Dr Craig Larkin is a Reader in Middle East Politics and Peace and Conflict Studies and Director of the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies (CSDS) at King’s College London. He is Co-Convenor of the War Studies MA Programme, Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies. He is also a Research Lead on Memory and Conflict [Violent and Peaceful Behaviours] for the FCDO funded Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy and Trends (XCEPT) research programme. Prior to joining King’s he was an ESRC Research Fellow at the Department of Politics, University of Exeter working on an ESRC funded project, ‘Conflict in Cities and the Contested State’ (2008-2012).

Craig holds a PhD in Middle East Studies from the University of Exeter (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, 2009), an MA in Criminology and Criminal Justice (LLM, 1999) and a BA(Hons) in Law and Politics (LLB, 1998) from Queen’s University Belfast. He also studied Arabic at Damascus University (2002-2004) and worked in community development projects in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

He is author of Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: remembering and forgetting the past (Routledge: London and NY, 2012); co-author of The Struggle for Jerusalem’s Holy Places (Routledge: London and NY, 2013) and co-editor of The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant with Michael Kerr (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2015). He has also written extensively on memory and violence, urban geopolitics, Islamist movements and post-conflict politics. He is Co-editor of Hurst/OUP Book Series – Urban Conflict, Divided Societies.

Research Interests

Craig’s research is interdisciplinary and comparative, examining the intersection of conflict, identity and urban space in the contemporary Middle East.He is particularly interested in:

• Memory and transitional justice in post conflict settings
• The spatio-politics of ethnically and religiously contested urban space
• Islamist movements, religion and identity politics

For more details, please see his full research profile.

Publications

For a full list of publications, please consult the Research Portal at King’s or Craig’s page on academia.edu.

Books

• The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant, with Michael Kerr (eds.) (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2015)
• The Struggle for Jerusalem’s Holy Places, co-authored book with Mick Dumper, Wendy Pullan, Lefkos Kyriacou and Maximilian Sternberg. (Routledge: London and NY, 2013)
• Memory and Conflict in Lebanon: remembering and forgetting the past (Routledge: London and NY, January 2012); Paperback edition April 2015

Journal articles

• ‘The ‘Inclusion-Moderation’ Illusion: Re-framing the Islamic Movement inside Israel’ (Larkin and Nasasra) Democratization Vol.28, No.4 (2021): 742-761.
• ‘Spiritual Ambiguity in Interfaith Humanitarianism: Local Faith Communities, Syrian Refugees and Muslim-Christian Encounters in Lebanon and Jordan’, (Larkin and Gutkowski) Migration Studies (07/2021)
• 'School choice and conflict narratives: representative bureaucracy at the street level in East Jerusalem,' (with O'Connor, Nasasra & Shanks) Administration & Society 52, no. 4 (2020): 528-565.
• ‘War Museums in Post-War Lebanon: Memory, Violence and Performance’ (Larkin and Parry-Davies) Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Vol.25, No.1 (2019): 78-96.
• ‘Jerusalem’s Separation Wall and Global Message Board: Graffiti, Murals and the art of Sumud’, Arab Studies Journal, Vol. XXII, No.1, Spring 2014, 134-169. 
• ‘In Defence of Al-Aqsa: The Islamic Movement inside Israel and battle for Jerusalem’ (Larkin and Dumper), Middle East Journal, Vol.66, No.1, (Winter, 2012):30-51.
• ‘The Politics of Heritage and the Limitations of International Agency in Divided Cities: The role of UNESCO in Jerusalem's Old City’ (Larkin and Dumper), Review of International Studies, Vol.38, No.1, (Jan 2012): 25-52.
• ‘Beyond the War? The Lebanese Postmemory Experience’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol.42, Issue 4, (Nov. 2010): 615-635.
• ‘Remaking Beirut: Contesting Memory, Space and the Urban Imaginary of Lebanese Youth’, City and Community, Vol.9, Issue 4, (Dec 2010): 414- 442.

Book chapters

• Craig Larkin. "Ethnic Identity, Memory, and Sites of Violence." The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East. Online publication Dec 2020,
• ‘Religious Pluralism, Interfaith Dialogue and Post-war Lebanon’ (with Gutkowski and Daou) in Jan-Jonathan Bock, John Fahy and Sami Everett (eds.) Emergent Religious Pluralisms (Palgrave, 2019), 95-122.
• ‘The Alawis of Tripoli: identity, violence and urban geopolitics‘ (with Olivia Midha) in The Alawis of Syria: War, Faith and Politics in the Levant by M.Kerr and C.Larkin (eds.) (Hurst/OUP, 2015) 
• ‘Speaking in the Silence: Youthful negotiations of Beirut’s postwar spaces and memories’, Locating Urban Conflicts: Ethnicity, Nationalism, Religion by W. Pullan and B. Ballie (eds.) (London: Palgrave MacMillan, April 2013), 93-114. 
• ‘Lebanese Postmemory’ in Arab youth: Social Mobilization in times of Risk, R. Khalaf and S. Khalaf (eds.), Saqi Press (December 2011), 127-145.
• ‘Martyrs & Massacres: Memorializing Violence in Beirut’, Capturing Urban Conflicts, Conflict in Cities, 2011 ( http://issuu.com/lefkos/docs/beirut_-_martyrs_and_massacres)

Teaching

• Co-Convenor of MA Conflict Resolution in Divided Societies
• Conflict & Coexistence in Divided Societies
• Divided Cities, Contested States: Urban Violence and Transformations in the Middle East
• Islamist Movements: Jihad, Revolution and Consensus

PhD Supervision

Dr Larkin welcomes enquires from PhD candidates seeking supervision in areas connected to his research interests