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Well-being, Inclusion, Diversity and Equality (WIDE, School Lead)
Middle East studies, politics, popular culture, masculinity, security, intelligence, trauma, health humanities
I have supervised a range of doctoral students on topics including:
Students interested in exploring politics, popular culture, historical memory or security studies please get in touch.
Teaching
Undergraduate Teaching
1)AHRC funded PhD leading to monograph: The Arab World and Western Intelligence: Analysing the Middle East 1958-1981
2) Co-Investigator for collaborative AHRC-funded project, ‘Politics and Popular Culture: Contested Narratives of the 25 January 2011 Revolution and its Aftermath’ from 2016-2020, creating a digital archive for researchers https://egyptrevolution2011.ac.uk
3) Leverhulme funded project on presidential masculinity titled: ‘Virtue, Violence and Virility: Making Egypt’s Presidents’
My research has always been concerned with contemporary questions at the intersection of security, authority and culture. I received my Ph.D from Cambridge University in 2013 and subsequently spent two years at the Politics Department in Warwick University as a Teaching Fellow in Intelligence and Security. I was appointed at the University of Reading in 2015 and have a particular interest in public engagement and communicating with non-academic audiences.
PhD, Cambridge University, 2013
M-Phil, Cambridge University, 2006
BA, Cambridge University, 2005
2020-2021: Leverhulme Research Fellowship, ‘ Virtue, Violence and Virility: Making Egypt's Presidents’
2019: AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker (NGT) Award.
2018: Book Prize, Best ECR output in Arts and Humanities, Reading University.
2017-2019: British Academy Rising Star Award, ‘Social listening’ in the Humanities: developing qualitative methods to understand digital cultures in the past, present and future’
2017: Building Outstanding Impact Support Programme (BOISP) Award, Reading University
2016-19: Co-Investigator on AHRC Research Grant, 'Politics and Popular Culture in Egypt: Contested Narratives of the 25 January Revolution and its Aftermath'
2006-9: Fully Funded AHRC Doctoral Award (Fees and maintenance), 'Anglo-American political and intelligence assessments of Egypt and the Middle East from 1957-1977’
-Member of AHRC Peer Review College
-Reviewer for British Academy Knowledge Frontiers funding scheme
-Editor for Intelligence Studies journal
-Editor for series on Middle East Intelligence with Cambridge University Press
-Member of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Programme Committee
-Member of the International Studies Association (ISA), Intelligence Studies Section, ‘Best Student Paper Award’ Committee
2022 ‘Egypt’s grand strategies: from Gamal Abdel Nasser to Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’ in Clive Jones, Anoush Ehteshami and Tore Peterson (eds.) Grand Strategies in the Middle East, Cambridge University Press.
2021 Co-edited with Nicola Pratt and Dalia Mostafa, ‘Politics and Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: Beyond Domination and Resistance’ special issue of British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol 48.
2020 ‘Egypt’s revolutionary year: regime consolidation at home, pragmatism abroad and neutralism in the Cold War’ in Jeffrey Karam (ed.) 1958: A Revolutionary Year. Bloomsbury Academic.
As a Fellow for the Cambridge Security Initiative since 2013, I have consulted for a range of national and international government bodies including the UK Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence, The United States European Command and NATO, alongside the business community.
I am a regular contributor to BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 and commentate on Middle East affairs in a range of international media such as France 24 and Al Jazeera.
A sample of media work includes: