Centre for the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World

Teaching and Research Fellowships

The Alwaleed Centre offers two-year early career fellowships linked to its teaching and research agenda.

Fellowships are offered periodically and are advertised on the Current Vacanies page of this website as well as on www.jobs.ac.uk.

Current Teaching and Research Fellows

Dr Idil Akinci

Dr Idil Akıncı

İdil joined the Alwaleed Centre in September 2019 as an Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow. Her research interests and experience centre around the issues of national identity, citizenship and belonging in multicultural societies, with a focus on the Arab Gulf States.

She holds a PhD in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex (2018), where she explored the everyday experiences of national identity and citizenship by young Arab migrant communities and Emirati citizens in Dubai. İdil also conducted fieldwork in Dubai with South Asian migrant communities during 2012-2013 as a part of her MA degree in Sociology at the City, University of London. She has published her work in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies.

İdil has taught a number of undergraduate courses in sociology, migration, human geography, and social anthropology both at the University of Sussex and Zayed University in Dubai. She is currently working on her post-doctoral research, where she investigates how Syrians, born and raised in the Arabian Gulf States, develop new strategies to acquire alternative citizenship from Western European countries, taking into consideration the ripple effects of the political situation present in Syria and the ramifications of such upon their relationship to citizenship and future plans, within the Gulf and Europe.

Contact Dr Idil Akıncı

Dr Alexis Blouet

Dr Alexis Blouët

Alexis works alongside the Alwaleed Centre's Director, Professor Frederic Volpi, on a project that develops a comparative approach to analyze Islamist parties’ action in governance around the Mediterranean region.

Alexis obtained a PhD in Law from University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne. His dissertation dealt with constitution-making in Egypt after the January 25th 2011 Revolution, and its first part was accomplished in Cairo where he stayed from 2011 to 2014. His work received a prestigious award from the Varenne Institute and was published in French by LGDJ editions in 2019. His research interests are focused on how legal theory can contribute to a better understanding of power in the region while trying to refine legal theory’s analytical tools through the prism of politics and actors in the area.

Alexis has taught in Cairo University, Paris I Panthéon-Sorbnonne University and Paris Ouest Nanterre la Défense University. He has also carried-out postdoctoral fieldwork in Beirut as part of the French Institute for Near East Studies (IFPO). As part of his work at the Alwaleed Centre he will teach a new course starting in 2020 dealing with law and politics in the Middle East.

Lean more about Alexis's work HERE.

Contact Alexis Blouët