Staff Profile
Dr Rory McCarthy
Contact Dr Rory McCarthy (email at rory.p.mccarthy@durham.ac.uk)
Biography
I joined Durham University in 2019 as an Assistant Professor in Politics and Islam to work on the comparative politics of the Middle East. I have two current projects. First, I study the dilemmas of Islamism in the wake of the Arab uprisings, looking at the internal dynamics of contemporary Islamist mobilizations and rethinking concepts of post-Islamism. Most of my fieldwork in recent years has focused on the trajectories of Islamism in Tunisia. Second, I’m writing about the politics of protest in the Middle East through a region-wide comparative analysis of contentious politics and claims to dignity.
Before coming to Durham I spent three years as a Fellow by Examination at Magdalen College, Oxford. Previously, I worked as a foreign correspondent with the Guardian, with postings in Islamabad, Baghdad, Beirut, and Jerusalem. I have a BA in History from Cambridge and an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies and a DPhil in Oriental Studies from Oxford.
Twitter: @rmccarthy
Office Hours (online via Teams for 2020/21): Mon 1430-1530, Thurs 1130-1230
Research Interests
- Islamism
- Comparative Politics of the Middle East
- International Relations of the Middle East
- Contentious Politics
Teaching Areas
- SGIA 2311 Middle East in the International System
- SGIA 3271 Muslims and Politics in the Modern World
- SGIA 49530 International Politics of the Middle East
Selected Publications
Authored book
- McCarthy, Rory (2018). Inside Tunisia's al-Nahda: Between Politics and Preaching. Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
- McCarthy, Rory (2006). Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated: Stories from the New Iraq. London: Chatto & Windus.
Edited book
- Roberts, Adam, Willis, Michael J., McCarthy, Rory & Garton Ash, Timothy (2016). Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chapter in book
- McCarthy, Rory (2016). The Tunisian uprising, Ennahdha, and the revival of an Arab-Islamic Identity. In Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East. Holliday, Shabnam J. & Leech, Philip Rowman & Littlefield International. 157-176.
Journal Article
- McCarthy, Rory (2019). The Politics of Consensus: Al-Nahda and the stability of the Tunisian transition. Middle Eastern Studies 55(2): 261-275.
- McCarthy, Rory (2018). When Islamists Lose: The Politicization of Tunisia's Ennahda Movement. The Middle East Journal 72(3): 365-384.
- McCarthy, Rory (2015). Protecting the Sacred: Tunisia's Islamist Movement Ennahdha and the Challenge of Free Speech. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 42(4): 447-464.
- McCarthy, Rory (2014). Re-thinking Secularism in Post-Independence Tunisia. The Journal of North African Studies 19(5): 733-750.