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Master's Dissertation Prize 2025

LSE Middle East Centre

Congratulations to Razan Elshazali (Department of International Development) and Sally Itani (Department of Geography and Environment) for their prize-winning dissertations!

Every year, the LSE Middle Centre awards a prize for the best dissertation on the Middle East and North Africa submitted by a student on an LSE master’s programme. This year, the Selection Committee were pleased to see submissions from across the School covering a range of topics and disciplines. All submitting students deserve credit for their work.

After much deliberation, we are pleased to award first prize to Elshazali's dissertation 'The Rapid Support Forces and the Construction of Public Authority in Sudan’s Political Marketplace’ and second-prize to Itani's dissertation ‘Urban Renewal in Wartime Damascus: Decree 66 and the Legalised Dispossession of Mukhalif Property Owners’.

On the winning dissertations, the Selection Committee stated:

Razan Elshazali wrote an excellent dissertation on the Rapid Support Forces trajectory in Sudan since the early 2000s, centring, specifically, on how they have built their public authority. The work is meticulously documented, methodologically robust, and demonstrates considerable investigative skills. It is empirically detailed and remarkable in its insight, offering original and subtle explanations on Sudan’s current tragedy.

The dissertation by Sally Itani is a beautifully crafted examination of the impact of so-called Decree 66, one of the last legislative pieces of Syria’s Assad regime, whose aim was to expropriate informal property settlements in Damascus. The author tracks how ‘legalised wartime urban development’ played out in practice and brings forth is ulterior motives. There is detailed mapping of the expropriations and, above all, an empathetic rendition of their human cost and a significant testament of a tragedy.

  • Razan Elshazali

    Razan is a British-Sudanese MSc International Development and Humanitarian Emergencies graduate from LSE. She is also a first-class graduate of the University of Cambridge, where she studied Politics and International Relations. Alongside her academic work, which focused on political economy and revolution, she is also the founder of Women of Sudan, an online platform dedicated to advocacy and cultural archiving.

  • Sally Itani

    Sally graduated from LSE with an MSc in Urbanisation and Development. An architect by training, she currently works at World Habitat where she supports organisations globally to strengthen housing rights within their communities.

Launched by the LSE Middle East Centre in 2018, this prize is awarded annually to the most innovative and significant LSE Master’s dissertation focussing on the MENA region.

For all enquiries, please contact Kendall Livingston, Projects and Research Development Manager: k.livingston@lse.ac.uk