Arab World Studies PhD

Middle Eastern Studies at Manchester offers exceptionally wide-ranging opportunities for research and advanced training in the history, languages, religious traditions and politics of the Middle East. Training and research supervision in all major cultures and periods of the region are delivered by experts whose publications contribute to their subject on an international level. The Department was awarded the role of hosting (together with Edinburgh and Durham) the national Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in 2006. In the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise a total of 60% of its research was deemed to be in the two top quality categories of 4* (world-leading) and 3* (internationally excellent).

The Centre offers specialised intensive training in Arabic, and in a wide range of other research skills and techniques; it organises seminars, workshops and conferences, and offers fully-funded MA and PhD studentships. Another major research centre, the Centre for Jewish Studies (based in the Faculty of Humanities), brings together a wide range of specialists from across the University, and a large and active body of graduate students working on various aspects of Jewish culture and history.

Research embraces the historical-literary study of classical periods, as well as current approaches in the exploration of the social, cultural, literary or religious characteristics of the contemporary Middle East. Staff research interests include modern Islamic thought, the role of women in the Muslim world, Israeli culture, modern Jewish thought, 20 ^th century relations between Europe and the Arab Middle East as well as Iran, alongside classical Islamic history, Shiism and rabbinic Judaism. Some of Manchester's experts in Middle Eastern Studies contribute to the public debate on contemporary cultural-religious issues in the UK, or are part of the Middle Eastern discourses on the preservation of national heritages, gender roles or the relations between 'East' and 'West'. Manchester is also the editorial home of the internationally renowned academic periodical Journal of Semitic Studies, which recently celebrated its fiftieth anniversary