Dr Rahaf Aldoughli

Research Overview

I teach courses on Politics and History of the ''Middle East''. I was a Visiting Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and also won a fellowship with WIIS (Women in International Security) in Washington DC. I have also been granted the highly competitive and prestigious fellowship by Kroc Institute at Notre Dame Univerity to do research on peace and justice in the Syrian context.

My 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.

I have been working on two research projects in the last two years investigating state Islamism in Syria, the relationship between authoritarianism and religion, sectrianaims and nationalism.

My research also focuses on the association between the rise of nation-states in the Middle East and the perpetuation of militarism, despotism and fundamentalism, analysing militarism in the Arab context not only as an institution used by the state, but also as an ideology that perpetuates masculinity and gender bias.

Before moving to Lancaster, I was lecturer at the University of Manchester teaching Modern Middle Eastern History. She was based at the Centre for Cultural History of War.

My 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.

I am currently working on my book Constructing the Nation: Masculinism and Gender Bias in Syrian Nationalism, which looks at the idealisation of militarism in Syrian culture and constitutions with particular focus on the origin of the Ba’ath ideology in the thought of Syrian nationalists.