The Paul Wilkinson Memorial Lecture 2022 Featuring Dr Raphaël Lefèvre, New College, Oxford - Free

Email [email protected] to book a space.

Raphaël's central research interest is the changing nature of Sunni Islamism in the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Levant. His work aims to produce a general account of the ways in which grand Islamist discourses have often been used by political actors to express and address a range of less obvious, more local, socio-economic and political grievances. It is situated at the crossroads of political sociology, urban studies and international relations. His PhD thesis, entitled “The ‘Islamic Emirate' of North Lebanon: the rise and fall of the Tawheed movement in Tripoli, 1982-1985”, explored how the emergence of a radical Islamist group in the Lebanese city of Tripoli during the 1980s reflected the city's deep inner social tensions. His first book looked at how, in Syria, the rise of Islamism in the 1970s came to embody Sunni urban middle class opposition to an ‘Alawi and rural-dominated political system. Raphaël is now focusing his research at New College on contemporary Islamist trends and in particular on the political and social dynamics lying behind the rise of Salafist movements.