Skip to main content

Staff Profile

Dr Mori Ram

Lecturer in Politics of the Global South

Background


Background

My main interests lie in the meeting points between politics, space and matter. Past and present research include the militarisation of natural resources in contested territories in the Middle East and the Mediterranean. The infrastructure of faith and religion in conflicted urban environments and the emergence of new separation regimes in cities today. Before taking a position at Newcastle, I was a research and teaching associate at SOAS (2017-2021)  and UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies (2016) and Development Planning Unit (2017- 2018).







Qualifications

· DPhil in Politics and Government (Ben Gurion University)


· MA in Israel Studies (Ben Gurion University)


· BA in History and Middle East studies (Tel Aviv University) 

Research



Past, current and future projects

My research approach involves designing interdisciplinary working environments that integrate multiple exploratory methods from the fields of IR, political geography, culture studies and public policy. My first project comparatively examined the securitisation processes of contested territories and focused on the Golan Heights and Northern Cyprus. Upon completion of my thesis in 2014, I examined the relations between urban politics and practices of faith in Israel-Palestine utilising ethnographic work with geographic analysis. In 2016 I received a Wellcome Trust Seed grant that enabled me to take part in a research project at UCL’s Development Planning Unit (DPU) exploring the international relations of development health and focusing on the export of medical knowledge, personnel and infrastructure from Israel to Africa. The project examines how medical experience shapes development aid, international politics, immigration processes and racialisation dynamics in Africa and the Middle East. As of January 2020, I am part of a research group which was awarded a grant by the Gerda Henkel Foundation. The three-year project studies the links of destruction and renewal by framing ruins as multi-dimensional public, social, and cultural problems and tracing the urban histories of ruination and recovery in the Middle East. 

Several of my publications are based on these projects. The first explores the political formation of the Golan Heights as a tourist resort (Antipode, 2014); the subsequent two develop a comparative model to study the securitisation processes of contested territories by juxtaposing the Golan Heights to Northern Cyprus (Political Geography, 2015) and the West Bank (Political Geography, 2016). Three additional articles discuss how places of worship are shaped as ethnonational strongholds in the city (Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie 2017), examine how religion constructs urban-national identity (Journal of Urban Design, 2018) and engage with the methodology of rhythm analysis and its application to the study of national conflicts in contested cities (City and Society 2019).  In addition to these works I have written on collective memory and trauma, and the figure of the undead in popular culture.  




Teaching




During 2022-23 I will convene the following modules:

 

POL 3127: Global Apartheid Regimes

 

POL8044: Critical Geopolitics

 



Publications