 2008-2013. She is a founding member of Birzeit University's women’s studies MA program. She has written books and papers on the role of women in politics, Palestinian women and the relationships among them, Islam, and NGOs. She is also a consultant on gender issues to the United Nations Development Programme and is co-author of the UN's Arab Development Report on Women's Empowerment and author of two books: Women at the Crossroads: The Palestinian Women's Movement between Nationalism, Secularism and Islamism(2008, second edition 2013) and Palestinian Female Headed Households (2002). Jad received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 2004.
Kmar Bendana is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of La Manouba (Tunisia) and an associate researcher at the Institute for Research on the Contemporary Maghreb. She has participated in collaborative research projects on such topics as pedagogy of research and scientific writing, in both French and Arabic. She also runs bilingual training sessions on reading and writing in social sciences, in Tunisia and the Maghreb in general. As a historian of the cultural and intellectual life in Tunisia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Bendana was involved in the development and coordination of journals and newsletters, namely Watha'iq, Correspondances, IBLA, Rawafid, and Année du Maghreb. Bendana’s work addresses the history of magazines/journals, cinema, and the conditions of knowledge production (textbooks, university, cultural institutions). She relies on translation (from Arabic to French and vice versa), colinguism, and historiography to study the intellectual and political evolution of contemporary, colonial, and post-colonial Tunisia.
Postdoctoral Fellows - Cycle 4 (2017-2018)
Abdeslam Badre
Postdoctoral Affiliation: University of Mohammed V Rabat
Project Title: Mapping the Career State of Young Arab Scientists: The Cases of Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt
Nationality: Moroccan
Biography: Abdeslam Badre is a Moroccan social scientist and Fulbright alumnus. His research interests focus on women, youth, and early career policy development in the context of the Middle East and North Africa. His PhD on “Gender and Media Policy” at Mohammed V University in Rabat led him to a short-term Carnegie postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Badre has been a visiting researcher and assistant professor at various universities, including Alfred University (New York), Monterey Institute for International Studies (California), Aalborg University (Denmark), Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (Berlin), Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania), University of North Carolina at (Chapel Hill), and Mohammed V University of Rabat (Morocco). His first book titled International Negotiation for Economic Diplomacy: The EU-Morocco DCFTA was published in 2014. Badre is a member of: the Fulbright Association, American Political Science Association, Canadian Political Science Association, Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, Moroccan Association of Education, Africa Science Leadership Program, and the Next Einstein Forum. Badre has taken part in over 300 international conferences in more than 80 countries. Currently, he is a part-time assistant professor at Mohammed V University in Rabat.
Hebatalla Hassan Mohammed Taha
Postdoctoral Affiliation: Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut
Project Title: The Genesis of 'Economic Peace': Development and Settler-Colonialism in Israel/Palestine
Nationality: Egyptian
Biography: Hebatalla Hassan Mohammed Taha has recently completed a DPhil in Oriental Studies at St Antony's College, University of Oxford. Her dissertation explored the political economy of Israeli development policy towards the Palestinians of 1948. Having lived most of her life in Cairo, she decided to pursue her long-standing research interest in Palestine after 2011, inspired by the political changes that were unfolding in Egypt, which offered a newfound critical atmosphere. Hebatalla’s research is interdisciplinary, spanning political economy, development, anthropology, indigenous politics, citizenship, and conflict. Alongside her academic work, she has been working with the International Institute for Strategic Studies since 2013 in London and Manama. She has co-edited a book titled Egypt after the Spring: Revolt and Reaction, in which she authored a chapter on militarization in the aftermath of the 2013 coup d’état. She has also authored several short commentary pieces and translations.
Hussam Hussein
Postdoctoral Affiliation: Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut
Project Title: Climate change and Syrian refugees: new discourses, new transboundary water governance in Lebanon and Jordan?
Nationality: Jordanian
Biography: Hussam Hussein received his PhD in Social Sciences at the School of International Development – Water Security Research Centre, University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. After studying international relations and diplomacy at the University of Trieste (Gorizia, Italy), the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London, England), and the College of Europe, where he focused on water policies in the Middle East, he worked for the European Parliament, the Italian Embassy in Amman, the NGO, Friends of the Earth Middle East - EcoPeace, the London Middle East Institute, and the World Bank, covering the Middle East and the environment. He is currently Associate Tutor for eight undergraduates and master courses at the University of East Anglia. His current research focuses on transboundary water governance and climate change discourses in the Levantine region. He is also currently involved in a UEA-led project titled “Hydropolitical Baseline Study of the Yarmouk Basin” and is leading on the Council for British Research in the Levant grant on “New Discourses and Water Politics in Jordan.” Hussam’s latest article titled “Whose ‘reality’? Discourses and hydropolitics along the Yarmouk River” was published in Contemporary Levant.
Ismael Sheikh Hassan
Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institut des Beaux Arts, Department of Urbanism at the Lebanese University
Project Title: Extra-Ordinary Urbanisms: Between Research, Teaching and Practice
Nationality: Lebanese
Biography: Ismael Sheikh Hassan is an urbanist, researcher, and activist who has been involved in a variety of reconstruction projects in Southern Lebanon, as well as the reconstruction of the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared. He received his architecture degree from Mississippi State University in 2015. He later defended his PhD Dissertation titled: “On Urbanism and Activism in Palestinian Refugee Camps” in the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Strategic Planning at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL), where he has also taught a verity of urban design studios. Currently, he works with Lil-Madina Initiative in Saida, which focuses on urban research and community mobilization in relation to a variety of campaigns countering problematic infrastructure and urban development projects in the city. He is also a consultant with UNRWA’s Camp Improvement Program, providing assistance on urban improvement plans for camps in Jordan, such as Husn and Jerash camps. He has authored a variety of publications on topics pertaining to reconstruction, activism, and the urbanism of Palestinian camps. He has two upcoming publications, which he has coauthored. The first is “Towards Improving Landpooling Practices in Lebanon” and the second is “The Amleh River in the Greater Saida Region: Narratives of its Disappearance and Strategies for its Reclamation”.
Lea Bou Khater
Postdoctoral Affiliation: Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut
Project Title: The Labour Movement in Lebanon: Institutional Shackles and Solutions
Nationality: Lebanese
Biography: Lea Bou Khater earned her PhD in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies of University of London in 2016. In her doctoral thesis titled “Labour Relations in Lebanon: Trials and Tribulations of the Labour Movement,” she charts the structure and performance of the labour movement in Lebanon, and its relations with the state, while exploring the repercussions of the collusion of dominant sectarian forces. She is currently a teaching instructor of Sustainable Community Development at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. As a development practitioner for more than ten years, she undertook several studies and projects commissioned by the government of Lebanon and international organizations. She also authored various reports on needs assessments, national surveys, and program evaluations mainly pertaining to labour, education, and poverty. Bou Khater had previously acquired a Master’s degree in Political Science from Saint Joseph University in Beirut and another in Development Studies from SOAS in the United Kingdom. Her research interests are economic development, public policy, social movements, and labour relations.
Maroua Marmouch
Postdoctoral Affiliation: Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences at Saint Joseph University
Project Title: Women's Sexuality in Todya's Beirut (Lebanon): Life Trajectories, Practices, and Sexual Identifications (Original French Title: Sexualité entre femmes aujourd’hui à Beyrouth (Liban) : parcours de vie, pratiques et identifications sexuelles)
Nationality: Tunisian
Biography: Maroua Marmouch received her PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology in 2015 from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in France (EHESS). She also holds a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Turin in Italy (2011) and a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Tunis (2003). Based on two ethnographic field trips to New Caledonia (2012-2014), which included data collection, biographical interviews, and participant observation, her doctoral research allowed her to reconstruct the biographies of transgender individuals (men to women) and reveal their personal trajectories, while taking into account their social practices. This year, she will be presenting her research project on female non-heteronormativity in Beirut, Lebanon. Based on an ethnographic study, the project aims to describe and analyze the ways in which women who self-identify as “homosexual” live and negotiate their presence in a city of the Arab Middle East. The study will contribute to a number of reflections on the issue of non-normative sexualities of women, as well as “intersectional” and discriminatory constraints in Lebanon.
Rim Naguib
Postdoctoral Affiliation: Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo
Project Title: Authoritarian Egyptian Nationalism and its Counter-Narrative
Nationality: Egyptian
Biography: Rim Naguib is a sociologist based in Egypt. She holds an MA in Comparative Politics (2006) from Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence, and a PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University (2016). Her dissertation compares intelligentsia class formation and ideologies in Egypt and Iran, in the period between 1922 and 1952, and explores the roots of their divergence in the two countries' specific processes of integration into the world economy. Her research interests include political economy, class formation, nationalism, and early twentieth century communist movements in Egypt and Iran. She has co-translated two graphic novels to Arabic (Zahra's Paradise and Best of Enemies), and is working on her own collection of graphic shorts, based on real stories of individuals who were deported, or had their nationalities revoked in interwar Egypt.
Samar Kanafani
Postdoctoral Affiliation: Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut
Project Title: Why Don’t People Care about Heritage? Heritage from Below and the Resonance of Intellectual and Activist Discourses of Preservation in Beirut
Nationality: Lebanese
Biography: Samar Kanafani is a social anthropologist residing and working in Beirut. Her recent research interests are urban dwelling and urban decay, but her work has previously dealt with nationalism, migration, gender, and the body. In 2015-16, she was a doctoral fellow at the Orient Institute Beirut. In May 2017, she completed her PhD from the University of Manchester. Her recent article, “On Deference and Benevolence,” came out in the Arab Studies Journal (2017). Her article, "Leaving Mother-Land: The Anti-Feminine in Fida'i Narratives," based on her MA research, was published in Identities (2008). She co-edited a special issue of Contemporary Levant on ethnography and knowledge in the Arab region, in which she co-authored the introduction (2017). She also co-edited the book Anywhere But Now (2013). She has taught anthropology and social theory at the American University of Beirut and at Manchester. She is a resident at Mansion, a Beirut-based cultural collective.
