Chair of Middle East Politics and Society (Prof. Dr. Thomas Demmelhuber)
Who we are...
The Chair of Middle East Politics and Society specializes in research and teaching on the Middle East region. The Chair is one of the main research units of the Institute of Political Science as well as part of a broad network of interdisciplinary research on the Middle East at FAU.
The Chair, amongst others, contributes to the interdisciplinary Master degree program “Middle East Studies”. The curricula, detailed descriptions and the research foci of the Erlangen Middle East research is available on our MA program’s website.
Our research and teaching activities concentrate mostly on Turkey, the Levant, Egypt and the Arab Gulf region. We work and teach on a wide range of topics along the subfields of our discipline Political Science:
System analysis of state and power (authoritarianism, system transformation), questions of legitimacy/legitimation of political order, state-society relations (questions of participation and inclusion), historical analysis of political concepts (liberalism, nationalism, secularism and Islamism), and cooperation and conflict mechanisms (Gulf Cooperation Council, Middle East conflict/Arab-Israeli conflict). Apart from the research concerning the regional dynamics and structures of the Middle East we further investigate the region’s integration into international politics as well as the role of external actors within the region (e.g. the USA and the EU). Regular conferences and lectures organized by the Chair present the cutting-edge research on Middle Eastern politics, society, and culture.
Since its foundation in 1984, the Chair frequently conducts (international) research projects and offers thereby Ph.D. positions. In addition, we work with community colleges (Volkshochschule), media, local and national government/s to share our expertise with the wider public.