Speakers ENIS Granada Spring School

We are very pleased to announce that the following researchers will deliver a keynote lecture during the ENIS Granada Spring School ‘Patronage and Clientelism in the Muslim World’. Click here for more information about the theme of the Spring School and for the full program please click here.

Doris Behrens-Abouseif  (SOAS, University of London)

Behrens-Abouseif is Emeritus Professor at SOAS, University of London. She studied at the American University in Cairo, held her PhD from the University of Hamburg and her Habilitation from the University of Freiburg in Germany. From 2000 to 2014 she was the Chair of Islamic Art and Archaeology at SOAS (Nasser D Khalili ). Previously she taught at American University in Cairo, and at the universities of Freiburg and Munich in Germany. She held visiting professorships in several universities (American Univ. Cairo, Bamberg, Berlin, Gent, Harvard, University of Virginia) and she is member of the Academia Europaea. Her list of publications covers a wide range of subjects from the early period to the 19th century with focus on Egypt and Syria: history of Islamic architecture, urbanism, Islamic cultural history, concepts of aesthetics and Orientalism, material culture and the decorative art (in particular metalwork).

Mohamed Elshahed

Maribel Fierro (CSIC)

Maribel Fierro is Research Professor at the Institute of Languages and Cultures of the Mediterranean (CSIC). Her research deals with the political, religious and intellectual history of al-Andalus and the Islamic West, Islamic law, the construction of orthodoxy and the persecution of heresies, as well as violence and its representation in Medieval Arabic sources.

Eirik Hovden (University of Bergen)

Hovden is since 2018 a post doctoral fellow at the section for Arabic, Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen, Norway. His PhD (2012) was on development of Zaydi fiqh and codification of waqf in Yemen. After that, he has worked in projects on Yemeni medieval history (viscom.ac.at) and on the Zaydi Islamic law of the imamate.

Giacomo Luciani (Sciences Po Paris, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva)

Luciani teaches at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po, and at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. His work has focused on the political economy of MENA. With Hazem Beblawi, he edited a book on “The Rentier State” (1987), which is frequently cited as one of the origins of the concept. His latest edited book, “Combining Economic and Political Development”, discusses economic policies to support democratic transitions.

Laura Ruiz de Elvira (IRD) and Christoph Schwarz (CNMS)

Ruiz de Elvira is a permanent researcher at the French Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD). Her research interests focus on charities and social movements, political crisis and social policies, namely in Syria and Tunisia. She is the author of Associations de bienfaisance et ingénieries politiques dans la Syrie de Bachar al-Assad. La rupture du contrat social (Karthala, 2019) and, together with T. Zintl, of Civil Society and the State in Syria: The Outsourcing of Social Responsibility (Lynne Rienner, 2012). Together with C. H. Schwarz and I. Weipert-Fenner she has edited Clientelism and Patronage in the Middle East and North Africa. Networks of Dependency (Routledge, 2018).

Christoph H. Schwarz is a Post-doc researcher at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philipps-University Marburg, Germany. His research focuses on intergenerational relationships, political participation, social exclusion and precariousness, collective memory, and social movements, namely in Palestine, Morocco and Spain. Recent publications and editorial work: YOUTH. Thematic issue #9 of the journal META (Middle East – Topic & Arguments); Family and the Future. In: J. Gertel, R. Hexel, eds. (2018) Coping with Uncertainty: Youth in the Middle East and North Africa. London: Saqi. p. 115-132.
Together with Laura Ruiz de Elvira and I. Weipert-Fenner he has edited Clientelism and Patronage in the Middle East and North Africa. Networks of Dependency (Routledge, 2018).

Thijl SUNIER (Vrije Universiteit)

Sunier is professor of cultural anthropology, holds the chair of ‘Islam in European Societies’ (VU Amsterdam). Currently he conducts a research project on Islamic authority, religious critique, leadership and knowledge production in Europe. Currently he is involved in a European (EU funded) research project ‘Mediating Islam in the Digital Age’ (MIDA). His latest English books: Transnational Turkish Islam (2015) (with Nico Landman), Palgrave Macmillan; Islam and Society, Critical Concepts in Sociology (4 edited volumes) (2018), Routledge. He has written several reports on Islam in the Netherlands commissioned by the Dutch government. He is chairman of the board of the Netherlands Inter-University School for Islamic Studies (NISIS) and executive editor of the Journal of Muslims in Europe (JOME/Brill).