People

The Centre draws together scholars from a wide range of departments and disciplines, including Archeology, History, Geography, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Law, and the Bartlett.

Director 触听Associated staff 触听PhD students | Visiting Fellows

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Director

The MERC Director is听Seth Anziska (Hebrew and Jewish Studies). His research interests are听Modern Middle Eastern history, Israeli and Palestinian society and culture, Lebanon, Jewish-Arab encounters in Europe and the Levant, archival practices, visual culture in the contemporary Middle East.听

Associated staff

Mark Altaweel (Institute of Archaeology):听Ancient Near East Archaeology, Cultural Heritage, Environment and Society in the Near East, Data Science in Archaeology, Mesopotamian History, Connections between the ancient and modern Near East/Middle East.
(Urban Lab): Political practices and clientelism, the intersection of conflict and politics with humanitarian aid and energy, and the production of ethnographic research in turbulent times.听听听听听听
听(IOE - Culture, Communication & Media): The political, cultural and socioeconomic impact of colonialism on children in Palestine and the UK
(Institute for Global Prosperity, Bartlett): Urbanism, displacement, infrastructure, Israel/Palestine, Lebanon.
Gabriela Bazzo (Geography): Works on the听Southern Responses to Displacement from Syria project
Beverley Butler (Institute of Archaeology):听Cultural Heritage, Memory Studies, Heritage and Health.
Estella Carpi听(Geography,听Migration Research Unit): Human displacement, identity politics, humanitarianism, migrations, welfare.
听(Thomas Coram Research Unit): asylum-seekers from North Africa,听Anthropology of Islam, Local Articulations of Revolution, Sufism, Ritual Secrecy, Tribal Dynamics, State Surveillance.
Alinda Damsma听(Hebrew and Jewish Studies):听Semitic languages, especially Hebrew and Aramaic, and Ancient Near Eastern Studies.
Corisande Fenwick (Institute of Archaeology):听Late Antique and Islamic archaeology, history and heritage of North Africa and Middle East.听
Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh听(Geography): Forced migration and conflict-induced displacement; gender, generation and religion; statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa.
(History):听Research Fellow- Leverhulme ECF: Documentary Afterlives
Mark Geller (Hebrew and Jewish Studies):听Ancient Near Eastern languages and texts.
听(History of Art)听Medieval art and architecture of Africa; Ethiopic, Syriac, Armenian, and Copto-Arabic illuminated manuscripts
(IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy & Assessment) Teacher professional development, children's wellbeing and social justice - experience in听primarily Egypt, but also Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Qatar.
Christopher Harker (Institute for Global Prosperity): Spatial practices of debt and finance in Palestine.
Ya臒mur Heffron (History):听Archaeology of Bronze Age Anatolia, archaeology and social history of religion in the ancient Middle East, integrating texts and archaeology, archaeological labour relations in Turkey.
(Arts & Sciences):听Palestinian refugee history and politics, displacement and bordering, Lebanon, modern Middle Eastern history, UN and UNRWA, internationalism, colonialism and postcolonialism, archival suppression.
(Hebrew and听Jewish Studies):听Hebrew, Yiddish, Jewish languages and linguistics.听
Neill Lochery (Hebrew and Jewish Studies):听Arab-Israeli conflict, Middle East Politics, Israeli Politics, 听Mediterranean history and politics (Portugal).
Ruth Mandel听(Anthropology):听Transnational migration, ethnicity and identity Turkey, Greece, Germany, Kazakhstan; Post-socialist societies in transition,听 Media and International development; Memory and memorialisation in post-Holocaust Europe.
Eva Miller (History):听ancient Middle East, the modern West, and the relationship between the two
(Institute of Education):听Education in Emergencies, Refugee Education, Human Rights Education.听
Julie Norman (Political Science):听conflict, conflict resolution, human rights, security, social movements, protests, nonviolence/civil resistance, political violence, gendered violence, prisons/detention, refugees,听Israel/Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq.
(Judicial Institute, Faculty of Laws):听听socio-legal studies of the Middle-East, especially the role and significance of Middle East judiciaries.听
Maria Rubins (School of Slavonic and East European Studies):听modernism, exile and diaspora, national and postnational cultural identities, the interaction between literature and other arts, bilingual and transnational writing, Russian-language literature in Israel, Israeli literature and culture.
Eleanor Robson听(History):听History of ancient and modern Iraq; the politics of heritage, culture and higher education in Iraq.
Fatemeh Sadeghi (Institute for Global Prosperity):听cognitive historical procedures enabling individuals/groups to define their identities by collective fantasies, focusing mainly on Islam and Iran
(Institute for Sustainable Heritage):听Archaeology and cultural heritage in (post-)conflict countries,听working in Iraq on research & conservation projects for c. 4yrs, and听co-director of Living Mesopatamia CIC.
Serta莽 Sehlikoglu (Institute for Global Prosperity):听Self-making, political and ethical imagination, intimacy, gender in the Middle East.
听(Institute for Global Prosperity):听Energy transitions, rethinking economics, post-oil futures, political economy.
Rachael Sparks (Institute of Archaeology):听Archaeology of the Bronze and Iron Age Levant; cultural interactions between Egypt and the Southern Levant; materiality of texts; history of archaeological research in 20th century Israel, Palestine and Jordan; archaeological ethics.
(Hebrew and Jewish Studies): The ancient, late antique and early medieval Near East, with a special interest in Jewish history, the history of science, and Hebrew and Aramaic literatures.
Ali Co艧kun Tun莽er (History):听Economic History of the Middle East with a focus on the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey.
Tom Western听(Geography): Sound, citizenship, activisms, anticolonialisms, creativities, migrations, and borders.
Haim Yacobi (Bartlett Development Planning Unit):听(Post)colonial architecture, planning and development in Israel\Palestine, the Middle East and Africa.
(Geography): Intersections of refugee studies, critical humanitarianism and gender, with an area focus on Turkey.

PhD students

(IOE):听Refugee Education through the lens of Social Justice. Acculturation and Pedagogical Love
(IOE): Democracy building with Libyan teachers,听Peace and Conflict Studies,听peacebuilding education.听
听(Hebrew and Jewish Studies):听The Case of Palestinians in Tel Aviv
(Anthropology):听YouTube production, film industry, production cultures, nation branding, globalization, and neoliberalism.听
(History): Social biography of one of the first Ottoman-Americans and the way in which he used mass media in the United States to further his political goals in the Otoman Empire between 1835 and 1895.
Hanadi Samhan (Bartlett Development Planning Unit):听The politics of the Vertical in the camps of Palestinian Refugee camps in Lebanon
听(Hebrew and Jewish Studies):听A Historical Study of Palestinian Archaeological Agency within the Contested Space听

MERC Visiting Research Fellows

Kusha Sefat (Visiting Research Fellow, UCL Middle East Research Centre and听Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Tehran):听brings Science and Technology Studies and, interrelatedly, the new materialism to bear on historical, political, and cultural sociology, with an emphasis on the Global South.

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