Adham Saouli

Adham Saouli received his PhD from the University of St Andrews in 2009. He has held a Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship at the University College Dublin (2008 to 2009). He then moved to the University of Edinburgh where he was Lecturer of Politics and International Relations (2009 to 2014). He joined the University of St Andrews in 2014. Adham Saouli is visiting Associate Professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies from September 2018 to August 2020.

His research is in the fields of International Relations and Comparative Politics, with focus on the Middle East region. He is interested in the genesis and development of political actors, be they states, social movements, or individuals. He is fascinated by the political behaviour of actors within constraining social contexts, by the dilemmas they face as they struggle to realise their ideals, and the intended and sometimes tragic consequences of their behaviour.

He has published on state formation, social movements, political ideas, and the politics and international relations of the Middle East region. He examined several cases, including Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Hezbollah, and Hamas. His first book, The Arab State: Dilemmas of Late Formation (2012), examined the conditions that keep states intact in the region. His second, Hezbollah: Socialisation and its Tragic Ironies (2019), explored the genesis and development of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. His article, Performing the Egyptian Revolution: Origins of Collective Restraint (2015), explained the collective action of the Midan al-Tahrir demonstration. It was nominated for the Harrison Prize (2015).