School of Social and Political Science

Research interests

Historical sociology, International relations, International theory, Marxism, Middle East politics, Political theory, Revolutions, politics of the Capitalocene

I am a scholar of politics and international relations with a particular interest in the contemporary Middle East. I am especially interested in how forms of political power - within, across and beyond borders - interact with people and movements originating in the realms more commonly thought of as 'society' and 'the economy.' I am also interested in how such questions inform our present political condition in what Jason Moore calls 'the Capitalocene.'

My most recent book The Age of Counter-revolution: States and Revolutions in the Middle East addresses these questions by looking at the fate of the 'Arab Spring.' In the book, I argue that the Arab Spring should  be seen not merely as a series of failed revolutions but as a series of successful counter-revolutions. By comparing the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Libya and Yemen, the book shows how these profoundly revolutionary situations were overturned by counterrevolutions.

My previous book The Struggle for the State in Jordan: The Social Origins of Alliances in the Middle East was awarded the Jadaliyya 2016 Political Economy Book Prize. I am also the recipient of the 2022 Fred Halliday Award given to recognize an outstanding mid-career scholar researching the Middle East/ Mediterranean region.

I am a member of the Salvage editorial collective and the author with Rosie Warren, Richard Seymour, and China Mieville of The Tragedy of the Worker: Towards the Proletarocene (Verso, 2021) in the Verso Salvage books series.

I am currently developing a new project on the intertwined histories of energy extractivism and modern state sovereignty, provisionally entitled The Birth of Fossil Sovereignty.

I have also served as an external consultant for the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Germany and as a member of the Historical Materialism editorial board.

Topics interested in supervising

I am interested in supervising PhD applicants working on Middle Eastern politics and International Relations, especially those working within critical theoretical approaches and historical sociology.

If you are interested in being supervised by Jamie Allinson, please see the links below (open in new windows) for more information:

• PhD in Politics
• MSc (R) Political Theory
• MSc (R) Politics