About
Mehdi Shakarchi is an IRD Fellow and PhD candidate at LSE’s Department of International Relations, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. He studies social movements including labour, popular protest movements and uprisings in the Middle East, with a focus on Iraq. Drawing inspiration from Gramscian approaches, his work explores the relationship between transformative political and economic change and questions of political leadership, organisation and ideology.
An Arabic speaker with a background in Middle East studies, his research is informed by sustained fieldwork in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East, where he has interviewed activists, protesters, workers and elites, as well as conducting participant-observation in protest and organising contexts.
Mehdi completed his MA in the Political Economy of the Middle East at King’s College (with Distinction) and his BA in Arabic at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He is also a qualified UK solicitor and has worked for international law firms and on death penalty cases in the Middle East with Reprieve.
Research topic
Labour, protest and the Tishreen Uprising in contemporary Iraq
Academic supervisors
Research Cluster affiliation
Theory/Area/History Research Cluster
Expertise
Labour, trade unions, class and social mobilisation; uprisings, subaltern social movements; protest; ethnography; Iraq