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Dr. Rahaf Aldoughli teaches courses on Politics and History of the ”Middle East” at Lancaster University. She was a Visiting Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and also won a fellowship with WIIS (Women in International Security) in Washington D.C.
Her areas of research expertise include identifying the ideological borrowings between European and Arab nationalism, the rise of the nation-state in the Middle East, the Syria crisis, militarism and the construction of masculinity in the Arab world.
Before moving to Lancaster, she was lecturer at the University of Manchester teaching Modern Middle Eastern History. She was based at the Centre for Cultural History of War. Her articles have appeared in the Middle East Journal, British Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Contemporary Levant and Syria Studies. She is currently working on her book Constructing the Nation: Masculinism and Gender Bias in Syrian Nationalism, which looks at the idealization of militarism in Syrian culture with particular focus on the origin of the Ba’ath ideology in the thought of Syrian nationalists.
Bringing loyalist and opposition factions together: The prospects for reconciliation in new Syria
Western visions for a post-war Syria often entail the creation of disarmament and reintegration programs oriented toward members of Islamist groups and militias. However, there is less discussion about how the legacies of state authoritarianism in regime-controlled or otherwise loyalist areas will likely hinder any type of post-war reconciliation.
A thinly veiled strategy: Assad's co-optation of women religious leaders
A few weeks ago, Syrian social media was abuzz about a short clip featuring the famous woman religious scholar and regime loyalist Khuloud Suruji. The video also drew attention to one question that has gone largely unaddressed: how have Assad and the Ba‘ath regime mobilized and manipulated female religious scholars throughout the Syrian civil war?
