Department of Development Studies

Professor Gilbert Achcar

Key information

Roles
Department of Development Studies Professor of Development Studies and International Relations Centre for Palestine Studies Member Centre for Migration and Diaspora Studies Member
Qualifications
BA (Lyon); BA, MA (Lebanese University Beirut); PhD (Paris VIII)
Building
Russell Square: College Buildings
Office
292b
Email address
ga3@soas.ac.uk
Telephone number
020 7898 4557

Biography

Gilbert Achcar is Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS University of London. 

Gilbert Achcar has degrees in Philosophy (ESL, Beirut), Social Sciences (UL, Beirut) and a PhD in Social History/International Relations (University of Paris-VIII). Before joining SOAS in 2007, he taught and/or researched in various universities and research centres in Beirut, Berlin and Paris. 

His many books, published in a total of 20 languages, include: The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder (2002, 2006); Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, co-authored with Noam Chomsky (2007, 2008, 2024); The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives (2010, 2025); Marxism, Orientalism, Cosmopolitanism (2013); The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising (2013, 2022); Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising (2016); and The New Cold War: The United States, Russia and China, from Kosovo to Ukraine (2023).

Research interests

  • Globalisation
  • Global Power Relations
  • MENA
  • Sociology of Religion 
  • Sociology of Revolution

PhD Supervision

Name Title
Anne-Marie Misconi The Intellectual Formation of the Iraqi Orientalist, Dominique Bashir Misconi (1892-1933).
Bryony Wolff The political economy of structural change: a case study of Egypt and Turkey 1980-2010.

Publications