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Lecturer in social policy, University of Bath

Prior to working at the University of Bath, I was a lecturer in social policy at the University of Kent. Having completed my PhD in social policy at the University of Nottingham I spent one year at Warwick University working as an ESRC post-doctoral fellow.

My main research interests are in the study of social policy and the welfare systems of the Middle East and North Africa region, with particular emphasis on the Arab and Muslim populations there. I also have a passionate interest for understanding the intersections between religion and public action which has filtered into my research on social policy both in the UK, MENA region and the world at large! These two main lines of enquiry help me make links between social policy, international development and moral philosophy and feed into a much broader theoretical focus on the meanings of wellbeing, the drivers of social welfare action and the mutually constitutive relationship between religious identities and capitalism.

I am involved in a variety of academic research, consultancy and outreach activities on social policy in the MENA region. I am currently Principal Investigator on an ESRC standard grant which seeks to produce a mapping of the welfare systems of the MENA region based on the country case studies of Lebanon, Turkey and Iran.

I am also founder and current convener of the MENA social policy network and MENA social policy blog. The network activities have been funded by a grant from the Council for British Research in the Levant.

I am a member of the editorial board of Sociology and co-convenor of the Social Policy Association’s International and Comparative Social Policy Working Group. I was Treasurer of the UK Social Policy Association (SPA) between 2005-2012, and member of the editorial board of the Journal of Social Policy since between 2009 and 2013.

Experience

  • –present
    Lecturer in social policy, University of Bath