Hesham Abdulrahman Mohammad Alawadi

Dr Hesham Al-Awadi is a Full Professor of Political Science in the Department of International Relations and former Director of the Center for Gulf Studies at the American University of Kuwait. At London Metropolitan University, he doubled major in Communications and Politics. He obtained a master’s degree in international relations with Merit from the University of Kent in 1998, and an M. Phil degree in Historical Studies from the University of Cambridge in 1999. He then completed his PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. He then taught as a full-time lecturer in the University of Exeter (2002-05). His taught courses included MA courses titled: History and Politics of the Gulf, and Modernity and the Transformation of the Middle East. In 2010, he was a Visiting Scholar in the Elliot School of International Affairs, at George Washington University, where he taught an MA course on the Contemporary Politics and Society of the Gulf. He is the receipt of the Faculty Mentorship Award from the American University of Kuwait in 2013. His publications include In Pursuit of Legitimacy: Power and Political Islam in Egypt under Mubarak (2013), and All the Rage: How Ideas Spread in Kuwait (2020). He contributed articles to Middle East Journal, Contemporary Arab Affairs and Carnegie, among others. Al-Awadi’s main research interests include Islamists in the Middle East and sociopolitical change in the Gulf, with specific focus on Kuwait.