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Associated Fellows

Dr. des. Anne-Linda Amira Augustin (Research Fellow 09/2013 - 01/2017)

Anne-Linda Amira Augustin holds an M.A. in Middle Eastern Studies, Russian and French from Leipzig University. During her studies, she spent numerous semesters at Aden University (Yemen), Gadjah Mada University (Indonesia) and University of Aix-Marseille I (France). She is a research associate in Middle Eastern Studies and Sociology. In her dissertation, she focused on intergenerational transmission of narratives and memories in the ‘South Arabian revolution’ and political mobilization in southern Yemen. Her current research interests include independence and protest movements, unrecognized statehood and social space production in the MENA region.
Dr. Jamal Bahmad (Research Fellow 05/2014 - 01/2015)

Jamal Bahmad obtained a PhD in Film and Postcolonial Cultural Studies from the University of Stirling (UK). His main research interests centre principally on North African, Amazigh (Berber) and Francophone culture, cinema, cities, literature, migration and minorities.

In January 2015, he joined the University of Leeds as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow based at the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies. He is currently working on two book projects related to his current research and interests in contemporary Maghrebi cinema and culture.

http://leeds.academia.edu/JamalBahmad
Dr. Jamie Furniss (Research Fellow 03/2018-01/2019)

Jamie Furniss is an anthropologist working mainly on topics related to
'development' and the environment, especially waste, in Arabic-speaking
societies of the Middle East and North Africa. He has taught in
anthropology, geography and area studies departments at the University
of Lyon and the University of Edinburgh. He also has significant
experience working outside of the academy to make research accessible
and compelling to wider audiences through museum exhibitions, artistic
performances, and documentary film. He was the Egypt team leader for the
exhibition Lives of Garbage: The Economy of Waste, a 1200 square meter
exhibition at the Musée des Civilisations de l’Europe et de la
Méditerranée (Marseille, 22 March - 14 August 2017). He was assistant
director for an ARTE documentary film on waste in Cairo, aired in North
America on Smithsonian TV, the History Channel, and Smithsonian TV. He
was the fundraiser and show coordinator for a Just Festival/Edinburgh
Fringe show consisting of a spoken word, musical and photographic
performance about Cairo’s waste collectors, based in part onH his
research and performed by a former Cairo Opera House violinist.

Publications (Selected)

Edited collections
Furniss J., Y. Ph. Tastevin, F. Joulian (2016) Réparer le monde : Excès,
Reste et Innovation, Special Issue of Techniques & culture 2016/2(65)

Furniss J. & D. Meier (2012) Le laïc et le religieux dans l’action
humanitaire, Special Issue of A Contrario 2012/2(18)

Peer reviewed articles

Furniss, J. (forthcoming) Al-Ustura: Folk Hero or Thug? Class and
Contested Masculinity in Egypt In M. Inhorn & K. Isidoros (eds.) Arab
Masculinities: Anthropological Reconceptions, Berkeley, University of
California Press.

Furniss, J. (2017) What Type of Problem is Waste in Egypt? Social
Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale 25(3): 301–317.

Furniss, J. (2016) Postrevolutionary land encroachment in Cairo:
Rhizomatic urban space making andthe line of flight from illegality
Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 37(3): 310-329.

Furniss, J. (2015) Alternative framings of transnational waste flows:
reflections based on the Egypt–China PET plastic trade AREA 41(1): 24-30

Furniss J. (2012) Religion, Humanitarianism and Development: The Secular
Materialist 'Mission' of Sœur Emmanuelle with Cairo's Garbage
Collectors A Contrario 2012/2(18): 97-123.
Dr. Helena Nassif (Research Fellow 10/2015 - 01/2017)

Helena Nassif received her PhD in media studies from Westminster University. She holds a bachelor degree in environmental health and a master degree in journalism, and she worked in these fields before pursuing culture studies. Her PhD thesis “Home Under Siege: *Baba al-Hara*, Televising Morality and Everyday Life in the Levant”, examines the role of television in representing the past and constructing an idealized society using a case study of a phenomenal Ramadan drama series, Bab el-Hara; and it ethnographically investigates how Bab al-Hara’s cultural, moral and spatial telos are negotiated by its viewers. Nassif‘s research interests focus on questions of nationalism, postcolonialism, memory, generations, contentious politics, space, gender, digital technology as well as theory and methodology of knowledge production in the Arab east.
Dr. Refqa Abu-Remaileh (Research Fellow 10/2013 - 03/2014)

Refqa Abu-Remaileh was a Postdoc Researcher at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philipps Universität Marburg. Her academic research revolves around the intersections between modern Arabic literature and film. She received her PhD and MSt in modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford (2010, 2004) and her BA in English Literature from the University of British Columbia (2002). Abu-Remaileh’s doctoral thesis examined the creative works of two Palestinian citizens of Israel: the novels of Emile Habibi (1922—1996) and the films of Elia Suleiman (1960—). After completing her PhD, Abu-Remaileh worked with the Oxford Research Group’s (www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk) Middle East Programme, a conflict-resolution organization focusing on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. She created a new strategic thinking group involving Palestinian citizens of Israel.
She was a Europe in the Middle East—The Middle East in Europe (EUME) Fellow in 2012-2013 and worked on a book project expanding upon her doctoral dissertation. Her new project looks at the aesthetics of resistance and subversion in the works of the post-Oslo generation of Palestinian writers and filmmakers.
Dr. Achim Rohde (Scientific Coordinator 03/2013 - 03/2018)

Achim Rohde is an Islamic scholar and Middle East historian. From March 2013 until March 2018 he was the scientific coordinator of the research network Re-Configurations at the Philipps University. Previously, he was a guest researcher at the CNMS in 2011 and was instrumental in developing the successful project proposal to the BMBF. Since April 2018, Rohde has been research coordinator at the Academy for Islam in Science and Society of the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main (www.aiwg.de).

Contact: https://aiwg.de/aiwg_team/rohde/
Dr. Laura Ruiz de Elvira Carrascal (Research Fellow 09/2013 - 10/2015)

Laura Ruiz de Elvira Carrascal earned a Ph.D. in Political Science at the EHESS (Paris) and the UAM (Madrid) in 2013. Her dissertation, Associations de bienfaisance et ingénieries politiques dans la Syrie de Bachar al-Assad : Émergence d’une société civile autonome et retrait de l’Etat ? (Charities and political engineering in Bashar al-Asad’s Syria: the rise of an autonomous civil society and the retreat of the state?), on which she was awarded The Syrian Studies Association's 2014 Dissertation Prize, analyzes the political engineering of Bashar al-Asad’s regime through the prism of charitable action. At Marburg University, Dr. Ruiz de Elvira carries out a new comparative and interdisciplinary research project focused on the changing interactions that can be observed between charities and politics in Syria and in Tunisia. Ultimately, this research aims at exploring different forms of sociopolitical reconfigurations that are taking place in the MENA region since 2011, thus trying to seize both the logics of continuity and rupture. Ruiz de Elvira has written numerous papers in French, English, and Spanish on the Syrian civil society and charitable actors, on the Syrian authoritarian system of rule and, and more recently, on the Syrian uprising. Amongst them: The End of the Ba’thist Social Contract in Bashar al-Asad’s Syria: Reading Sociopolitical Transformations through Charities and Broader Benevolent Activism (IJMES, 46-2, May 2014) and Civil Society and the State in Syria: The Outsourcing of Social Responsibility (Lynne Rienner, March 2012), both co-authored with Tina Zintl.

She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the ERC / CNRS project WAFAW (http://www.wafaw.org/) and based at the L'Institut de recherches et d'études sur le monde arabe et musulman - IREMAM (http://iremam.cnrs.fr/).

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Dr. Mariam Salehi (Research Fellow 10/2013 - 01/2017)

Mariam Salehi is a research fellow and doctoral candidate at the Center for Conflict Studies. Previously, was as research fellow in the research network “Re-Configurations. History, Remembrance and Transformation in the Middle East and North Africa” at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Marburg. Within the network, she contributed to the research field ‘Political Transformation and Transitional Justice’ and mainly worked on the Tunisia case study.

Prior to coming to Marburg, she worked as a research associate to the Chair of International Politics at Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg. She studied European Studies and Global Politics at the University of Bremen, IEP Lille, and the London School of Economics.

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Dr. Ihab Saloul (Research Fellow 10/2015 - 01/2017)

Ihab Saloul is associate professor of cultural studies, founding director and academic coordinator of the Amsterdam School for Heritage and Memory Studies (AHM). He is leading the UVA’s research domain ‘Conflict’ at the Amsterdam Center for Cultural Heritage and Identity (ACHI), and a visiting professor of Culture and Politics at Freie Universität Berlin. Saloul was a research fellow at the network “Re-configurations”. History, remembrance and transformation processes in the Middle East and North Africa” at Marburg University, a senior fellow at Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (NIAS), a EUME-Fellow at Wissenschaftkolleg zu Berlin, and taught previously Comparative Literature, Art and Media Studies at Maastricht University. Saloul is a book series editor of ‘Palgrave Studies of Cultural Heritage and Conflict’ (Palgrave US), and ‘Heritage and Memory Studies’ at Amsterdam University Press (AUP). His research deals with competing memories and the aesthetics of displacement and exile, cultural memory and identity politics, visual analysis and trauma, museums and conflict heritage as well as contemporary cultural thought in the Middle East.
Dimitris Soudias (Research Fellow 04/2014 - 06/2017)

Dimitris Soudias was a research assistant in the BMBF-funded project "Re-Configurations" at the Center for Near and Middle East Studies (CNMS) of the Philipps-University Marburg.
He studied Political Science and Middle East Studies at the University of Erlangen and the American University in Cairo. Before joining the CNMS, Dimitris worked as a consultant for the Yemen Polling Center in Sana'a and as a research assistant at the Center for Politics of the Near East at Freie Universität Berlin.

His current publications include Negotiating Space - The Evolution of the Egyptian Street, 2000-2011' (The American University in Cairo Press, 2014);
Mapping Popular Perceptions: Local Security, Insecurity and Police Work in Yemen with Mareike Transfeld (Yemen Polling Center, 2014);
Presence and Space in the Arab Revolt together with Christoph Schumann (in Presence and Implicit Knowledge, edited by Christoph Ernst & Heike Paul, Transcript, 2013).

Dimitris is interested in protest and resistance, spatial sociology, security, and research logic.
Dr. Irene Weipert-Fenner (Research Fellow 09/2013 - 09/2015)

Irene Weipert-Fenner studied Political Science, Arabic Studies, Religious Studies, and Philosophy at the Universities of Munich, Erlangen-Nuremberg, and Bamberg. During her studies, she spent a year in Egypt: the focus of her research ever since. In her dissertation, at the cluster of excellence “normative orders” at the University of Frankfurt and the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF), she explored the role of the parliament in an authoritarian regime using the example of Egypt. Furthermore, Dr. Weipert-Fenner is interested in the labor movement and social protests in North Africa and in political transformations and transitions from a comparative perspective. Her postdoctoral research at the Philipps-Universität Marburg examines Socioeconomic Protests and Political Transformation: Dynamics of Contentious Politics in Egypt and Tunisia. Socioeconomic grievances were among the major forces driving the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia. However, since the ousting of the dictators, political debates have focused on political institutions, questions of identity, and civil-military relations, even though both countries continue to contend with socioeconomic protests. Her project analyzes how and to what extent socioeconomic contention shapes the ongoing process of political transformation in Egypt and Tunisia.

She is the co-director of a project funded by The Volkswagen Foundation: Socioeconomic Protests and Political Transformation: Dynamics of Contentious Politics in Egypt and Tunisia Against the Background of South American Experiences

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