August 2014 - December 2016
This project aims to support the creation of new scholarly work emerging from and about the Gulf Cooperation Council. The project seeks to explore the foreign policy of the GCC states through investigations of the respective states’ resources (financial and natural), recipients of economic aid and political support, and the regional effects of these policies. The project also seeks to outline domestic sources of foreign policy input, including states’ long-‐term interests and survival imperatives. As part of the project, a number of research grants to scholars at partner institutions will be funded. In addition, three intensive workshops to support new research will be organised.
This project fosters networks between scholars working in the GCC at local universities with scholars and policy communities based in the UK. The project also seeks to fill a gap in the available support for social science research, particularly funding field research, research assistantships for junior scholars (undergraduate and graduate students), and scholarly exchange. The project also seeks to support student research and junior faculty development, two key priorities of young Gulf universities.
Research Team
Professor Toby Dodge is Director of the LSE Middle East Centre, a Professor in the International Relations Department at LSE, and a Senior Consulting Fellow for the Middle East, International Institute for Strategic Studies, London.
Dr Line Khatib is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University of Sharjah. She earned a PhD in Islamic Studies from McGill University. Her research and teaching interests lie within the fields of comparative politics, religion and politics, and authoritarianism and democratisation in the Arab World, with a particular focus on Islamic groups as social and political movements.
Dr Khalid Almezaini is Assistant Professor of Gulf Studies at Qatar University. Prior to joining Qatar University, he was a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Kuwait Programme. His research focuses on International Relations of the Middle East and the Gulf in particular, foreign aid and foreign policies of the Arab states.
Dr Karen E. Young is Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. She was Assistant Professor of Political Science at the American University of Sharjah, UAE from 2009 to 2014. In 2013-14, she was an American Political Science Association MENA Fellow. Her research interests include Gulf Arab States' Foreign Policy, Political economy of transition and Identity and state formation.
Research Grants
The project awarded four research grants to facilitate new or on-going research on GCC foreign policy:
The UAE’s nexus state: Logistics, transport and foreign policy
Christian Henderson, School of Oriental and African Studies
Maintaining Alliances and Building New Alignments through the UAE ‘Influential Model’ and Internationalisation Strategy
Robert Mason, British University in Egypt
GCC Foreign Policy Projections in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: A Comparative Analysis of Saudi Arabia & Qatar
Suliman Al-Atiqi, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
UAE Policies towards the Western Balkans: Investment Motives and Impacts
Will Bartlett and James Ker-Lindsay, European Institute, LSE, Kristian Alexander, Zayed University