Jeroen Gunning

Professor Jeroen Gunning

Small Group Project 2024-25

Political authority in the ruins – developing an urban lens on wartime and post-war governance of the Middle East

This project proposes that the city, rather than the state, should be the starting point for understanding struggles over governance. An urban lens can provide new theoretical insights and methodological tools to help scholars make sense of these transformations through its attention to the multiplicity of authorities and scales, including local non-state informal as well as national and transnational actors, and to the co-production of space and political order. This project will build on the long tradition of ‘seeing like a city’ (Magnusson 2011) and the emerging broader literature on conflict and post-conflict cities.

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Areas of interest

Middle East Peace and Conflict Studies Politics Critical Terrorism Studies Social Movements Political Violence State Violence Peace Security Palestine Lebanon Egypt

Cohort

FG10

Biography

Jeroen Gunning is Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and Conflict Studies in the Department of Political Economy and at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London. He is one of the founders of the field of critical terrorism studies and has taught and advised both policy-makers and civil society organisations.

Professor Gunning's research is situated at the interface between Middle Eastern Studies and theories of political contestation and conflict, drawing on a wide variety of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, political science, international relations, and critical security studies. His research focuses on political mobilisation with a specific focus on the interplay between Islamist social movements, religion, political contestation, democratisation and violence (both state and non-state) in the Middle East. He has advanced a dynamic interpretation of social movement theory, weaving together structural and agential analysis to explain political contestation and violence under occupation (Hamas in Politics: Democracy, Religion, Violence) and mass mobilisation in the context of authoritarian repression (Why Occupy a Square? People, Protests and Movements in the Egyptian Revolution, with Ilan Zvi Baron).

Biographical details correct as of 09.07.25