Dr Kalousian is a Research Associate in the Department of War Studies, working on the research project, Mapping Injury, led by Professor Vivienne Jabri, selected by the ERC Advanced, and funded by the UKRI Frontier Research Grant. The project investigates ‘injury’ in its multiple sites and manifestations in the Global South, and its impact on political agency and global mechanisms of response. Madonna’s research on the project focuses on Lebanon.

Madonna has a PhD in English Literature, with a focus on Lebanese Civil War literature and politics, from the Department of English Literature at Lancaster University. Before coming to King’s, Madonna worked in various teaching and research positions at a number of institutions in the UK and abroad, including the University of Cambridge, the University of Warwick, and Ettijahat Independent Culture.

Madonna’s current work for Mapping Injury focuses on societal, cultural, and political entanglements of injury and justice at a number of sites in Lebanon, with a particular focus on questions relating to population displacement, the absence of infrastructure provision, and legacies of war on the cityscapes and landscapes of Lebanon, including the Beirut Port explosion and continuing international conflict in south Lebanon.

Research Interests:

• Legacies of war and socio-political conflict in Lebanon
• Technology, ecology, and the arts
• Middle East culture, society, politics, and pre-modern political theology
• Modern Arabic war literature(s)

Selected Publications:

•  “Drones as Machines of Sacrifice: Enframing the Zoological Components of Drone Warfare”. Drone Warfare and Aesthetic Forms, special issue of Journal of War and Culture Studies, no. 15:4, 2022, pp. 461-475
• “Between Invertible and Invertebrate Histories: The Evolution of Rachid Boudjedra’s Snail-Man”. Literature, History, and Historiography, special issue of Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 41, 2021, pp. 110-139.