Dr Atef Alshaer
I first came to London after completing my Bachelor degree in English Language and Literature at the University of Birzeit in Palestine. Then I obtained my masters and PhD from the faculty of Languages and Cultures at SOAS, University of London. I have been teaching there since 2009.
I have several research papers and monographs, including a forthcoming book on Poetry and Politics in the Modern Arab World.
I am interested in discourse analysis, literature, postcolonial studies, and the politics of the Arab world, and have published several papers and reviews in these fields.
My research interests include language, politics and literature of the Arab world in particular. In Arabic culture, political discourses tend to draw on rich political and literary traditions which are used by various groups in different ways. I have researched, alongside other scholars, a number of interrelated themes, including nationalist and Islamist discourses and their interrelations in Palestine, political poetry, avant-garde classical and modern Arabic poetry, the politics and culture of movements such as the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, and the Lebanese movement Hizbullah; language and national identity in the Palestinian territories and postcolonial ideas and their relevance to Palestinian conditions and Arab narratives in general.
I am a member of a number of research centres and institutes, including the Palestine Studies Centre and The Middle East Institute in London at SOAS.