Bamo Nouri

Dr Bamo Nouri is currently an Honorary Research Fellow in international politics at City, University of London and a Lecturer in Politics and IR at the University of West London.

Bamo has a degree in Law, an MA in Human Rights Political Science, and a PhD in international politics. His experience includes working both in the private corporate sector and UK higher education. He is a scholar and an independent investigative journalist and writer with interests in American foreign policy and the international and domestic politics of the Middle East.

His latest book with Routledge, entitled ‘Elite theory and the 2003 Iraq Occupation by the United States – How US corporate elites created Iraq’s elitist political system’ was released in September, 2021. The book locates US elites as members of corporate elite networks and drivers of corporate elite interests, arguing that studying the social sources of US power plays an important part in understanding the nature of their decisions in US foreign policy. By exploring the decisions taken by American elites in the Iraq War, Bamo argues that the decisions and agendas US elites pursued in Iraq were driven by corporate elite interests – embedded in them as individuals and in groups through the corporate elite networks they were rooted in – which they prioritised, using democracy promotion as a cover up. Using elite theory, membership network analysis and content analysis, this book explains who these elites were, how their backgrounds and social influences impacted their world-views, and what this looked like in a detailed exploration of their decision-making on the ground in Iraq. Bamo specifically examines the nature of US power, what drives it, what it looks like and its legacies.

Bamo’s teaching experience includes Lecturing American Politics and Foreign Policy at City, University of London, Goldsmiths, University of London and Manchester Metropolitan University. He has also previously been a teaching fellow at the University of Liverpool and the University of Manchester, where at the latter, in 2019, he was awarded the esteemed ‘Making a Difference Award’ for outstanding teaching innovation in social responsibility.