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Consulting

 

Dr Carly Beckerman is Co-Director of the Institute for Hazard, Risk and Resilience and Assistant Professor in the International Relations of the Middle East in the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. She specialises in the study of causality in foreign policy decision-making and emerging technologies in International Relations (IR), with an emphasis on the political psychology of conflict and mediation in the Middle East. She has lectured to a range of stakeholders outside the academy, including the NATO Intelligence Centre, RAF Molesworth.

Research Interests:

  • International Relations of the Middle East
  • Cyber security
  • Foreign Policy decision-making
  • Arab-Israeli conflict

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Dr Alan Craig is a research fellow in the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. A trained lawyer, he previously held the Pears Lectureship in Israel and Middle East Studies at the University of Leeds and was a former Chair of the European Association of Israel Studies. His research focuses on how recourse to international law has shaped the prosecution of war (lawfare) across the Middle East. He has advised a number of government agencies and NGOs, including the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Justice.

Research Interests:

  • International Law and normative behaviour in the international system
  • Israel politics and society
  • Palestine/Israel conflict

 

Miss Georgia Dimitriou joined the School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) in October 2019 as an A.G. Leventis scholar. Her doctoral research explores the concept of vulnerability in the resettlement of Syrian refugees through the Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) in the North East (NE) of England. Before joining SGIA, Georgia completed an MA in Philosophy at the Philosophy Department of Durham University.

Research interests:

  • Syrian Civil War
  • Refugee Protection, Resettlement and Integration
  • Applied Ethics
  • Political Theory
  • Politics in the North East of England

 

Professor Anoush Ehteshami is Professor of International Relations in the School of Government and International Relations at Durham University and Director of the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. He works on regional security, broadly defined, systemic shift and effects of changing balance of power at Asian and global levels on West Asia and the Mediterranean. He is regular contributor as a consultant or expert to international debates regarding Middle East security and its ensuing geopolitical tensions, Persian Gulf security, China’s BRI, and power rivalries in the MENA region.

Research Interests:

  • International Relations of the Middle East
  • Iranian Foreign and Security policy
  • Gulf Security (including energy security)
  • Asian – Mediterranean relations
  • Political Islam

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Professor Clive Jones is Professor of Regional Security (Middle East) in the School of Government and International Affairs. He has advised the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, The Swedish Defence Ministry, as well as numerous IGOs and NGOs in the UK and overseas. He is currently a Visiting Research Professor in the School of Historical Studies, NTNU, Trondheim, Norway.

Research Interests:

  • Israeli foreign and security policy
  • Gulf (in)Securities
  • Regional Alliance formation and state intervention
  • Intelligence and National Security
  • Civil-Military Relations in the MENA Region

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Dr Marzieh Kouhi-Esfahani lectures on the International Relations on the Middle East and Central Asia in the School of Government and International Affairs. She has a particular research focus on Iranian foreign and security policy in the Gulf and south Caucasus and is an acknowledged expert on the nuclear politics of Asia.

Research Interests:

  • Central Asian Politics
  • Iranian Foreign and Security Policy
  • Energy Security and the Middle East
  • Gulf Security

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Dr Rory McCarthy is an Assistant Professor in Politics and Islam at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. He has drawn on his research to advise the Foreign Office and the British Army, as well as writing briefings for Oxford Analytica and opinion pieces for The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Telegraph among others. He is an advisor to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Tunisia at the House of Commons. Previously he worked as a foreign correspondent with The Guardian, with postings in Islamabad, Baghdad, Beirut, and Jerusalem. He has a BA in History from Cambridge and an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies and a DPhil in Oriental Studies from Oxford.

Research Interests:

  • Social Movements in the MRNA region
  • Contentious Politics
  • Islamism in the Middle East and North Africa

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Professor Emma Murphy is Professor of Political Economy in the School of Government and International Affairs. Her research interests cover a broad spectrum of political economy issues in the Middle East, including information and communications technologies, food security, economic liberalisation, the Arab uprisings, and relations with the European Union. She has a particular interest in youth politics of the MENA region, an interest that has seen her work closely with the European Commission on a series of funded projects.

Research Interests:

  • Youth Politics in North Africa
  • New Media in the MENA region
  • Political Economy of the MENA region
  • Arab-Israeli Conflict

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Dr Amjed Rasheed is a research fellow in Middle Eastern Politics at the School of Government and International Affairs at Durham University. His work focuses on the state and the non-states actors in MENA in post-ISIS. He delivers regular courses on Kurdish politics to the FCO analysts and staff and writes opinion pieces for the Guardian, and OpenDemocracy, and Rudaw. He has an MA in Peace Studies from the University for Peace in Costa Rica and MSc in International Politics from Glasgow University and a Ph.D. in Politics from Durham University.

Research Interests:

  • Inter-Arab relations
  • Terrorism and Political Violence
  • Political Violence
  • Islamic State
  • Kurdish politics