My research focuses on the activism of Middle Eastern migrants in Britain from 1960-80 and Middle East solidarity and anti-war movements that campaigned against British imperialism in the Middle East. I am interested in exploring how dialectical spaces were formed in Britain by Middle Eastern activists who connected their own national liberation struggles with other activists, confronted British imperialism in the region and globally, and interacted with British political currents.
My PhD project argues that the arrival of foreign students, immigrants workers, and exiled activists popularised Middle East struggles in Britain and the wider British Left. Whilst in the US, many young people were radicalised by US imperialism in Vietnam and developed relationships with the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, the radicalism of the Sixties in Britain was rooted in campaigns that challenged British imperialism in the Middle East. Britain's involvement in the Dhofar war, the war against the National Liberation Front in Yemen, support for Israel and the Shah's regime in Iran was linked to activists in Britain to the US war on Vietnam.
By exploring and comparing organisations including the Yemen Workers Union, the Gulf Committee, and the Confederation of Iranian Students and engaging with the exchanges between activists, periodicals, memoirs and oral interviews, I aim to understand how transnational solidarity was conceptualised from Britain and what it means to organise as migrants from the imperial core.
My research is funded by the White Rose Colleague of the Arts and Humanities, which is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
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