Center for Middle East Studies Director Nadje Al-Ali

July 1, 2020

Effective July 1, 2020, NADJE AL-ALI, Robert Family Professor of International Studies and professor of anthropology and Middle East studies, assumed the role of Center Director for a three-year term. Nadje Al-Ali joined Brown as the Robert Family Professor of International Studies and professor of anthropology and Middle East studies in 2018, after leaving a long-term position at the Centre for Gender Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. Her main research interests revolve around feminist activism and gendered mobilization, mainly with reference to Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, and the Kurdish political movement. Her publications include Gender, Governance and Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2018, co-edited with Deniz Kandiyoti and Kathryn Spellman Poots); What kind of Liberation? Women and the Occupation of Iraq (University of California Press, 2009, co-authored with Nicola Pratt); Women and War in the Middle East: Transnational Perspectives (Zed Books, 2009, co-edited with Nicola Pratt); Iraqi Women: Untold Stories from 1948 to the Present (Zed Books, 2007,); and Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2000. Her co-edited book with Deborah al-Najjar, titled We are Iraqis: Aesthetics & Politics in a Time of War (Syracuse University Press), won the 2014 Arab-American book prize for non-fiction.

Professor Al-Ali is on the advisory board of kohl: a journal of body and gender research and has been involved in several feminist organizations and campaigns transnationally.