Staff profile

Having completed a PhD at Exeter University on the political economy of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Emma moved to Durham’s Centre for Middle East and Islamic Studies as a British Academy post-doctoral Fellow in 1993, working on political and economic reform in Tunisia. She took up a lectureship post in 1995 and moved into the new School of Government and International Affairs in 2003, becoming a professor in 2007. As well as continuing her research on Tunisian political economy she has published widely on Middle East political economy and, more recently, on issues in global political economy such as food security and the spread of contemporary ICTs.

She has filled a variety of University roles including Deputy Head of Faculty (2002-05), Chair of Senate Academic Appeals Committee (2009-) and Honorary President of Durham University Charities Kommittee (2006-). She was a trustee and Secretary for the Universities Educational Trust for Palestine (1995-8), a member of the Board of Trustees for the Council for British Research on the Levant (2007-10) and a member of the Executive Committee of the UK Council for Graduate Education (2005-6). She is currently a member of the HEFCE Research Excellence Framework Sub-Panel 27 Area Studies, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacturing (2000) and an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (2009). She is also co-editor of the journal Mediterranean Politics (IF 0.722, 72/157).

My 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. 

Since 2011I have been researching youth and youth politics in the MENA region, and working with colleagues in Sociology and Anthropology to develop comparative reseach on young people in Africa and Europe. In particular we have worked on causes of youth (political, economicand social) exclusion, pathways to inclusion, the structural aspects of youth policy and related narratives and, most recently, the impacts of COVID-19 on young people's futures.

List of doctoral students supervised by Emma Murphy who have successfully completed.

• Arab-Israeli conflict/politics
• Information and communications technologies, new media in the Middle East
• Political economy of North Africa
• Political economy of the Middle East
• Youth and Youth Policy

• 2000: Member of Area Studies REF Panel 2014 and 2021:
• 2000: Member of Editorial Board of Mediterranean Politics journal:
• 2000: Member of the International Advisory Board - MECAM:

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  The Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb
• 2000: ACSS: Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences
• 2000: FRSA: Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts
• 2000: International Election Observer - Tunisia 2011: In October 2011 Tunisia held its first genuinely democratic elections since independence in 1956. Emma Murphy was invited by the Carter Center to join its team of international election observers in her capacity as a regional expert.

  http://www.dur.ac.uk/resources/profiles/490/EmmaTunisia2.JPG

• 2000: Member of the Advisory Board, IMES East: Institute of Middle East Studies, Kings College London

Authored book

• Ehteshami, A., & Murphy, E. (2011). The International Politics of the Red Sea. Routledge
• Murphy, E., & Zweiri, M. (2010). The New Arab Media: Technology, Image and Perception. Garnet Publishing
• Jones, C., & Murphy, E. (2001). Israel: Challenges to Identity, Democracy and the State. Routledge
• Murphy, E. (1999). Economic and Political Change in Tunisia: From Bourguiba to Ben Ali. Palgrave Macmillan

Book review

• Murphy, E. (2008). 'Institutions, Islam and Democracy Promotion: Explaining the Resilience of the Authoritarian State'. Mediterranean Politics, 13(3), 459-466. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629390802387059

Chapter in book

• Murphy, E. C. (2018). Youth activism and protest around the Mediterranean. In R. Gillespie, & F. Volpi (Eds.), Routledge handbook of Mediterranean politics (342-355). Routledge
• Murphy, E. C. (2016). From Democratic Consensus to a A Struggle for Power: The fragility of transition in Tunisia. In Y. Zoubir, & G. White (Eds.), North African Politics: Change and Continuity (225-242). Routledge
• Murphy, E. (2013). Under the Emperor's Neoliberal Clothes! Why the International Financial Institutions Got it Wrong in Tunisia. In N. Gana (Ed.), Contexts, Architects, Prospects (35-57). Edinburgh University Press
• Encounters and Horizons (41-58). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137031761_3
• Murphy, E. (2009). Learning the Right Lessons from Beijing: A Model for the Arab World?. In R. Springborg (Ed.), Development models in Muslim contexts : Chinese, 'Islamic' and neo-liberal alternatives (85-114). Edinburgh University Press
• Murphy, E. (2008). 'ICT and the Gulf Arab States: A Force for Democracy?'. In A. Ehteshami, & S. Wright (Eds.), Reform in the Middle East Oil Monarchies (181-216). Ithaca
• Murphy, E. (2006). 'Buying Poverty:International Aid and the Peace Process'. In J. Benin (Ed.), The Struggle for Sovereignty in Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005 (54-61). Stanford University Press
• Murphy, E. (2005). 'Zionism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict'. In Y. M. Choueiri (Ed.), A Companion to the History of the Middle East (269-290). Blackwell
• Murphy, E. (2003). 'Women in Tunisia: Between State Feminism and Economic Reform'. In E. A. Doumato, & M. P. Posusney (Eds.), Women and Globalisation in the Arab Middle East (169-194). Lynne Rienner
• Murphy, E. (2002). 'The Foreign Policy of Tunisia'. In R. Hinnebusch, & A. Ehteshami (Eds.), The Foreign Policies of the Middle East States (235-256). Lynne Rienner
• Murphy, E. (2000). The Arab-Israeli Peace Process: Can the Region Benefit from the Economics of Globalization?. In J. Wright, & L. Drake (Eds.), Economic and political impediments to Middle East peace : critical questions and alternative scenarios (46-49). Palgrave Macmillan

Journal Article

• Porter, G., Murphy, E., Adamu, F., Dayil, P. B., Dungey, C., Maskiti, B., de Lannoy, A., Clark, S., Ahmad, H., & Yahaya, M. J. (2025). Young women’s travel safety and the journey to work: reflecting on lived experiences of precarious mobility in three African cities (and the potential for transformative action). Journal of Transport Geography, 123, Article 104109. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.104109
• MacDonald, R., King, H., Murphy, E., & Gill, W. (2024). The COVID-19 pandemic and youth in recent, historical perspective: more pressure, more precarity. Journal of Youth Studies, 27(5), 723-740. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2022.2163884
• Murphy, E. C., Han, S., Keskes, H., & Porter, G. (2024). Driven out: women’s employment, the transport sector and social reproduction in Grand Tunis. Journal of Gender Studies, 33(3), 341-356. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2023.2258075
• Porter, G., Murphy, E., Adamu, F., Dayil, P. B., Han, S., Dungey, C., Maskiti, B., de Lannoy, A., Clark, S., O'Connor, E., & Ambrosini, S. (2023). The lived experiences of women workers in Africa's transport sector: Reflections from Abuja, Cape Town and Tunis. Journal of Transport Geography, 112, Article 103695. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2023.103695
• Murphy, E. C., Porter, G., Aouidet, H., Dungey, C., Han, S., Houiji, R., Jlassi, M., Keskes, H., Mansour, H., Nasser, W., Riahi, H., Riahi, S., & Zaghoud, H. (2023). ‘No place for a woman’: Access, exclusion, insecurity and the mobility regime in grand tunis. Geoforum, 142, Article 103753. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103753
• Porter, G., Murphy, E. C., Adamu, F., Delannoy, A., & Dungey, C. (2023). Everyday mobility practices and the ethics of care: young women's reflections on social responsibility in the time of COVID-19 in three African cities. Mobilities, 18(1), 21-36. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450101.2022.2039561
• Porter, G., Murphy, E., Han, S., Mansour, H., Keskes, H., Dungey, C., Clark, S., & der Weijde, K. V. (2022). Improving young women’s access to safe mobility in a low-income area of Tunis: Challenges and opportunities pre- and post-Covid. Transportation Research Procedia, 60, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trpro.2021.12.035
• Porter, G., Murphy, E., Adamu, F., Dayil, P., De Lannoy, A., Han, S., Mansour, H., Dungey, C., Ahmad, H., Maskiti, B., S, C., & Van der Weidje, K. (2021). Women's mobility and transport in the peripheries of three African cities: Reflecting on early impacts of COVID-19. Transport Policy, 110, 181-190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2021.05.025
• Murphy, E. (2018). The In-securitisation of Youth in the South and East Mediterranean. The International Spectator, 53(2), 21-37. https://doi.org/10.1080/03932729.2018.1454084
• Murphy, E. (2017). A Political Economy of Youth Policy in Tunisia. New Political Economy, 22(6), 676-691. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2017.1311848
• Murphy, E. (2013). The Tunisian elections of October 2011: a democratic consensus. The Journal of North African Studies, 18(2), 231-247. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629387.2012.739299
• Murphy, E. C. (2012). Problematizing Arab Youth: Generational Narratives of Systemic Failure. Mediterranean Politics, 17(1), 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13629395.2012.655043
• Daoudi, A., & Murphy, E. (2011). Framing New Communicative Technologies in the Arab World. Journal of Arab & Muslim Media Research, 4(1), 3-22. https://doi.org/10.1386/jammr.4.1.3_1
• Murphy, E. C. (2011). "The Arab State and (Absent) Civility in New Communicative Spaces". Third World Quarterly, 32(5), 959-980. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2011.578972
• Murphy, E. (2009). Theorizing ICTs in the Arab World: Informational Capitalism and the Public Sphere. International Studies Quarterly, 53(4), 1131-1153. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2009.00571.x
• Murphy, E. (2006). 'The Tunisian Mise à Niveau Programme and the Political Economy of Reform'. New Political Economy, 11(4), 519-540. https://doi.org/10.1080/13563460600990798
• Murphy, E. (2006). Agency and space : information technology and political reform in the Gulf Arab States. Third World Quarterly, 27(6), 1059-1083. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436590600850376
• Murphy, E. (2002). 'Transition amd Good Governance Versus Transition amd Bad Governance'
• Murphy, E. (2001). 'The State and the Private Sector in North Africa: Seeking Specificity'. Mediterranean Politics, 6(2), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/713604511
• Murphy, E. (2001). 'Human Rights in Tunisia: Dilemmas for the European Union'. Mediterranean journal of human rights, 5, 199-224
• Murphy, E. (1998). Legitimacy and Economic Reform in the Arab World. The Journal of North African Studies, 3(3), 71 - 92
• Murphy, E., & Ehteshami, A. (1996). 'Transformation of the Corporatist State in the Middle East'. Third World Quarterly, 17(4), 753-772. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436599615362

Report

• Pickett, K., & Taylor-Robinson, D. (2021). The Child of the North: Building a fairer future after COVID-19. London: Northern Health Science Alliance and N8 Research Partnership

Working Paper

• Calder, M., MacDonald, R., Mikhael, D., Murphy, E. C., & Phoenix, J. (in press). Marginalisation, Young People in the South and East Mediterranean and Policy
• Murphy, E. C. (1995). Israel and the Palestinians : the economic rewards of peace?