Visiting Doctoral Fellow
May is a doctoral student of Anthropology at the University of Oxford. Her work focuses on political life in the Lebanese city of Tripoli in the period between the sectarian clashes of 2011-2014 and the aftermath of the 2019 Uprising, in which Tripoli gained the status of the ‘bride of the revolution’. Her research investigates the tension between resistance and complicity to clientelism, and the effects of this extended process on personal well-being and political subjectivity.
May obtained an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford in 2016. She then worked in policy research institutes including the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies (2016-2019) and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (2020-2021).
Research Project
Everyday Betrayal, Relentless Hope
Political Life in a Lebanese City
My work focuses on political life in the Lebanese city of Tripoli in the period between the sectarian clashes of 2011-2014 and the aftermath of the 2019 Uprising, in which Tripoli gained the status of the ‘bride of the revolution’. I investigate the tension between resistance and complicity to clientelism, and the effects of this extended process on personal well-being and political subjectivity.
2022. (co-authored with Zeina Helou). “Tripoli Amidst Lebanon’s Parliamentary Elections: New Faces, Elite Reshuffling, and Public Disinterest.” The Policy Initiative. Available at: www.thepolicyinitiative.org/article/details/142/tripoli-amidst-lebanon%E2%80%99s-2022-parliamentary-elections-new-faces-elite-reshuffling-and-public-disinterest
2022. “Concrete Memories: Revisiting the Lebanese Civil War through Beirut’s Material Remains.” Ethnography. Available at journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14661381211067451
2021. “Waiting in Darkness: The Lebanese Economic Crisis as one of the third worst globally since 1850.” Voxpot. Available at www.voxpot.cz/cekani-ve-tme-libanonske-elity-berou-lidem-elektrinu-leky-benzin-penize-ale-i-nadeji/
2020. “Snap Back to Reality: Saad Hariri Returns as Lebanese PM.” MEDirections Blog. Available at blogs.eui.eu/medirections/snap-back-to-reality-saad-hariri-returns-as-lebanons-pm/.
2020. “The Birth of a Revolutionary Symbol: A Brutalist Egg at the Center of the Lebanese Protests.” A2larm. Available at a2larm.cz/2019/12/jak-se-rodi-symbol-revoluce-brutalistni-vajicko-v-centru-libanonskych-protestu/.
2019. Book Review of Louise Steel and Luci Attala (eds.) “Body matters: exploring the materiality of the human body.” Journal of Anthropological Society of Oxford 11(1): 98-101.
2019. “Preventing Violent Extremism in Lebanon.” The Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. 41. Available at lcps-lebanon.org/publication.php.
2018. “The Black Saturday Massacre of 1975: The Discomfort of Assembling the Lebanese Civil War Narrative." Contemporary Levant 3(2): 123-136. doi.org/10.1080/20581831.2018.1531531.
