Teal Mingledorff (Linacre College)

College: Linacre College

Department: Oxford School of Global and Area Studies

Thesis subject: The Diaspora Business of Iran-Israel Relations 

Supervisor: Professor Yaacov Yadgar 

Biography: Teal is a DPhil student in Middle East area studies. Her work examines trade and business exchanges between Israel and pre-revolutionary Iran. She is conducting fieldwork as a Sandwich Scholar at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and was previously a Kamran Djam Scholar in Iranian studies at SOAS and a Hassenfeld Fellow in Chinese studies at Hopkins. 

Previous education: 

Master’s in Iranian studies (SOAS, University of London)

Master’s in comparative and international law (The Johns Hopkins University–Nanjing University Centre for Chinese and American Studies)

Dual Bachelor’s in [French and Chinese] languages, literatures and cultures and cinema studies (Northeastern University)

Research interests: Political Economy, Resource-Rich Economies, Global Financial Crises, Investment Migration, Minority Trade, International Relations 

Abid Zaidi

College: St Antony’s College

Department: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Supervisors: Dr Maryam Alemzadeh

Biography: Abid Zaidi is a doctoral candidate in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at St Antony’s College. His research focuses on the development of the Qom seminary in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, and its role in organising, structuring, and supporting revolutionary activities amongst the clergy in the lead up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978–79. He is supervised by Dr Maryam Alemzadeh, and is the recipient of a Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities, funded by the Wolfson Foundation.

Abid received a Distinction in his MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford (St Antony’s College), and a First Class (with Honours) in his BSc in Political Science and Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Outside his studies, Abid is an avid reader, long-distance runner in-training, and takes part in several student societies, serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Middle East Review, and President of the Oxford University Ahlulbayt Islamic Society.

Ashkan Hashemipour (New College)

College: New College

Department: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Supervisor: Dr Maryam Alemzadeh

Biography: Ashkan Hashemipour is a doctoral candidate in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at New College. His research explores Iranian student activism during the 1960s and 1970s and focuses particularly on students’ formation of transnational networks and the influence of these networks on the Iranian guerrilla movement. He is supervised by Dr Maryam Alemzadeh and is the recipient of an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) scholarship, which is partially supported by the Clarendon Fund.

Ashkan holds an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford and a BA (Hons) in Political Science and Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations from the University of Chicago. As part of his undergraduate degree, he undertook a year of study at Sciences Po Paris.

Outside his studies, Ashkan is passionate about linguistics and, in addition to English, speaks Persian, French, and Spanish fluently and is research proficient in Modern Standard Arabic and Portuguese. 

Su Hyeon Cho

College: St Antony’s College

Department: Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Thesis title: ‘Saints and States in a Plastic Bowl: Tales of a Sacred Porridge in Unlikely State’

Supervisors: Professor Walter Armbrust and Professor Laurent Mignon

Biography: My ethnographic field research visits the post-earthquake space in Hatay, a province in Turkey’s southern Mediterranean region. This border region has long been marked by ambiguity, largely because it was incorporated into the Turkey’s borders only after the death of Mustafa Kemal in 1939. 

The historical trajectory of the region has influenced its demographic compositions and local historiography in distinct ways. The feasts of harisa among Hatay’s Arabic-speaking Alawite and Greek Orthodox communities, as well as Armenians of the Musa Dagh, epitomise the complex interplay of crises and the aftermaths boiled down in rites. These crises include the 1915 Armenian genocide, the 1939 annexation, the 1980 coup, the rise of neoliberalism, and contemporary minority politics.

In the wake of the devastating earthquakes in February 2023, cooking harisa has assumed an even deeper significance, symbolising unity and rejuvenation of communities. My project aims to highlight the resilience of these communities and the profound importance of food and ritual, which transcends national borders and religion and ethnicity classification.

I am currently based in Turkey for fieldwork as a doctoral scholar at the Orient Institut Istanbul (OIIST), splitting my time between Istanbul and Hatay. 

I am curating an edited volume with colleagues under the working title Foodways to the Divine. 

Selected publications:

Cho, Su Hyeon. (2019) ‘The Evvel Temmuz Festival: Cooking and Consuming Identity’. Heritage Turkey 9 (December): 10–11. https://doi.org/10.18866/biaa2019.06.

Cho, Su Hyeon. 2023. ‘Recipes for Sacred Porridge in Post-Earthquake Turkey.’ The Recipes Project. October 24, 2023. https://doi.org/10.58079/tddt.

Cho, Su Hyeon and Daniel Thorpe. 2024. ‘Celebrating Evvel Temmuz in Post-Earthquake Hatay.’ Bianet. July 19, 2024. https://bianet.org/yazi/celebrating-evvel-temmuz-in-post-earthquake-in-hatay-297630.

Jamshid Jamshidi

College: St Antony’s College

Department: Oxford School of Global and Area Studies

Biography: Jamshid Jamshidi is currently pursuing a DPhil in Area Studies (Middle East) at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) at the University of Oxford. He is affiliated with St. Antony’s College, and his research focuses on the convergence of democratisation, authoritarian persistence, and identity politics in the Middle East. Jamshidi was awarded the prestigious Ali Pachachi Studentship funding in 2023 to support his doctoral studies. Prior to his doctoral program, he earned an honors degree in political science from the University of Tehran, where his studies centered on Middle Eastern politics, with a particular focus on the evolution of institutional structures and the shifting interplay among political actors in contemporary Iran.

Jamshidi’s research interests underscore the complexities of state-building within the Iranian context, exploring the dynamic interplay between local politics and national processes. His scholarly work delves into the nuanced role of local governance structures and patronage networks in shaping the stability and resilience of the Iranian state. Through rigorous analysis, Jamshidi aims to elucidate how the synergy between local politics and national governance mechanisms functions as a critical instrument for garnering political support and bolstering the longevity of the state apparatus in Iran.

Sacha Mouzin (Keble College)

College: Keble College

Department: School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography

Thesis title: ‘Shepherds in the shadow: Lebanese pastoralism in a context of eco-systemic crisis’

Supervisors: Professor Morgan Clarke and Professor Dawn Chatty

Research interest: Environmental anthropology (anthropology of farming, human-animal relations, climate change, the commons, autonomy/self-sufficiency) anthropology of the Middle East, mobility, modernity, ethics

Dominic Gerhartz

Thesis subject: Middle Eastern and Central Asian politics and international relations

Supervisor: Professor Edmund Herzig

Karolin Tuncel

College: St Antony’s College

Department: Oxford Department for International Development

Thesis title: ‘Negotiations of Gender Norms in Everyday Life – Empirical insights from young couples in contemporary Turkey’

Supervisors: Professor Jörg Friedrichs and Professor Masooda Bano

Biography: Karolin Tuncel is a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Department of International Development (ODID), investigating everyday negotiations of gender norms among young couples in Turkey. Her project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) through the Heinrich Böll Foundation. 

Alongside her doctoral research, Karolin has held several teaching positions at the University of Oxford. She has also worked for the Dahrendorf Programme, researching discursive shifts in Turkey’s relation with Europe. 

Before starting her DPhil research, Karolin worked as a Carlo Schmid Fellow with the UN Liaison Office for Peace and Security (UNLOPS) in Brussels. Previously, she gained work experience at the Global Public Policy Institute, the German Embassy in Canada, and the Administration of the German Bundestag, among others.

As scholar of the German Academic Scholarship Foundation, Karolin studied Political Science and International Relations in Berlin (BA), Cairo, Reims, and Cambridge (MPhil with Distinction).

Selected Publications:

Tuncel, Karolin I. M., and Tobias Müller (forthcoming). “Is religion a problem for intersectional theory? Muslim women, feminism, and varieties of patriarchy.” Contemporary Political Theory.

Tuncel, Karolin. 2025. “‘It’s Not About Sex, It’s About Fıtrat’: Exploring Turkey’s Politics of Gender through a Religious Concept.” In Embracing Faith and Desire: Queer and Feminist Engagements with Islam and Christianity as Lived Religions, edited by Viola Thimm and Ferdiansyah Thajib, 1st edition, 15– 30. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003590880-6.

Tuncel, Karolin. 2021. Turkey’s New Emigration Wave and Its Implications. Manara Magazine 2021/1. https://manaramagazine.org/2021/03/turkeys-new-emigration-wave-and-its-implications/.

Tuncel, Karolin. 2021. 20 years of Women, Peace and Security: How we argue for participation matters. London School of Economics and Political Science Centre for Women, Peace and Security. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/wps/2021/01/21/20-years-of-women-peace-and-security-how-we-argue-for-participation-matters/.

Josiane Matar (Worcester College)

College: Worcester College

Department: School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography

Thesis title: ‘Governing Displacement in the Absence of the State: Who Fills the Gap? – Reflections from Lebanon’

Supervisor: Professor Loren Landau

Biography: Josiane is a DPhil candidate in Migration Studies and has been awarded the Rhodes scholarship for Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. Her research intends to move beyond a state-centric view of migration control to highlight the importance of non-state actors in migration management and local-level policymaking.

Josiane holds a master’s degree in International Public Management from the Paris Institute of Political Studies – Sciences Po and a bachelor’s in Political Science and International Affairs from the Lebanese American University. Prior to joining Oxford, Josiane has volunteered and conducted field research in several refugee camps across Lebanon. She has also worked as a consultant for the research division at the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) and as an events and media coordinator at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center.

Humeyra Biricik (Pembroke College)

College: Pembroke College

Department: Department of Politics and International Relations

Supervisors: Dr Scott Williamson and Professor Neil Ketchley

Biography: Humeyra Biricik is a doctoral candidate in Politics at Pembroke College. Her research focuses on the relationship between political speech, populism, and democratic backsliding in Turkey, Hungary, India, and Arabic-speaking Middle Eastern countries. She primarily employs large language models and text analysis, along with other econometric analyses, to conduct her studies.

She is the recipient of the joint studentship between Pembroke and the Department of Political Science and International Relations, as well as the Pembroke Senior Studentship for the academic year 2023-2024, granting her a place in the Senior Common Room alongside esteemed faculty members. In conjunction with her SCR membership, Humeyra formerly served as the President and the Academic Representative of Pembroke Middle Common Room, leading the college’s peer-reviewed academic journal, termly academic symposium, and the 3CR talks where the members of the undergraduate and graduate community present their research with the faculty across all disciplines. As part of her role, Humeyra advocated for increased accessibility to affordable housing for graduate students, with a particular focus on those from Global South backgrounds. She also serves as a lead mentor in the JCR/MCR mentorship program, designed to provide professional assistance and support to undergraduate students. As a part of her scholarship, Humeyra coordinated a series of politics talks at Pembroke College, on a wide array of topics, including local British elections, the housing crisis, regulation of AI and democracy, and machine learning methods used in political science. She is currently working on organising writing workshops for undergraduate students in politics, to support women and ethnic minority undergraduates at Oxford University.

Humeyra currently serves as a student representative in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford. In this role, she routinely attends multiple termly meetings with senior administration to advocate for the interests of DPhil students in Politics. Her advocacy focuses on addressing inequalities in research funding among colleges across Oxford and reducing graduate student fees. Additionally, she organises termly formal dinners and various social events for the entire department. She is also affiliated with the Middle East Centre, and she co-organised the Middle East Politics Seminar Series and the Women’s Rights Research Seminars with Professor Maryam Alemzadeh for the academic year 2023-2024. She was also the co-organiser of the 2024 Oxford Language Models for Social Science Workshop, which brings together machine learning scientists, leading researchers, and industry practitioners to provide comprehensive training to social scientists. For questions related to the 2024 Oxford LLMs Workshop, Middle East Politics Seminar Series, Women’s Rights Seminar Series, Pembroke Academic Symposium, or Politics at Pembroke talks, contact Humeyra via email.

Currently engaged with several academic collaborations, Humeyra was invited to present her work at several academic conferences, including the American Political Science Association (APSA), European Political Science Association (EPSA), Society for Political Methodology (PolMeth), the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES), Middle East Studies Association (MESA), International Studies Association (ISA), and New Directions in Analyzing Text as Data (TADA).

She currently teaches Middle East Politics and Comparative Political Economy to undergraduate students at New College and Pembroke College. She also formerly taught at St Catherine’s College, Keble College, St Anne’s College, and St Edmund’s College and conducted admissions interviews for the upcoming Politics, Philosophy, and Economics (PPE) students during the 2022-2023 admissions cycle.

Before Oxford, Humeyra obtained an MPhil Degree from the University of Cambridge in Economic and Political Sociology. Her MPhil dissertation titled “Resurrecting God: Analyzing Wartime Desecularization in France, the Soviet Union, and Turkey” was awarded the Cambridge Department of Sociology Polity Prize, as well as the Wolfson College Jennings Prize for the best dissertation and the best overall mark. She earned her BA in Government, Economics, and Sociology with a focus on Comparative Politics from Georgetown University and successfully defended her honors dissertation, receiving a distinction and a department prize.