Dr Courtney Freer

Courtney Freer is a Research Officer at the LSE Kuwait Programme. Having received a BA from Princeton University in Near East Studies and an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, she recently completed her PhD in Politics at the University of Oxford. Courtney’s thesis is focused on revising rentier state theory by examining the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the so-called “super-rentiers” of Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE. Courtney previously worked as a Research Assistant at the Brookings Doha Center and as a researcher at the US-Saudi Arabian Business Council.

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Contact

Email: c.j.freer@lse.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)207 955 7497

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Research Interests

• The political and social role of Islam in the Gulf
• The history and current role of Islamist organizations, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood, in the GCC
• Political reform in the Gulf States
• The political role of tribes in the Gulf
• Domestic politics of rentier states

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Publications

• The Muslim Brotherhood's Post-Arab Spring Legacy in the Smaller Gulf States, Gulf Affairs (Spring 2016).

• The Brotherhood in the Emirates: Anatomy of a Crackdown, Middle East Eye (December 2015).

• Rentier Islamism: The Role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf, LSE Middle East Centre (November 2015).

• The Rise of Pragmatic Islamism in Kuwait's Post-Arab Spring Opposition Movement, Brookings Institution’s Rethinking Political Islam funded by the Luce Foundation (forthcoming).

• Exclusion-Moderation: The Emergence of Islamist Cooperation with Secular Groups in Kuwait, Markaz, Brookings Institution (May 2015).

• Yemen Needs Action, Not Just Talk, with Ibrahim Sharqieh, The Philadelphia Inquirer (October 2011).

• How Stable is Jordan?: King Abdullah’s Half-Hearted Reforms and the Challenge of the Arab Spring, with Shadi Hamid, Brookings Doha Center Policy Briefing (November 2011).

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Selected Presentations

• “Qabila in the 21st Century: Tribes as Civil Society in the Arabian Gulf,” to be presented at MESA Annual Meeting (November 2015).

• “Contested Visions of Liberation: Kuwait as a Microcosm for Competing Islamisms,” presented at BRISMES Annual Conference (June 2015).