Ali Kassem

Short Biography

Ali M. Kassem is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the School of Law, Politics and Sociology at the University of Sussex. At Sussex, Ali has held multiple teaching positions and is currently on the steering committee of the Sussex Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (CPSC) and the management committee of the Sussex Middle East North Arica Centre (MENACS). Ali holds an MA in Sociology (of religion) from the American University of Beirut (AUB) with a thesis titled ‘the Social Sciences in the Training of Shia Scholars in Lebanon’ under the supervision of Prof Sari Hanafi. Additionally, Ali has held multiple teaching and research positions since 2015 at AUB as well as the Lebanese American University, CNRS/Aix-Marseilles University and the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, among others. More recently, he was a resident visiting research fellow at the Ecole Des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS)-Centre D’etude Sociale du Religieux (CeSor) in Paris.
Ali’s main interests are in Postcolonial and Decolonial theories, the Sociology of Islam and of Knowledge as well as migration and refugee studies.

Research project

For his fellowship at LMU, Ali is investigating the dynamics of the entanglement/intersection of the Syrian identity, as one of dehumanized refugees, with that of an ‘Islamic’ appearance and conduct as a non-modern form of being. The project builds on Grosfoguel’s (2011, 2010) theorization of the hierarchy along the lines of the human to examine how multiple dehumanisations in complex settings entangle and are lived through daily experiences. Through collecting data with Syrian refugees across contexts, the project hopes to shed light on subalternised and marginalised forms of dwelling in the modern world of racial capital.

Publications

Peer reviewed

2019 Harb M., Kassem A., and Najdi W. ‘Entrepreneurial Refugees and the City: Brief Encounters in Beirut.’ Journal of Refugee Studies, fey003, Volume 32, Issue 1, March 2019, Pages 23–41 https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/fey003

2018 Kassem A., ‘“Modernization” of the Hawza? Lebanon as a Case Study.’ Contemporary Arab Affairs, Volume 11, No. 4, December 2018, Pages 83-110 https://doi.org/10.1525/caa.2018.114005

Book chapters

2020 Kassem, A. ‘Islamic Studies in Academic Lebanese Higher Education’ in ‘A Mirror of the Social Sciences’ Ed. Sari Hanafi, Myriam Catusse and Candice Raymond, Diacritiques éditions.

2018 Harb, M., Kassem A and Najdi W. ‘Syrian Owned Businesses in the City’ in ‘Refugees as City Makers’ Ed. Mona Fawwaz, Ahmad Gharbieh, Mona Harb and Dounia Salame, Social Justice and City Program publications, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International affairs. (September 2018) [also published in Arabic under the title: الـمـديـنـة والـسـوريـون مـن أصـحـاب الـمـتـاجـر]

Book review

2018 Kassem A., review of Troubling Muslim Youth Identity: Nation, Religion and Gender, by Dunne, M., Durrani, N., Fincham, K. and Crossouard, B., ReOrient: The Journal of Critical Muslim Studies, volume 4, No. 1, 2018, Pages 121–124.

Public publications

2019 ‘The Shia Hawza: for an Alternative Educational Model’ in Al-Adab Literary Magazine, vol 9, August 2019 issue. [In Arabic]

2019 ‘Marching Towards Decolonisation: Notes and Reflections’ in the Sociological Review blog, July 28 2019.

2019 ‘Avowal/disavowal – Europe as an Ideologized Commitment’ in Discover Society, issue 66, March 2019.

2019 ‘Sociology, I found, holds a major tool of decolonisation’ in Network, Magazine of the British Sociological Association, issue 131, Spring 2019, Features section, p. 25.

2018 ‘Syrian Youth in Lebanon’ in Discover Society, issue 55, April 2018.

2018 Kassem, A. ‘Colonialism and Imperialism: The Case of Lebanon’, London School of Economics and Political Science, Middle East Centre blog. April 5 2018.