Dr. Fouad Gehad Marei joined the Centre for Middle Eastern and North African Politics in 2013 as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer. He was awarded a PhD in International Relations from Durham University, UK, in 2012. Fouad is also the recipient of the 2015/2016 Research Grant Award of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and the Swedish International Development Agency for his project Resistance, Piety and Development: Hezbollah’s Capital of Resistance as Global City.

His broad research agenda focuses on state-society relations, globalisation and development, and Islamist religious activism in conflict and post-conflict contexts with a particular focus on Lebanon and Syria. In 2015/2016, he conducted a pilot study of/in Syrian refugee settlements in Lebanon assessing the situation of refugee and host communities and mapping actors involved in crisis response plans.

Prior to joining Freie Universität Berlin, Fouad was a conflict transformation and stabilisation consultant. He conducted fieldwork in Syria and authored policy papers examining civilian opposition and local administration structures, the emerging justice and police sectors, and violent-extremist messaging. In addition, he partook in developing and implementing Integrated Community Security Programmes.

Fouad convened a thematic panel discussion entitled Interrogating the State: The State, the non-State, and contested spatialities in the Arab world (London, 2015) and, as part of a collaboration between the Hertie School of Governance and the London School of Economics, convened an international workshop entitled Governing the Ungovernable? Interrogating Global Geographies of Transformation and Intervention (Berlin, 2016).

Dr. Marei teaches graduate and undergraduate courses and supervises BA and MA students.

Currently, he is the convenor and lead instructor for the DAAD-funded German-Moroccan Exchange Seminar, Critical Perspectives on Development and International Cooperation. Find out more about the projekt here.

Selected publications

• Marei, Fouad G. (2016), Preaching Development: Shi’i Piety and Neoliberalism in Beirut. In Religious Activism in the Global Economy: Promoting, Reforming or Resisting Neoliberal Globalization? edited by Sabine Dreher and Peter J. Smith. Washington, DC: Rowman and Littlefield.

• Marei, Fouad G. (2013a), Public Order, Security and Justice in the Syrian Civil War. ARK Workshop Reports. Istanbul/Ras Al Khaimah: ARK Group MCC.

• Marei, Fouad G. (2013b), Multiple Justices and Contending Legitimacies: Security and Justice in Northern Syria. Special Reports. Istanbul/Ras Al Khaimah: ARK Group MCC.

Selected conference papers

• Marei, Fouad G. (2015a), Governing in the Meanwhile? Understanding Justice and Governance in the Syrian Insurgency, paper presented at the 3rd Conference of the Centre for Syrian Studies, St. Andrews (UK), 1-3 July 2015.

• Marei, Fouad G. (2015a), Governing Dahiya: Piety, Globalisation and City-Making in Beirut’s Southern Suburbs, paper presented at ‘The State of Lebanon’ Conference, Orient-Institut Beirut (Lebanon), 15-16 October 2015.