The
Institute for the Transregional Study of the
Contemporary Middle East, North Africa
and Central
Asia
A Program of
the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University
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2008-2009 Fellowship Competition
Research Theme for 2008-2009: “Youth Culture and Politics in the Arab and Muslim Worlds”Haykel Takes Over as New Director
| Bernard Haykel, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at New York University has assumed directorship of the Transregional Institute. |
Haykel joins the Princeton faculty this fall as a professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. He was formerly associate professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern History in NYU's Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.
Haykel received his Ph.D. from Oxford University. His primary research interests center on Islamic political movements and legal thought. He has published extensively on the Salafi movement in both its pre-modern and modern manifestations. In particular, his book entitled Revival and Reform in Islam (Cambridge University Press, 2003) explores this strand of Islamic legal and political thought. He is presently writing a book on the religious politics of Saudi Arabia since the early 1950s.
Haykel has also advised the British and US governments on Islamic affairs and has been involved in a number of key court cases relating to terrorism since 9/11.
2007-2008 Transregional Institute Fellows Named
The Institute has selected two scholars as postdoctoral research associates for 2007-2008, Thomas Hegghammer and Majid Mohammadi.
Thomas Hegghammer earned his Ph.D. in political science from the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris, where he wrote a dissertation entitled "Violent Islamism in Saudi Arabia, 1979-2006: The Power and Perils of Pan-Islamic Nationalism." Since 2001, he has served as a Research Fellow with the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, researching and advising on militant Islam, terrorism and Saudi Arabia. He was also a Visiting Researcher at King’s College, London. His current research focuses on militant Islamic movements in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. While at Princeton he will work on a book project entitled “Abdallah Azzam and the Arab Mobilisation to Afghanistan: the Origins of Pan-Islamic Nationalism.” This work will explore how and why Arab Muslims were mobilized to fight in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Majid Mohammadi earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the State University of New York, Stony Brook in 2006. Prior to his academic career, Mohammadi was a writer and journalist in Iran and he has published ten books in Persian and English, as well as dozens of articles, chapters, translations and reviews. Mohammadi was an Open Society Fellow in 2006-2007 and held a summer fellowship at Stanford University in 2005. His current research focuses on the development of Islamism in Iranian society. While at Princeton he will work on a project entitled “From Revolutionary Islamism to Military Islamism: the Development of Islamism in Iranian Society, 1977-2007.” This work will explore the variety of Islamic ideologies that have arisen in Iran and the religious, cultural and political roots that sustain them.