Research Associate
Christian Thuselt joined the OIB in October 2021 as a research associate and is responsible for the in-house production of the “Beiruter Texte und Studien” (BTS). He holds a MA from Tübingen University and received his PhD in Social Sciences from Roskilde University with a study on Lebanese political parties as expressions of a global modernity. From 2009 till 2021 he worked at Erlangen University, most recently as an assistant professor. His research at the OIB focusses on Iraqi statehood as part of a discourse on legitimacy.
The research project aims to bring together two research paradigms that have hardly been connected so far: the study of spatially bound identity patterns in political geography and a political science perspective on the constitution of political orders. Using an interpretative-constructivist approach on statehood, borrowing from political philosophy and philosophical anthropology, it is argued that three dimensions of political-territorial orders can be analytically distinguished: (1) sociocultural differentiations separate an "us" from the "others" (identity) and (2) in many cases naturalise this differentiation with, among other things, the delimitation of spaces through a location of supposedly pre-existent spaces based on these practices. Finally, they connect these two dimensions with the conception of a "polity" (3), understood as the formal constitution of societies.
Lebanese Political Parties: Dream of a Republic (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021).
• Digital populism in Iraq: the case of Muqtada al-Sadr, Politics, Religion & Ideology, (2024) (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21567689.2024.2352443)
• Lebanese Phalangism and fascism: history of a symbolic appropriation, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 59, No. 2, (2023), pp. 281-297 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00263206.2022.2065263 )
• Revolutionary Utopia in the Middle East as Steely Romanticism: the Case of the al-Baʿth Party, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 50, No. 1 (2023), pp. 50-66 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13530194.2021.1919992 ).
• Libanon: Politökonomische Kurzanalyse (PÖK) für das Bundesministerium für wirtschaftliche Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit (BMZ) und Eskalationspotenzialanalyse Libanon für das German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) Hamburg: seit 2021.
• Sois belle et vote – Wahlwerbung einer libanesischen Partei, in: Christian Schicha (ed.), Wahlwerbespots zur Bundestagswahl 2017. Analysen und Anschlussdiskurse über parteipolitische Kurzfilme in Deutschland (Wiesbaden: VS, 2019), pp. 529-546.
• ‘We Wander in Your Footsteps’ – Reciprocity and Contractility in Lebanese Personality-centred Parties, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 44, No. 2 (2017), pp. 194-210 (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13530194.2017.1281573 ); reprinted in: Siavush Randjbar-Daemi et al. (eds.), Political Parties in the Middle East (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), pp. 44-60.
• ‘Training in Morals’ – Zur Rolle und Verwendung religiöser Narrative im Diskurs der ‘Forces Libanaises’, in: Peter Lintl, Christian Thuselt und Christian Wolff (eds.), Religiöse Bewegungen als politische Akteure im Nahen Osten (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2016), pp. 195-225.
• Milizen als Surrogat eines dysfunktionalen Staates, in Sicherheit und Frieden, Vol. 33, Special Issue ‘Militias’ (2015), pp. 193-199 (https://www.jstor.org/stable/26389255 ) .
• Demokratische Paradoxien in Ägypten zwischen Aufstand und Autokratie, in: Georges Tamer, Hanna Röbbelen and Peter Lintl (eds.), Arabischer Aufbruch. Interdisziplinäre Studien zur Einordnung eines zeitgeschichtlichen Phänomens (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2014), pp. 293-329. (with Peter Lintl and Christian Wolff)
• ‘Und wenn sich die Krankheit der Behandlung widersetzt (…), vielleicht existiert dann die Verpflichtung zur Revolution.’ – Systemantagonistische Opposition im Konkordanzsystem am Beispiel des Libanon, in: Stefan Köppl et al. (eds.), Konkordanzdemokratie. Ein Demokratietyp der Vergangenheit? (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2012), pp. 395-417.
• On: A. Kadir Yildirim, Muslim Democratic Parties in the Middle East. Economy and Politics of Islamic Moderation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), Die Welt des Islams, Vol. 60 (2020), pp. 132-135.
• On: Are Knudsen et al (eds.): Lebanon after the Cedar Revolution (London: Hurst & Co., 2012): https://www.hsozkult.de/review/id/reb-19276.
• On: Franck Mermier et al. (eds.): Leaders et partisans au Liban (Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2012): https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-19275.
• On: Heidemarie Winkel: Geschlechtercodes und religiöse Praxis. Arabische Christinnen zwischen patriarchaler Leitkultur und Selbst-Autorisierung (Würzburg: Ergon, 2009): https://www.hsozkult.de/publicationreview/id/reb-13940.
• Nader El-Bizri: On Being and Time: The Section on Heidegger in Charles Malik's 1937 Harvard Thesis. Würzburg, Ergon, 2022 (scientific supervision, partial language editing [German])
• Anna A. Dolinina: Ignatij Kračkovskij (1883–1951). Ein Arabist in seiner Zeit. Übersetzt von Kirill Dmitriev. Würzburg, Ergon, 2023 (scientific supervision and German language editing)
• Wir sind uns selbst am nächsten, zenith 1/2023, 32-35.
• Die vielen Leben des Michel Aoun, zenith online, 07.11.2022, https://magazin.zenith.me/de/politik/michel-aoun-und-die-praesidentschaft-im-libanon
• Warum die Wende im Libanon ausbleibt, zenith online, 19.05.2022, https://magazin.zenith.me/de/politik/nach-den-parlamentswahlen-im-libanon.
• Wer ist hier eigentlich Elite? Zenith online, 05.10.2020, https://magazin.zenith.me/de/politik/volk-parteien-und-elite-im-libanon
• Libanon – ein geschundenes Land, BR alpha – demokratie, 17.02.2021, https://www.br.de/mediathek/video/alpha-demokratie-17022021-libanon-ein-geschundenes-land-av:5f18916767b8e20014940f56
21.09.2023 Jahreskongress der Deutschen Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vorderer Orient (DAVO) in Vienna; “Muqtada al-Sadr as a case of populism in the Middle East. A balancing act between representation and transcendence”
11.-13.03.2023 OIB Conference “Living in a Digital Age”; “Digital Populism and Religious Authority”
20.-22.02.2023 MECAM Travelling Academy “Solidarities in/between the Middle East & North Africa”; “Solidarity and the Normativity of Modernity in some Lebanese and Iraqi political discourses”
14.-15.05.2022 Workshop Reading Islams and Modernities with ʿAziz al-ʿAzmeh, organized by the “Akademie für Islam in Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft” (AIWG) at Erlangen (as Discussant)
10.07.2021 26. World Congress of Political Science der International Political Science Association “New Nationalisms in an Open World”; Presentation: “Nationalism in the Middle East: Between a Nationalist Utopia and Methodological Post-Nationalism?”
29.04.2021 MA-Course “History, Politics and Society in Lebanon” at Erfurt University; Presentation: “Political Normativity and Self-Narration in Lebanon: A Critical Perspective”
22.-23.05.2020 Reading Course “Politische Anthropologie” Philosophical Seminary at Erlangen University; Presentation: “Elemente einer Anthropologie des autoritären Staates im Nahen Osten“
06.-08.09.2018 Workshop “Conceptualizing Sectarianization: Perspectives on the Dynamics of Ethno-Religious Difference in Studying the Middle East and North Africa” at Berne University; Presentation: “‘The Country as made out of Millets and Sects’ – Sectarianists as Modernists in Lebanon“
16.-20.07.2018 World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES) in Seville: “Lebanon: Decentralization as a break with Modernism?”
10.11.2017 Centre for Euro-Oriental Studies (CEOS) in Erlangen; Presentation: “Moderne und Neo-Patrimonialismus: Elemente personaler Herrschaft in libanesischen Parteien“
03.-04.11.2016 Workshop „Region(s), Religion(s), Regime(s): The Interplay of Politics and Religion in East Asia and the Middle East” at Erlangen University: “Politicized Religion among Lebanese Christians: A Religiously Inspired Self-Location between Radicalization and Consociationalism”
28.-29.01.2016 Conference “Political Parties in the Middle East: Past, Present and Future Perspectives” at Manchester University: “Personalized Party-Leadership in Lebanon as a Social Contract”
18.-22.08.2014 World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES) in Ankara; Panel: “Lebanon in Tension: Political Parties between Modernity and a ‘New’ Leadership”; Presentation: “Between Personal Leaderhip and ‘Training in Morals’ – Lebanese Political Parties as Products of a Hybridization Process”
10.-11.07.2014 Workshop „Milizen und die Herstellung von (Un-) Sicherheit an der Universität Osnabrück within the framework of the DFG-project “Security Governance durch Milizen”; Presentation: “Die Lebanese Forces als Staatssurrogat? Versuch und Grenzen eines Nation-buildings im Bürgerkrieg”
23.-23.09.2013 32. Deutscher Orientalistentag in Münster; Panel: “Libanon: neue politische und soziale Organisationsformen”; Presentation: “Erscheinungsformen, Funktionen und Bedingungen des Charismas in der libanesischen Politik am Beispiel christlicher Parteien”
04.-06.10.2012 Jahreskongress der Deutschen Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vorderer Orient (DAVO) in Erlangen; Panel: Religiöse Bewegungen als politische Akteure im Nahen Osten“; Presentation: Persistenz eines Milieus: Die christliche ‘Ideologie der Berge’ im Libanon”
