Central and West Asia
Region Leader
Dr Harry Munt
Harry is a historian of the pre-modern (medieval) Islamic world. Much of Harry's research focuses on the history of the early Islamic caliphate and particularly the development of ideas about holy cities and pilgrimage practices across the Islamic world. Harry also works on the interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims as well as on the different ways in which pre-modern Muslims approached the task of writing the history of their communities.
Harry's research
Research highlights
Region members
Dr Claire Chambers
English and Related Literature
Claire is Professor of Global Literature. Claire is an expert in contemporary South Asian literature written in English and literary representations of British Muslims. Claire's new monograph, Britain Through Muslim Eyes, traces the development of artistic depictions of Muslims in Britain from the eighteenth century to the present day.
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Dr Colleen Morgan
Archaeology
Colleen's research focuses on household archaeology, heritage and gender in the Gulf and Middle East. She is currently working in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
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Dr Corrado Topi
Stockholm Environment Institute
Corrado is a complex system scientist who focuses on participatory ecological economics and geographic political economics, and on working directly with stakeholders. In particular: participatory collaborative approaches to the economics of green transition strategies at the local level, i.e. strategies for the transition to a sustainable and resilient model in private enterprises (especially SMEs), cities, and rural and periurban communities; value chain (in particular food and drink value chain) and local green economic development; economics of energy efficiency strategies and of water efficiency strategies at the local level; cultural heritage and green economic development at the local level; ecosystem services and green economic development at the local level.
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Professor Gulcin Ozkan
Economics and Related Studies
Gulcin's research interests include international macroeconomics, international finance, emerging markets and political economics. Some topics of recent research include financial crises; fiscal austerity and redistribution; economics of constitutions; optimal monetary and macroprudential policy for emerging economies; central bank independence and public debt and financial development.
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Dr Joanna de Groot
History
Joanna's research interests include gendered socio-cultural histories of Iran, the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and the Persianate world since c.1750; orientalism, imperialism and anti-imperialism in those settings; concepts of, and debates around, historical practice in those fields.
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Dr Martin Jones
Centre of Applied Human Rights, York Law School
Martin's research examines the role of the law, the legal professional and legal processes and institutions in protection, with a particular focus on the protection of refugees and activists at risk (human rights defenders).
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Dr Michele Campopiano
English and Related Literature
Michele's research interests are in the economic, social and cultural history of Iraq and Iran in the Middle Ages. History of the Holy Land. Christendom and Islam in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Transcultural contacts in the Medieval period (India, Middle East, Europe).
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Professor Nina Caspersen
Politics
Nina's research interests include territorial and separatist conflicts in the former Soviet Union, in particular in the Caucasus; peace processes; conflict resolution; de facto/unrecognised states.
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Haleemah Alaydi
English and Related Literature
Haleemah's research areas include refugee literature, asylum seekers, migration, exile, Palestine and diaspora from the Middle East. Her research interests centre around the intersection of literature, race and politics, and the relation between peripatetic notions of identity, place, language, and modes of belonging in contemporary fiction.
Professor Richard Common
School for Business and Society
Richard's research interests are in Public Administration and Human Resource Management in the Gulf States, Hong Kong SAR, PRC, Singapore and Malaysia.
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Sabrina Mimid
International Relations Office
Sabrina manages strategic relationships in the Middle East.
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Dr Sam Hellmuth
Language and Linguistic Science
Sam works on the sound systems of Arabic dialects primarily, but also on the Indo-Aryan language Mirpuri Pahari (spoken both in the UK and in Pakistan), with a special focus on the expression of meaning via stress, rhythm and intonation, and on the contemporary effects of historical contact.
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Dr Yihua Hu
School of Physics, Engineering and Technology
Yihua's research interests include renewable energy, electric vehicles and smart grid technology.
Samantha Lui
Global Opportunities, International Recruitment, Partnerships and Mobility (IRPM)
I'm interested in events, funding and study exchange opportunities for York students in Asia.
Dr Samarthia Thankappan
Environment
Samarthia's research areas include sustainable food production and consumption (includes sustainable lifestyles, sustainable diets, food losses and food waste management and environmentally friendly behaviours); Understanding enhanced transport systems (includes innovative, efficient, sustainable and practical shortest pathways for low carbon strategies); CSR and sustainability of supply chains across a range of sectors (food, automotive, textiles, construction).
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Ullah, Zahid
Politics (PhD student)
Zahid is working on violent extremism in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan with a focus on the link between the system of governance and violent extremism.
Burak Caliskan
Politics
Burak's research areas are the post-independence Central Asian countries. He works on Post-Soviet, militarism, enclaves, nationalism and identity.
Jun Zhang
History of Art
Jun's research interests are late modernism, contemporary art in China, relations between art and politics, posthuman art. She works on the avant-garde arts based on Chinese characters in the 1980s.
Claudia Milena Adler
Health Sciences
My research interests are on what learning approaches empower girls and women from marginalised and rural backgrounds, focusing on women folk from South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. Her work focuses on raising awareness of the implications on health and wellbeing and community wellbeing by contemporary and non-mainstream pedagogical approaches within the context of disasters, conflict and uneven development.
Aljawharah Alzamil
Language and Linguistics
My research interests is about Saudi Arabic dialects linguistics aspects, mainly on phonological and intonational aspects in relation to sociolinguistics aspects and language contact.