Dr Shabnam Holliday

Qualifications

Professional membership

• British Society for Middle Eastern Studies
• British Institute of Persian Studies
• British International Studies Association

Roles on external bodies

• Director Modern Research Project, 'Iran and the International', British Istitute of Persian Studies (British Academy)
• Member of the Research Committee, British Istitute of Persian Studies (British Academy)

Teaching interests

I currently teach and lead 3 modules:

• Stage 1, Discovering World Politics. This is a team-taught module that introduces stage 1 students to the concep of power through diffeernt case studies, topics and approaches. This includes the 'Arab Spring'; Natural resources and power in Africa; the relationship between legitimacy, power and authority; plastic and ocean governance; Covid-19 and security; protests globally and power as resitance; and Covid-19 and international politics.
• Stage 3, The Politics and International Relations of the Middle East. This module examines confict and rivalry in the MIddle East by highlighting the intereconnection between domestic and international politics, and highlighting the importance of historica context.
• MA, The International Relations of the MIddle East: A critical approach. This module examines international relations in the region by exploring the somestic and international dynamics of popular uprisings in the Middle East, icluding the 'Arab Spring'.

PhD supervision

I am interested in supervising students in the following areas:

• Iranian foreign policy and politics, including nationalism and the role of political identity
• Political change and transformation in the MENA region
• Populism in the Global South
• World order and the Global South

Staff serving as external examiners

Open University, Undergraduate programmes, POLIS

Research interests

Shabnam is Associate Professor in International Relations. She joined the University of Plymouth on completing her PhD on discourses of Iranian national identity at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. Her publications include Defining Iran: Politics of Resistance (Routledge, 2011) and the edited volume, with Phil Leech, Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2016).

In addition to her research on Iranian politics and international relations, Shabnam has been working on populism. This includes her article, Populism, the international and methodological nationalism: global order and the Iran-Israel nexus, Political Studies (2020), which puts forward a new framework for looking at populism in International Relations.

Shabnam has three areas of research interest: the relationship between domestic and international politics in relation to populism; the role of ideas in politics in the Global South; the construction of global order and its relationship with revolution and political transformation. These research interests are reflected in ongoing research projects: Iran and global order; and Iran and the international.

Shabnam is the current Director of the British Institute of Persia’s Modern Research Project. In addition to being on BIPS’ research committee. Her research project is entitled 'Iran and the international' and explores the relationship between ideas and intellectual history and the international; and Iran's international relations.

Grants & contracts

• June 2007 British Institute of Persian Studies: 6 month Residential Post-doc in Tehran to research Iranian national identity
• June 2005 British Institute of Persian Studies Research Grant
• June 2005 Prince al-Waleed Award