Advancing a More Nuanced Understanding of the Middle East: CAIS Academic Contributions in 2025
Thursday 20 November 2025

In 2025, scholars at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS) at ANU produced an outstanding body of research that highlights the Centre’s breadth, global engagement and interdisciplinary depth.

Dr Mohammed Alsudairi published a major work on Sino–Middle Eastern futures alongside a substantial study of cultural security in China. Narratives of Sino-Middle Eastern Futures, co-authored with Dr Andrea Ghiselli, and published by Cambridge University Press, is available open access.

Dr Andrew Hammond continued to shape conversations in cultural and Islamic studies with work on modern Arab cinema and political authority in Islamic history.

A particularly prolific year for Anas Iqtait saw publications across leading journals on Palestinian governance, aid politics, taxation under settler colonialism, financial systems, and the impact of digital technologies in authoritarian contexts. For a full list of publications and links to articles – see the list below.

Karima Laachir’s contributions spanned world literature, North African cultural production, and public health communication within Arabic-speaking communities, complemented by collaborative research on air-pollution mitigation.

The Centre’s global reach is further reflected in forthcoming edited volumes featuring Dr Kirill Nourzhanov and colleagues on Central Eurasian migration, and the work of visiting fellow, Dr Hakan Yavuz on Turkey’s evolving civilizational identity, alongside his analysis of contemporary Turkish politics.

Together, these publications demonstrate CAIS’s leadership in analysing cultural, political, and social transformations across the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and beyond.

Academic Publications

(in ascending alphabetical order Faculty Staff & Visiting Fellows)

  • Alsudairi, Mohammed. 2025. “Cultural Security in the People’s Republic of China: Between Party-State Invocation and Academic Theorization.” In Cultural Security in Contemporary China and Mongolia, edited by Jarmila Ptáčková and Ondřej Klimeš, 35–72. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
  • Alsudairi, Mohammed, and Andrea Ghiselli. 2025. Narratives of Sino-Middle Eastern Futures: In the Eye of the Beholder. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Hammond, Andrew. 2024. “Political Ideology and the Shaping of Modern Arab Cinema.” In Routledge Handbook on Arab Cinema, edited by Noha Mellor. London: Routledge.
  • Hammond, Andrew. 2025. “Book Review: A Continuity of Shariʿa: Political Authority and Homicide in the Nineteenth Century by Brian Wright.” Journal of Islamic Studies 36, no. 1 (January): 131–33.
  • Iqtait, Anas. 2024. “The Palestinian Authority Since October 2023: Flawed Expectations and Failed Leadership.” Journal of Palestine Studies 53 (4): 80–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/0377919X.2025.2458999
  • Iqtait, Anas. 2025. “Blockchain Technology in MENA: Impacts on Authoritarianism and Civil Activism.” In Digital Technologies and Activism in Authoritarian Contexts and Beyond, edited by Zahid Ahmed, Shahram Akbarzadeh, and Ihsan Yilmaz, 209–32. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
  • Iqtait, Anas. 2025. “From Conditionality to Weaponisation: The Transformation of Aid in Palestine Post-October 2023.” Third World Quarterly, July, 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2025.2532005
  • Iqtait, Anas. 2025. “Reclaiming Strategic Purpose in Palestinian Politics.” Survival 67 (5): 69–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2025.2561484
  • Iqtait, Anas. 2025. “Taxation and Settler Colonialism: The Palestinian Case.” Forum for Development Studies, May, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2025.2505667
  • Iqtait, Anas. 2024. “The State of the Financial System in the West Bank and Gaza.” Strategic Comments 30 (7): x–xiii.
  • Iqtait, Anas. 2025. “The Palestinians in a Transforming Middle East: Adapting or Stagnating.” World Affairs 188 (3): e70000. https://doi.org/10.1002/waf2.70000
  • Laachir, Karima. 2025. “Morocco’s Popular Culture Powerhouse: Darija and the Chaabi Music of Nas El Ghiwane.” In Oral Literary Worlds: Location, Transmission and Circulation, edited by Sara Marzagora and Francesca Orsini, 281–300. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, January.
  • Laachir, Karima. 2025. “The Literary World of the North African Taghriba.” In The Locations of World Literature, edited by Francesco Orsini and Lorenzo Zecchini, 184–210. Leiden: Brill, February 2025.
  • Laachir, Karima, Nigel Goodman, Bandana Saini, Mustapha Taibi, Penelope J. Jones, and Sotiris Vardoulakis. 2025. “Perceptions of Air Pollution and Health Communication for People with Asthma among Australia’s Arabic-Speaking Communities.” Health Promotion International 40 (4)
  • Goodman, N., Campbell, S. L., Tong, M., Cameron, D., Brain, M., Arriagada, N. B., Wheeler, A. J., Matthews, V., Saini, B., Laachir, K., Walsh, E., Vardoulakis, S. & Johnston “Interventions for reducing exposure to air pollution from landscape fires in a changing environment: A systematic review” Feb 2025, In: Science of the Total Environment. 966, p. 1-13, Open Access.
  • Laachir,  Karima with Fernandez Ramos, Irene. 2025. “How Did You Get Here? Syrian Art and the ‘Aestheticization’ of the Refugee Journey Towards Europe.” Journal of Intercultural Studies.
  • Dadabaev, Timur, Shigeto Sonoda, and Kirill Nourzhanov, eds. Forthcoming 2026. Bridges Across Borders: Dynamics of Central Eurasian Migration to Australia, Japan, and Northern Europe. Cham: Springer.
  • Yavuz, M. Hakan. Forthcoming 2026. The Torn Republic: Turkey’s Search for Civilizational Identity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Yavuz, M. Hakan. 2025. “Erdogan and the Demise of the Secular Republic.” Middle East Policy 31 (4): 151–56.