Dr Mai Taha

Dr Mai Taha is an Assistant Professor in Human Rights at the Department of Sociology. Before joining LSE, she was a Lecturer in Law at Goldsmiths, University of London. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor in International Human Rights Law and Justice at the American University in Cairo (AUC), and a Visiting Assistant Professor at York University, Canada. Mai was also a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University. She received her doctoral degree from the University of Toronto.

Key expertise: Human Rights, International Law, Marxism, Labour, Feminism, Colonialism

Mai’s research explores the different scales of revolution that draw out historical tensions arising in workers’ movements, feminist movements and anticolonial liberation movements. She has developed this research in two key strands. The first engages with these questions in the context of international law, human rights, and international institutions. The second engages with them in the context of labour and social reproduction, taking on the home space as a central site of theorisation and critique. Within sociology, her work intervenes in research and debates in socio-legal studies, and the sociology of gender, labour, and empire, while attending to the importance of interdisciplinarity.

Mai has written primarily in the context of the Middle East and North Africa in the colonial and postcolonial periods, examining the complexities of historical understandings of race, gender and class within law, culture, and society.

She is currently working on three research projects:

1. The first is a book project with Sara Salem, entitled: Sonic Lives: On the Radio and Anticolonial Solidarity. The book focuses on anticolonial sound, exploring the role of radio in liberation struggles across Africa and the Middle East from the 1950s to the 1990s, drawing out different maps of solidarity and internationalism.
2. The second is a research project on liberation struggles in international law, focusing on the period of the 1960s and 1970s, which saw the codification of many anticolonial provisions, and on key liberation movements in the Middle East.
3. The third is on the home and the unhomely, which explores new approaches to social reproduction theory and forms of resistance in the Middle East, engaging with the sociology of gender, cultural studies, and Marxist feminism.

Mai also co-directs Archive Stories with Sara Salem, which is a web-based on working with creative and non-traditional archives. The project has, so far, included academics, archivists, librarians, activists, musicians, film makers, designers, chefs and students.

Mai is part of the Politics and Human Rights research cluster.

Mai teaches on the MSc Human Rights programme convening courses on Approaches to Human Rights and Patriarchy and Society.