Arabic at Westminster enjoys a wide variety of research specialisms and interests, covering literature, cinema, visual and digital culture, current affairs, language teaching, history, migration and ethnography.
We invite doctoral research proposals in the field of modern and contemporary Arabic studies. We particularly welcome proposals that fit within (or interface with) our core research areas, including:
- Contemporary Arabic literature and cinema studies focusing on: gender representations, the postcolonial dimension as well as war, ideological variations and their effects on Arab societies, the rise of Islamism, patriarchy, and aesthetics and politics in Arabic novels
- Migration studies with a focus on Arabic-speaking communities and their history in the UK and elsewhere
- Classical Arabic literary studies with a focus on manuscripts and poetry in particular
- Qur’anic studies including the history of the Qur’an, corpus, style, rhetoric, exegesis and hermeneutics
- Intellectual Arab and Islamic history with a focus on the Nahda period, its pioneers, language and national identity in the Arab World, and discourse analysis of political movements in the Arab world (political legitimacy drawing on cultural narratives and references)
Current and recent PhD projects
- the Tunisian community in London
- representations of Islamists and Islamism in contemporary Egyptian cinema