Dr Aitemad Muhanna-Matar

Assistant Professorial Research Fellow

Dr Aitemad Muhanna-Matar is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow  at the LSE Middle East Centre currently conducting a research on Salafist youth in Tunisia and the process of subjectification. In 2013, she managed a regional research project funded by Oxfam-GB and run by the LSE MEC in five Arab countries on Women’s political participation across the Arab region: Mapping of existing and new emerging forces in the region. Prior to that, her research concentrated on the historical trajectory of Gazan women’s religiosity, agency and subjectivity, drawing on different discourses of religion and secularism.

Aitemad's PhD thesis in 2010 examined the effects of the Palestinian Second Intifada on women’s agency and contributed to challenging mainstream liberal conceptions of women’s empowerment. It was published in a book Agency and Gender in Gaza: Masculinity, Femininity and Family during the Second Intifada, by Ashgate in October 2013. Since the mid-nineties, she has garnered substantive academic and development research experience with the UNDP, UNIFEM, the World Bank, SIDA and the Institute of Women’s Studies in Birzeit University. She has also been an active research fellow and member of international research programmes, networks, and think tanks, including: IDS Sussex’s Global Programme, Pathways of Women’s Empowerment; the Nordic-Arab Network of Research on Women’s Empowerment, Gender and Politics; and the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS University.

Contact Details

Email: a.muhanna-matar@lse.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)20 7955 5269

Research Interests

• The anthropology of religion;
• Middle Eastern studies in Political Islam;
• Poverty reduction and policy formulation;
• Gender and Development;
• Youth Development.

Publications

• 'Ahmad: Narrative of a Tunisian Salafist', LSE Middle East Centre Blog, 2014.

• ‘New Trends of Women’s Activism after the Arab Uprisings: Redefining Women’s Leadership’, LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series 05, November 2014.

• ‘Women’s Moral Agency and the Politics of Religion in Gaza Strip’, International Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 2014.

• 'Islamist and Secular Women’s Activism and Discourses in Post Uprising Tunisia', in Maha El Said, Lena Meari and Nicola Pratt (eds.), Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World (London: Zed press, August 2014).

• Agency and Gender in Gaza: Masculnity, Femininity and Family during the Second Intifada. London: Ashgate Publishers, 2013.

• 'When the Researcher Becomes a Subject of Ethnographic Research: Studying “myself” and “others” in Gaza’, Women’s Studies International Journal, 2013.

• 'Arab Muslim Women after the Uprisings: The Encounter between the Liberalisation of Islamist Politics and the Feminisation of Islamic Interpretation', Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, 2012.

• 'Crisis of Development Discourses in the Palestinian Development Process', in Nader Said (ed),  The Gaza Strip after the Israeli Withdrawal: an Assessment of Reality and a Future Vision (Ramallah: Birzeit University, 2006).

• 'Child Labor in Palestine during the Second Intifada',  A qualitative study published by Development Studies Program, Birzeit University, 2004.

• 'Women and Work in the Beach Camp', Jerusalem: Arab Thought Forum (Arabic and English), 1991.