2014 Travel Grant Winners

Mr. Benjamin Acosta (Claremont Graduate University)
The Dynamics of Lebanon’s Democratization

Prof. Mohammed Akacem (Metropolitan State University of Denver)
Oil and Democracy in Algeria: Why has the Arab Spring Passed it By?

Prof. Nicholas Al-Jeloo (University of Divinity)
Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Assyrians in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region and the ‘Disputed Territories’

Mr. Alex Brammer (United States Military Academy and King’s College London)
Post-Conflict Economic Development in Liberia

Prof. Mohamed Camara (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University)
Islam and Competing World Orders in West Africa During the Cold War

Ms. Idil Edes (Duke University)
The Political Economy of Religion and Authoritarian Breakdown

Mr. Justin Fantauzzo (University of Cambridge)
Ending Ottoman Misrule: British Soldiers, Liberal Imperialism and the First World War in Palestine

Ms. Sara Farhan (York University)
Manufacturing Subjectivity: The Establishment of Baghdad Television, 1952-1958

Prof. Jan Feldman (University of Vermont)
Models of Feminism: Tunisia’s Opportunity to Overcome the Secular/Islamist Binary

Dr. Amir Kamel (King’s College London)
The Political Economy of US-Iranian Relations (2005-2014)

Mr. Zachary Karazsia (Florida International University)
A House Divided: Testing Theories of Genocide in Rwanda and Burundi

Prof. Tugce Kurtis (University of West Georgia)
Silence in Official Representations of Turkish History: Implications for National Identity and Minority Rights

Prof. D. Gershon Lewental (University of Oklahoma)
Myth and memory in Islamic narratives: Saʿd and Abū Miḥjan at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah

Ms. Buket Oztas (University of Florida)
Party System Religiosity and the Quality of Democracy in Predominantly Muslim Countries

Dr. David Palkki (Texas A&M University)
Autocrats, Bureaucrats, and Iraq’s ‘Fumbling’ Toward the Bomb

Mr. Moritz Pieper (University of Kent, Brussels School of International Studies)
Resisting Hegemony in the Iranian Nuclear Crisis and the Future Geopolitical Mapping of the Middle East: The Cases of China, Russia, and Turkey

Mr. Orçun Selçuk (Florida International University)
Measuring Political Polarization in Turkey

Prof. Yuval Sinai (Yale Law School)
Jurisprudential Engineering in Two Middle Eastern Secular-Religious Countries: Between the Sanhuri Arab Code and Islamic Law in Egypt and the invention of Hebrew Law (Mishpat Ivri) in Mandatory Palestine

Prof. Christine Sixta Rhinehart (The University of South Carolina, Palmetto College)
Foolhardy in Middle Eastern Foreign Policy: The American Fallacy of Using Drone Targeted Killings to Decrease Terrorism

Mr. David Sobey (University of Texas, Austin)
Before Babel: Ethnic Identity and Multilingualism in the Ancient Near East

Ms. Fazilat Soukhakian (University of Cincinnati)
The Battle to Control Women’s Body: Dress Code, Gender, Sensuality and Sexuality in Post-Revolutionary Iran

Mr. David Suarez (Florida International University)
The Sahrawi—An Investigation of Their ‘National’ Identity from Ancient Origins Until 1524

Ms. S. Ladan Zarabadi (University of Cincinnati)
University of Cincinnati The Public Sphere and Civic Participation: What Can Murals Say in an Islamitized Urban Space?