Dr Roxane Farmanfarmaian

Dr Roxane Farmanfarmaian is a scholar of international relations specialising in the foreign and security dimensions of the Middle East, and in the media. She is Director of International Relations and Global Studies at the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education, and lecturer on Modern Middle East Politics at the Cambridge Department of Political and International Studies (POLIS).

A Senior Associate Fellow of the European Leadership Network (ELN) and member of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ ‘Women in Security Dialogue’, she was a resident Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies between 2018-19, where she finalised a new model for theorising media in the Middle East. In 2013, she received a 5-year £680K grant from al-Jazeera Media Corp to study Media and Politics in the Southern Mediterranean, which focused on Tunisia, Morocco and Turkey after the Arab Uprisings.

A recipient of ESRC and Annenberg Foundation for Communication awards, she was a founder of the POLIS-based Centre for the International Relations of the Middle East and North Africa (CIRMENA), and previously, editor of the Cambridge Review of International Relations. Prior to becoming an academic, she was an international reporter, covering the Soviet Union, Iran, women’s business and the high-tech media industry. She is a frequent public speaker, opinion-writer and television commentator on Middle East political and international affairs..

Qualifications:

• BA in Middle East Studies, Princeton University
• MPhil and PhD in International Relations, University of Cambridge

 

Research Interests:

• Political Discourse and Identity Theory
• Iran-US relations, and Iran's relations regionally
• Hybrid-media theory, particularly as related to power, values, and communication strategy
• Special relationships
• Energy Security and the politics of oil

 

Publications:

Just published:

• 'The pandemic and the media in North Africa', 2020, Journal of North African Studies, October 
• Media and Politics in the Southern Mediterranean: Communicating Power in Transition after 2011 (2020) Routledge
• Youth and Digital Politics in the Southern Mediterranean: Media-preneurship 2.0’ (2020) in Francesco Cavatorta and Fatima al-Issawi, eds.,The Arab Spring: Micro-dynamics of revolts between change and continuity(London: Ginko Press)
• 'Iran, Sanctions and the Covid-19 Pandemic' (2020, July) European Leadership Network,