Dr Maria Gloria Polimeno

Dr Maria Gloria Polimeno is Research Fellow at the SOAS Middle East Institute, University of London.

She is an interdisciplinary scholar of the Middle East. Many of her interdisciplinary research interests have been shaped by living and researching in the region. Her works focus on comparative politics with a particular emphasis on transformative authoritarianism and political legitimacy.

In this area of research, she focuses on corruption, comparative political economy, ethno-politics, and environmental and food politics with reference to green energy transition projects and the broader Social Development Goals. Her forthcoming book entitled “Egypt and the rise of fluid authoritarianism: Political ecology, power and crisis of legitimacy” is being published by Manchester University Press.

Her next project examines the transition to green energy and food politics in the context of elites’ survival and the dynamics of resistance to external shocks (i.e., climate change and Anthropocene related effects) in the region. Her works have been published in Mediterranean Politics, Democratisation, International Affairs, and other venues.  She is an occasional writer on political and economic events in the region and her contributions featured in The Loop, European Consortium for Political Research and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Before becoming a Research Fellow at the SOAS Middle East Institute, she lectured in International Relations and Politics at the University of York. As part of her appointments, she held teaching, supervisions and research positions at the University of Exeter, Queen Mary University of London, SOAS and remains an affiliate of the University of Cambridge.

She is Global Expert on Egypt and Tunisia in the ERC co-funded V-Dem project based at the University of Gothenburg and was a Global Expert on Egypt and Tunisia for the ERC funded DEMED Project led by the University of Glasgow, and a Middle East and North Africa country expert in the British Academy CITMODES-funded GLOBALCIT programme based at the European University Institute.

She holds a PhD in Middle East Politics from the University of Exeter and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts. She is a member of the Council for British Research in the Levant, European Consortium for Political Research and a UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab Expert.

Comparative politics with a particular emphasis on transformative authoritarianism and political legitimacy in the Middle East.