Dr. Mehdi Beyad

Biography

Mehdi Beyad's research and teaching focus on the politics of the Middle East and postcolonial International Relations theory. He obtained his PhD in International Relations as a Kamran Djam Scholar in 2020 from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, with a focus on international politics in the Gulf region, particularly the Iran-Iraq relations in the 1960s and 1970s. Before coming to Glasgow, he worked as a Senior Teaching Fellow in Politics and International Relations at SOAS University and as a Lecturer in International Development at King's College London. Mehdi has experience teaching in a range of fields, including Middle East Studies, International Political Economy, and International Relations History. He obtained a Fellowship from Advance (formerly the Higher Education Academy) in 2022. He has provided consultancy services and has acted as an advisor in the Middle East region for a number of governments, private actors, and charities, particularly regarding Iran and the Israel-Palestine conflict. Between 2013 and 2014, he served as a project assistant to Dr. Karma Nabulsi at Oxford University on a groundbreaking report looking at political representation and the mobilisation of Palestinian refugee communities. He is a co-founder of the Framing Race collective, a network of academics, activists, and researchers examining the politics, discourses, and histories of empire, racism, and anti-racism in Britain. His current research interests include the role of imperialism in the Middle East region and post-colonial statebuilding in South-South politics.

Research Interests

Experience