Emma Murphy

Having completed a PhD at Exeter University on the political economy of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Emma moved to Durham’s Centre for Middle East and Islamic Studies as a British Academy post-doctoral Fellow in 1993, working on political and economic reform in Tunisia. She took up a lectureship post in 1995 and moved into the new School of Government and International Affairs in 2003, becoming a professor in 2007. As well as continuing her research on Tunisian political economy she has published widely on Middle East political economy and, more recently, on issues in global political economy such as food security and the spread of contemporary ICTs.

She has filled a variety of University roles including Deputy Head of Faculty (2002-05), Chair of Senate Academic Appeals Committee (2009-) and Honorary President of Durham University Charities Kommittee (2006-). She was a trustee and Secretary for the Universities Educational Trust for Palestine (1995-8), a member of the Board of Trustees for the Council for British Research on the Levant (2007-10) and a member of the Executive Committee of the UK Council for Graduate Education (2005-6). She is currently a member of the HEFCE Research Excellence Framework Sub-Panel 27 Area Studies, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Manufacturing (2000) and an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (2009). She is also co-editor of the journal Mediterranean Politics (IF 0.722, 72/157).

My research interests cover a broad spectrum of political economy issues in the Middle East, including information and communications technologies, food security, economic liberalisation, the Arab uprisings, and relations with the European Union.