PhD Projects
Information for students interested in a PhD project
Please consider the following conditions/requirements:
General conditions: A master degree in political science or in an intersection between political science and Middle Eastern studies is required (final grade at least 2,0 – acc.to German grading scale; i.e. “excellent”).
Potential topics: You should make sure that the topic of your dissertation matches the research interests of the chair.
Preparation of a proposal: You should hand in a proposal of approximately 10 pages that captures your research question and its scientific relevance, an overview of the methodology you are planning to adapt as well as possible outcomes of your research.
As a doctoral candidate, you are expected to submit a formal application of your dissertation project at the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, sign a supervision agreement, and participate in the research colloquium (weekly event during the semester). Once every semester, doctoral candidates should present the state of their research in the colloquium.
Current PhD projects
Marius Bales: The Changing Practices of Warfare in Saudi Arabia and the UAE: a New Autocratic Way of War?
Miriam Bohn: The Autocrat’s Guide to the Periphery: Linking Decentralization Efforts and Elite Networks in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
Dastan Jasim: Civic Culture Without A State: Conceptualizing Kurdish Civic Culture in Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria between State-Control and Resistance (in cooperation with Doctoral Programme at GIGA Hamburg)
Andrea Klinger: Crisis of Democracy: Politics, Language and Emotions
Katharina Nicolai: Green Temptations: Environmental Sustainability as a Catch-All Policy Field in Morocco
Antonia Thies: Autocracies, the Temptation of Sentimentality and the Consolidation of Collective We-identities in the Gulf Monarchies
Completed PhD projects
2022: Dr. Aline de Oliveira Alencar: Ennahda from within: from Political Islam to Muslim Democracy
2021: Dr. Christina Hartmann: Changes in Jihadi Discourse in the Wake of the Islamic State
2020: Dr. Tobias Zumbrägel: The delusion of being eco-friendly: Environmental policy making and the quest of legitimation in the oil-rich Arab Gulf monarchies
2020: Dr. Nina Nowar: Local Normative Spaces. Dynamiken der Aushandlung von Identität und Moral im öffentlichen Raum von Tunis
2019: Dr. Matthias Sailer: Über die außenpolitischen Interessen der arabischen Golfstaaten gegenüber Ägypten seit 2011
2017: Dr. Ziad Koussa: The Arab Revolutionary Uprisings in Egypt: An Analysis of David Harvey’s framework of Accumulation by Dispossession
2015: Dr. Christian Wolff: Freiheit, Bürger und Staat: die Entwicklung libaralen Denkens in der ägyptischen Muslimbruderschaft (supervised by Prof. Dr. Christoph Schumann, Prof. Dr. Thomas Philipp)
2013: Dr. Mahmoud Jaraba: Moderation or Transformation: Explaining the Different Ideological Trajectories of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and the Turkish Justice and Development Party (supervised by Prof. Dr. Christoph Schumann)
2012: Dr. Meltem Kulaçatan: Geschlechterdiskurse in den Medien: Türkisch-deutsche Presse in Europa (supervised by Prof. Dr. Christoph Schumann, Prof. Dr. Mathias Rohe)