The 2024 Sir William Luce fellowship public lecture

The Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies is pleased to host Dr Altea Pericoli, the 2024 Sir WIlliam Luce Fellow. Dr Pericoli's lecture, on the subject of Aid from Gulf donors in conflict zones, will take place on Wednesday 12 June 2024 at 12 o'clock at the Al-Qasimi Building on Elvet Hill Rd, DH1 3TU. The lectures will also be live-streamed on Zoom: if you wish to attend online please register here.  

Dr Altea Pericoli's research has the overall objective to provide a broader understanding of humanitarian aid in conflict zones as implemented by Gulf actors and to improve the dialogue between Western and Gulf donors. The research examines foreign aid interventions of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their implementation in Yemen, Sudan, and Syria (including the Syrian refugee issue) in the period 2015-2022. The study combines international relations theories and the anthropological approach to humanitarian aid analysis, embedding a top-down and bottom-up observation of aid interventions.  

Dr Pericoli is currently a Postdoctoral research fellow in geopolitics and regional cooperation at the Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden. She was previously an academic visitor at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies and a visiting research fellow at the European University Institute, Robert Schuman Center for Advanced Studies. She obtained her Ph.D. in Institutions and Policies (2019-2023) at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, and she conducted many visiting periods at Vienna University, Durham University, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway. In July 2023, she obtained the BRISMES Award “Early Career Development Scholarship” to elaborate her first monograph with a university press. Her research interests include Islamic philanthropy and aid interventions implemented by Islamic actors and the Gulf States in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

The 2024 Sir William Luce lecture will take place at the Al-Qasimi Building (and on Zoom) on Wednesday 12 June at 12 o'clock. The lecture is open to the public and attendance is free.  

Information about the fellowship programme and past fellows is published here. The call for applications for the 2025 fellowship will be released in June after the lecture.