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Dina Rezk

Dina Rezk portrait

Well-being, Inclusion, Diversity and Equality (WIDE, School Lead) 

Areas of interest

Middle East studies, politics, popular culture, masculinity, security, intelligence, trauma, health humanities 

Postgraduate supervision

I have supervised a range of doctoral students on topics including:

  • Palestinian activism through children’s literature in the 1970s
  • Muslim Brotherhood propaganda post-2011
  • Socialization through imperial board games
  • Anglo-American soft power towards Iran in the post-war period

Students interested in exploring politics, popular culture, historical memory or security studies please get in touch.

  

Teaching

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching

  • Orientalism: Western Imaginaries of the Middle East (Part 1)
  • Reform and Revolt in the Modern Middle East (Part 2)
  • Politics and Popular Culture: Egypt since 2011 (Part 3)

Research centres and groups

  

Research projects

1)AHRC funded PhD leading to monograph: The Arab World and Western Intelligence: Analysing the Middle East 1958-1981 

2) Co-Investigator for collaborative AHRC-funded project, ‘Politics and Popular Culture: Contested Narratives of the 25 January 2011 Revolution and its Aftermath’ from 2016-2020, creating a digital archive for researchers https://egyptrevolution2011.ac.uk

3) Leverhulme funded project on presidential masculinity titled: ‘Virtue, Violence and Virility: Making Egypt’s Presidents’

 

Background

My research has always been concerned with contemporary questions at the intersection of security, authority and culture. I received my Ph.D from Cambridge University in 2013 and subsequently spent two years at the Politics Department in Warwick University as a Teaching Fellow in Intelligence and Security. I was appointed at the University of Reading in 2015 and have a particular interest in public engagement and communicating with non-academic audiences.

 

Academic qualifications

  

PhD, Cambridge University, 2013

M-Phil, Cambridge University, 2006

BA, Cambridge University, 2005 

Awards and honours

2020-2021: Leverhulme Research Fellowship, ‘ Virtue, Violence and Virility: Making Egypt's Presidents’
2019:
AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker (NGT) Award.
2018: Book Prize, Best ECR output in Arts and Humanities, Reading University.
2017-2019:
British Academy Rising Star Award, ‘Social listening’ in the Humanities: developing qualitative methods to understand digital cultures in the past, present and future’
2017:
Building Outstanding Impact Support Programme (BOISP) Award, Reading University
2016-19:
Co-Investigator on AHRC Research Grant, 'Politics and Popular Culture in Egypt: Contested Narratives of the 25 January Revolution and its Aftermath'
2006-9: Fully Funded
AHRC Doctoral Award (Fees and maintenance), 'Anglo-American political and intelligence assessments of Egypt and the Middle East from 1957-1977’

Professional bodies/affiliations

  

-Member of AHRC Peer Review College

-Reviewer for British Academy Knowledge Frontiers funding scheme

-Editor for Intelligence Studies journal

-Editor for series on Middle East Intelligence with Cambridge University Press

-Member of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Programme Committee

-Member of the International Studies Association (ISA), Intelligence Studies Section, ‘Best Student Paper Award’ Committee 

Selected publications

  

2022 ‘Egypt’s grand strategies: from Gamal Abdel Nasser to Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’ in Clive Jones, Anoush Ehteshami and Tore Peterson (eds.) Grand Strategies in the Middle East, Cambridge University Press.

2021 Co-edited with Nicola Pratt and Dalia Mostafa, ‘Politics and Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: Beyond Domination and Resistance’ special issue of British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, vol 48.

2020 ‘Egypt’s revolutionary year: regime consolidation at home, pragmatism abroad and neutralism in the Cold War’ in Jeffrey Karam (ed.) 1958: A Revolutionary Year. Bloomsbury Academic.

Consultancy and Media Work

As a Fellow for the Cambridge Security Initiative since 2013, I have consulted for a range of national and international government bodies including the UK Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence, The United States European Command and NATO, alongside the business community. 

I am a regular contributor to BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4 and commentate on Middle East affairs in a range of international media such as France 24 and Al Jazeera.

A sample of media work includes:

Publications

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