Elizabeth Monier
Elizabeth Monier is a Research Fellow in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. She is also a Research Associate at Darwin College, Cambridge and an Associate Fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies in Hamburg (GIGA). She specialises in the modern history, politics and culture of the Middle East. Her current research includes a project on the history of Arab intellectual discourses related to concepts of sectarianism, tolerance and citizenship in the modern nation state.
Subjects: Area Studies, History, Media and Cultural Studies, Middle East Studies
Biography
Dr Monier specialises in Middle East Studies, focusing on the contemporary history of the Arab World in general and Egypt in particular. Her work is interdisciplinary, incorporating religion, politics and history with an emphasis on analysing Arabic discourses. Elizabeth is an associate fellow at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA) and will be taking up a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship in the Department of Middle East Studies, University of Cambridge in 2016. She has previously held fellowships at the London School of Economics and Political Science, GIGA's Middle East Institute and the University of Warwick. She completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2011. Her thesis focused on the social and political aspects of the national and communal belonging of Coptic Christians in modern Egypt, and in particular the use of the media to manage, contest and negotiate identities, notions of citizenship, and representations of sectarian conflict.Education
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Phd Cambridge 2011
Areas of Research / Professional Expertise
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-Ethnic, national and religious identity formation and how this interacts with the development of sectarianisms.
- The role of identity in constructing relations of power in the Middle East, especially the concept of 'Arabness' and the use of Arab/Non-Arab 'othering' discourses.
-Notions of belonging and inclusion processes, particularly the concept of al-Mowatana and with reference to Middle Eastern Christians.
-Arab political and religious thought with a focus on tolerance and minorities and the formation of the Arab state in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Websites
Books
Articles
Egypt, Iran, and the Hizbullah Cell: Using Sectarianism to “De-Arabize” and Regi
Published: Jul 01, 2015 by The Middle East Journal
Authors: Elizabeth Monier
Subjects:
Middle East Studies
Despite being an Arab organization, Egyptian media portray Hizbullah as a non-Arab challenge to the Arab world’s stability, more than a Shi‘i challenge to Sunnism or a security threat. This indicates that Egypt’s traditional foreign policy of defending Arab interests is more important than sectarianism in conceptualizing threats to its security and national interests.
The Arabness of Middle East regionalism: the Arab Spring and competition for dis
Published: Oct 28, 2014 by Contemporary Politics
Authors: Elizabeth Monier
Subjects:
Middle East Studies
To explore the role played by Arab identity politics in regionalism with regard to the status of non-Arab states, this article presents a study of the competing hegemonic regional discourses employed by Turkey, Iran and Egypt during a two-year period following the 2011 uprising in Egypt. This analysis suggests that even during a time of crisis, non-Arab states face obstacles to their assertion of regional projects
The Fall of the Muslim Brotherhood
Published: Dec 01, 2013 by Middle East Policy
Authors: Elizabeth Monier, Annette Ranko
Subjects:
Middle East Studies
This article examines the process through which the Brotherhood became discredited and what the implications of its resultant failure are for the international relations of the Middle East. We contend that it was not so much the content of the MB's vision that failed to win support, but that the organization became a discredited vehicle for achieving a new and stronger Egypt, free from internal authoritarianism, regional weakness and foreign dependence.
The Arab Spring and Coptic–Muslim Relations: From Mubarak to the Muslim Brotherh
Published: Jun 01, 2012 by he European Yearbook of Minority Issues
Authors: Elizabeth Monier
Subjects:
Middle East Studies
despite the significant social and political changes brought about since February 2011 and the scenes of unity during the uprising, there was neither an improvement in the way sectarian violence was handled nor a decrease in the perennial outbreaks of violence between Muslims and Christians
The ‘mediation’ of Muslim–Christian relations in Egypt
Published: Jan 01, 2012 by Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations
Authors: Elizabeth Iskander
Subjects:
Media and Cultural Studies, Middle East Studies
This article analyses the representation of Muslim–Coptic relations in the Al-Ahrām newspaper between 2005 and 2010. The primary goal is to assess the strategies and discourses used by this newspaper to represent sectarianism. As scholars note, negative representations of the ‘other’ in the media can contribute to shaping and prolonging conflict