May Darwich

May Darwich is Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) of International Relations of the Middle East at the University of Birmingham. She was Assistant Professor at Durham University (2016-2019) and a Research Fellow at GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies (2014-2015). She holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from the University of Edinburgh (2015), an MA in International Politics from SciencePo Bordeaux (2010), and a BA in Political Science from Cairo University (2009).

Her research attempts to bring Middle East cases to debates within IR theory while surmounting the challenge to the study of state behaviour in the Middle East through theoretical lenses. Her research has appeared in internationally renowned journals, namely Foreign Policy Analysis, the Journal of Global Security Studies, Democratization, Mediterranean Politics, Global Discourse and in volumes on the international relations of the Middle East. She is the author of Threats and Alliances in the Middle East: Saudi and Syrian Policies in a Turbulent Region (Cambridge University Press, 2019). She is currently Principal Investigator of the Carnegie-funded project Port Infrastructures, International Politics, and Everyday Life: From the Arabian Gulf to the Horn of Africa.

She serves on the Steering Committee on the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS), a collaborative network designed to enhance the broader field of Middle East political science. She serves on the Steering Committee of the APSA MENA Workshops, an annual fellowship opportunity for PhD students and early-career political science faculty from the Arab MENA region. She is member of the Committe on Status of Engagement with the Global South of the International Studies Association. She is co-editor of the series ‘Identities and Geopolitics in the Middle East’ at Manchester University Press. Between 2016-2019, she was co-editor of the APSA (American Political Science Association) MENA Newsletter. Between 2019-2020, she was Director of the Arab Political Science Network (APSN), a scholarly collaborative initiative that seeks to support, enhance and increase scholars’ research and teaching outputs in the study of political science, and its sub and related fields in the Arab world. 

• International Relations Theory
• International Relations of the Middle East
• Foreign Policy Analysis
• Security Studies
• Identity Politics