Mohamad is a PhD Candidate within the Department of War Studies at King’s College London where his research focuses on protest movements and emotions in Lebanon.

Mohamad holds an MA in Political Economy of the Middle East from King’s College London, for which he was awarded a distinction and a postgraduate diploma in Middle East security studies from the University of St Andrews.

During his time at King’s, Mohamad worked as a translator for The Cross-Border Conflict Evidence, Policy, and Trends (XCEPT) research programme. His translation work focused on security and stability in Lebanon and peacebuilding in Iraq.

Previously, Mohamad worked as a research analyst at the American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project (CTP) where he was tracking and analysing current and emerging threats to American national security posed by the Salafi-jihadi movement in Yemen and North Africa. 

Research Interests: 

• Power sharing and post-conflict state building
• Emotions and social movements
• Lebanon and the Middle East

Thesis Title and Abstract: 

Emotions and Protest Movements in Lebanon, 2005-2020

In the autumn of 2019, the 17 October Revolution (thawra) took Lebanon by storm. Spreading rapidly across the country from North to South, major cities and neighbourhoods loyal to the sectarian political parties observed a unique outburst of hope and anger. Emotions were intense and crucial in sparking protests. For decades, sociologists and social movement theorists has disregarded the role of emotions in favour of structural, organisational, cultural, and economic explanations when studying collective action – this gap is obvious in Lebanon. To redress this oversight this research will introduce a new frame of analysis – examining through ethnographic fieldwork the role and impact of emotions on the Lebanese protests beginning with national demonstrations after the assassination of PM Rafik Hariri in 2005 until the 2020 Beirut port explosion.

Supervisors:

• Dr Craig Larkin
• Dr Stacey Gutkowski

Publications:

XCEPT (2023) Is Translation in Conflict an Instrument of Power or a Place of Neutrality? [Online] available at https://www.xcept-research.org/is-translation-in-conflict-an-instrument-of-power-or-a-place-of-neutrality/

ICSR (2023) Translation in conflict: an instrument of power or a place of neutrality? [Online] available at https://icsr.info/2023/04/06/translation-in-conflict-an-instrument-of-power-or-a-place-of-neutrality/

Estelle, E., and El Kari, M. (2019) Al Qaeda and the Islamic State will be the winners of the Libyan Civil War? [Online] available at https://www.criticalthreats.org/analysis/al-qaeda-and-the-islamic-state-will-be-the-winners-of-the-libyan-civil-war