Antonia Thies, M.A.

• Since 2026 associated researcher at the Chair of Middle East Politics and Society as well as research as associate at the Erlangen Center for Islam and Law in Europe (EZIRE)
• 2026 PhD in Political Science, “Autocracies, the Temptation of Sentimentality and the Consolidation of Collective Identities in Gulf Monarchies”
  • 2022–2025 PhD candidate in the DFG-Research Training Group 2726 “The Sentimental in Literature, Culture, and Politics”
  • Doctoral Research Scholarship from the DAAD and the Vinzl Foundation for Field Research in Qatar and Kuwait
  • Doctoral Research Scholarship from the Office for Gender and Diversity at FAU for Field Research in Qatar

• Mai 2025 Field Research in Kuwait

• Oktober–December 2024 Fellowship German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), Research Division Africa and Middle East (Stephan Roll)
• September 2024 Field Research in Saudi Arabia
• August 2023–February 2024 Academic coaching for early-career female researchers, supported by the chair (Demmelhuber) and funded by the Office for Gender and Diversity at FAU
• October–December 2023 Visiting Research Fellowship, Gulf Studies Center, Doha, Qatar, Research Group on Politics and Security (Luciano Zaccara) and Social Affairs (Amr al-Azm)
• October–December 2023 Field Research in Qatar
• 2021–2022 VW research project “Global Autocratic Collaboration in Times of Covid19” at the Chair of Middle East Politics and Society (Demmelhuber)
• 2020–2022 Interdisciplinary BMBF research project “Wechselwirkungen” at EZIRE (Thielmann)
• 2019–2022 Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies, master’s thesis on “Global Autocratic Collaboration in Times of Covid-19. Gulf regional competition for China’s favor”
• 2015–2019 Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Arabic Studies at the University of Applied Sciences Bremen and Al-Akhawayn University Ifrane, Morocco
• 2015 High school diploma at the Salzmannschule Schnepfenthal, second foreign language Arabic

• System Stability and Transformation of Political Systems, particularly in Autocracies
• Political Concepts of Order, Socio-Political Norm Formation, and Legitimation
• Autocratic Regime Resilience in Gulf Monarchies
• Foreign Policy and International Relations in the MENA Region
• Political Culture in the Arabian Peninsula
• Political Emotions, Affects, and their Significance for Identity, Norm, and Order Processes

• Thies, Antonia. Forthcoming. Drivers of Grassroots Social and Political Transition: Enhancing Saudi-German Underground Art Spheres. In KAS Policy Reports.
• Thies, Antonia. 2025. Back to the Future. State Transformation and Sentimental Repertoires of Belonging in Saudi Arabia. In Heike Paul and Sarah Pritz (ed.): Sentimental State(s). Affective Politics of Order and Belonging, Bielefeld: Transcript.
• Thies, Antonia. 2025. Konstruktion von Wir-Identitäten. In Thomas Demmelhuber and Nadine Scharfenort (ed.): Handbuch Arabische Halbinsel. Geographie und Politik. Heidelberg: Springer Nature.
• Thies, Antonia, Tobias Zumbraegel and Thomas Demmelhuber. 2025. The Race for Best Friendships in Sino-Gulf Relations: Fractured Cooperation and Conflict in Times of Strategic Uncertainty. In International Relations, online first.
• Roll, Stephan and Antonia Thies. 2025. Saudi Arabia’s ‘Vision 2030’ and Trump’s Second Term. Between Diverging Interests and Business Relations. SWP Commentary 2025/C 02. [Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik Berlin/German Institute for International and Security Affairs]
• Roll, Stephan and Antonia Thies. 2025. Golfmonarchien: Geschäftsbeziehungen und Interessenskonflikte. In Aksoy, Asseburg, Kempin et al.: Perspektiven auf Trump II aus Europa, Nahost und Afrika. SWP Study 360°.[Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik Berlin/German Institute for International and Security Affairs]
• Demmelhuber, Thomas and Antonia Thies. 2023. Autocracies and the temptation of sentimentality: repertoires of the past and contemporary meaning making in the Gulf monarchies. In Third World Quarterly. DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2023.2171392
• Thies, Antonia, Mahmud Helmy, Jule Klopke and Jens Schönstedt. 2021. Quantitative Religionsforschung zu Migration und Religion. In Soziologie 50 (3). Tagungsbericht.

Autocracies, the Temptation of Sentimentality and the Consolidation of Collective Identities in Gulf Monarchies

In her research project, Antonia examined the forms and functions of sentimentality in the consolidation of collective identities, using selected Gulf monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait) as case studies. She analyzed emotions and affects, as well as sentimentality as a relational communicative code that oscillates between past and present. The project investigated affect-driven civic engagement in processes of state transformation in the Gulf in light of multiple global crises like the looming post-oil era. She thus addressed gaps in existing research on the non-material modes of political order and regime survival.

A central focus lay on how memory practices within new cultural heritage projects activate emotional knowledge by drawing on historically shaped repertoires that are pre-structured by social and political norms as well as national ideological markers. Accordingly, the project examined sites of sentimentality in the cultural sector and in the context of national holidays. Emphasizing the reciprocal nature of sentimentality, the study adopted a tentative bottom-up approach by investigating affective responses through affect-ethnographic field research in the respective countries.