Lama Tawakkol

I am Lecturer in International Political Economy in the Department of European and International Studies. I hold a PhD in Political Studies from Queen’s University, Canada. Prior to joining King’s, I was Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Manchester. My research relates to international/global political economy, international relations, critical economic geography and development. Broadly, I am interested in the historical and contextual specificities of global capitalism, with a particular focus on the Middle East. More specifically, I explore the power and politics of development policy and aid, their implications for social relations and inequalities, and their intersection with Middle East states and populations.

In my doctoral research, I explored the political economy of western financial support for Jordan and Lebanon in the wake of the Syrian conflict and refugee influx. I focused on western donors’ shift from humanitarian aid to a development-led approach, the so-called Humanitarian-Development Nexus, which claims to provide a more sustainable and comprehensive solution to forced displacement by building host states’ resilience and addressing their development needs. Analyzing this approach through infrastructure projects in both countries’ water sectors, I explored how this shift was part of wider attempts to consolidate western capitalist relations and safeguard local ruling classes in a post-2011 Middle East. This research was partially funded by a Civil Society Scholar Award (2019) from Open Society Foundations.

As an Early Career fellow on the Mapping Connections: China and Contemporary Development in the Middle East project, I am interested in further exploring the political economy of recent infrastructure investments and development in the Middle East, with a focus on projects by western multilateral development banks (MDBs). I historically situate these projects within global capitalism, US-led imperialism in the Middle East and rising (geo)political and material competition, particularly between the West (led by the US) and China. More specifically, through a focus on western-funded infrastructure projects in Egypt and Jordan, I ask: what are the connections, if any, between these projects and rising Chinese influence in the region, particularly in infrastructure? What do they tell us about US-led imperialism in the region and more broadly? How do the beneficiary states of these projects fit into these relations?