Toby Matthiesen

Dr Toby Matthiesen is a Research Fellow in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Pembroke College and is associated with the Department of Politics and International Studies and the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Cambridge. In 2013, he is also a Research Officer at the London School of Economics and Political Scien... ce (LSE). In 2011 he was awarded a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, for his dissertation on The Shia of Saudi Arabia: Identity Politics, Sectarianism and the Saudi State. In 2007 he received an MA Near and Middle East Studies with Major in Politics from SOAS. He studied for his undergraduate degree at the University of Bern, where he received a BA in Oriental Studies with Minor in Modern History in 2006. Toby Matthiesen is working on a book project that looks at how the Arab Spring protests affected the Gulf states, particularly Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and how these states responded to protests both at home and in the wider Arab world. This book is partly based on his research at the LSE, where he is working on a research project on the Arab Spring in the Gulf States. In addition, he is working on a book based on his PhD, which won the 2012 APSA (American Political Science Association) Aaron Wildavsky Award for the Best Dissertation on Religion and Politics. He has published, amongst others, in The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Middle East Report, The Middle East Journal, al-Akhbar and Neue Zrcher Zeitung and has appeared on various Radio stations.Read More