PhD Project Proposals for the Higher Commission for Education Development in Iraq Scholarship Programme

Are you interested in studying for a Doctorate degree in Humanities and Social Sciences? Our research in these areas is classed as world-leading and internationally excellent (as measured by the Research Excellence Framework).

Projects that supervisors have proposed as part of the Scholarship Programme for the HCED in Iraq are listed below.

Iraqi students without a scholarship but interested in a project can consider these alternative funding routes. If a project listed here relates to a related area of interest, the supervisor may be able discuss modifying it. 

Please contact hsspgr@liverpool.ac.uk with questions, or to be directed to the appropriate supervisor.  

 

1. State-Citizen Relations – Trust, Legitimacy, and Representation

The state requires the buy-in of its citizens to foreclose (violent) challenges. These dynamics are particularly significant for post-conflict states’ nation-building processes where this state-citizen relationship is being formed or altered. Three avenues for research:

1. Do relevant population groups trust the local rule of law institutions? One of the most visible arms of the state is the police service. Why is a police service trusted, how does this trust manifest, and what are distinctions between different groups?
2. Does service delivery increase state legitimacy? Is a state which meets basic demands of the population (medical care, security, education etc) considered more legitimate?
3. What are the challenges of representation-building measures? States often engage in active trust-building measures, such as ensuring representation of relevant groups and communities. Does the active inclusion of communities increase their trust in the state?

Dr Birte Gippert, Politics

 

2. The Political Economy of State Building

This project investigates the challenges of nation-building in contexts characterized by fragile institutional frameworks and foreign intervention. The research focuses on understanding how weak state capacity undermines governance and public goods provision and explores pathways to strengthening institutional resilience. Drawing on theoretical frameworks that emphasize the interplay between institutional quality, external shocks, and state development, the study adopts a quantitative approach to analyze state capacity across multiple dimensions: Fiscal capacity (tax/GDP), Legal capacity (contract and property rights enforcement), Bureaucratic capacity (professionalization and meritocratic recruitment), Coercive capacity (monopoly of violence), Infrastructure capacity (public goods provision). The role and the effect of Political institutions, Historical legacies, Geographic factors and Social structure on nation building will be explored. The empirical strategy will exploit both cross-sectional and temporal variation in institutional reforms. Various estimation methods will be considered to ensure robust results and address potential methodological challenges inherent in institutional analysis. Expected contributions include developing a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between institutional development approaches and state capacity outcomes, with significant implications for policy design.

Professor Ruijun Bu, Economics

 

3. Language Policies and Nation-building

Recognising multilingualism as the defining characteristic of the modern state demands an engagement with how – in a literal sense – the State speaks to its citizens. In response, countries in transformation interrogate the linguistic rights and responsibilities of its citizens. Rather than returning to colonial-era language policies which privilege dominant ethno-linguistic groups, contemporary language policy research explores how best to manage language in a multilingual state, recognising the importance of communication without discriminating against groups who are erased by identifying a single language for all exchanges. This project would evaluate language policies of states undergoing nation-building in order to make recommendations based on the needs of Iraq, reflecting on the obstacles and opportunities posed by a diverse multilingual population. This PhD is ideally suited to a student who has previously studied linguistics.

Professor Robert Blackwood, Languages, Cultures & Film

 

4. Climate change and the Iraqi marshes: how heritage conservation, archaeology and environmental management could contribute to sustainable nation-building and community regeneration

The marshes of southern Iraq and its diverse people who have traditionally made a living out of the marshes constitute a unique social and biodiverse environment of the Arab region that belongs to Iraq. The draining of the marshes have threatened the habitat and the distinctive architectural practices, which are only gradually being retrieved. This provides an excellent opportunity to study the distinctive marsh human habitat, its reed architecture, and biodiversity as a unique aspect of Iraqi nation building. With the draining, paradoxically however, previously unexplored ancient archaeological sites have surfaced from the marshlands providing opportunity of throwing new light on Iraq’s very extensive civilisations. The University has been studying the reed architecture and working on identifying ancient sites over the past years. By assembling a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, environmental and health specialists, architects and development experts, the University proposes to lead an extensive project to address the rebuilding of the marsh region and its people, their livelihood and wellbeing, identify developmental trajectories, and develop measures to safeguard and rectify the environment and habitat.            

Professor Soumyen Bandyopadhyay, Architecture

 

5. Understanding pilgrimage routes: how a cohesive heritage documentation along the main pilgrimage routes could result in a better international presentation of Iraq’s religious heritage

Pilgrimage to the holy shrines in Iraq have been an important religious and cultural activity since the early days of Islam. Pilgrimage routes are essentially religious infrastructure consisting of periodically maintained routes supported by resting stations, caring facilities, water infrastructure, mosques, defensive installations, and artifact production centres, that provide an important understanding of cultural and economic life. Such routes have added new infrastructure over time or replaced old ones to ensure their continued sustenance and use. This project will undertake a comprehensive study of pilgrimage routes by documenting all urban, architectural, archaeological and environmental evidence of how these routes supported pilgrims over several centuries and evolved over time under various political and social transformations. The University will assemble a multi-disciplinary team of Islamic heritage experts, archaeologists, environmentalists, urbanists and development experts to document and study in extensive detail the nature and evolution of the pilgrimage routes, to present the cultural significance of this infrastructure to a world audience. It will also propose policies and guidelines of how the routes could be further enhanced to cater for contemporary and future needs as Iraq build a new future.  

Professor Soumyen Bandyopadhyay, Architecture

 

6. Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and Transformative Justice in Iraq: A Pathway to Sustainable Peace and Development through International Human Rights Law

This PhD project will examine the role of international human rights law, specifically Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCRs) in building and sustaining peace in Iraq. Whilst significant progress has been made in the stabilisation of the social, economic and political conditions required for post-conflict recovery, further research is required to investigate how ESCRs, as an essential and often overlooked element of transformative justice, peacebuilding and sustainable development, can be realised for all people in Iraq.

The specific scope of the research can be tailored to the researchers’ interests but suggested relevant significant issues include:

• The rights to an adequate standard of living (food, water and sanitation, housing) and health
• Domestic implementation of ESCRs including the Iraqi National Human Rights Institution
• The intersection between ESCRs and the SDGs, including the obligation of international assistance and cooperation
• ESCRs, resources and economic policy (e.g. taxation; austerity measures)
• ESCRs and poverty (in particular among disadvantaged and marginalized populations)
• ESCRs, Minority Protections, Marginalised Groups and Social Cohesion (Youth/Women/Minorities)

Dr Amanda Cahill-Ripley, Law

 

7. Music heritage, memory and cultural resilience in the Iraqi diaspora

The ways in which people use and discuss music can offer perspectives on conceptions of ‘home’ and the construction of personal and national identity. This has been particularly true amongst diasporic communities who use music to link ‘homeland and hereland through an intricate network of sound’ (Slobin, 1993: 243). Working with the Iraqi diaspora in the UK this PhD would build an understanding of how individuals use popular musics as a cultural resource to construct themselves in relation to their cultural past and future. The study could explore how personal archives and individual memories are in dialogue with broader constructions of collective identity and cultural remembering. The research could investigate how music is used within identity work, to develop resilience, support well-being, and navigate a sense of belonging. This qualitative research project will elicit perspectives on the Iraqi diasporic experience through sound as well as drawing out narratives about how popular musics of Iraq are given value as cultural heritage. The project has potential to create a portrait of how the creative culture of Iraq is positioned in a global frame.

Dr Marion Leonard, Music

 

8. Development journalism and Iraq as imagined community

This could be a project using ideas form development journalism (journalism – and media more generally – as an instrument of nation-building) to look at the work done to create and maintain a post-transition Iraqi national imaginary. Questions here – likely focused on specific Iraqi media institutions or media products - would ask what kind(s) of contemporary Iraq are being proposed to viewers, how an imagined ‘Iraq’ community (in Benedict Andersen's sense of a nation as an imagined community) is articulated and the limits of/tensions in this discursive work. A PhD in this area might also ask questions about how an Iraqi national imaginary is articulated with other identity discourses (e.g. ideas of Pan-Arab community).

Dr Richard Stupart, Communication & Media

 

9. Media and memory in post-conflict Iraq

A PhD project in this area would be less focused on contemporary media institutions and more interested in questions of media, memorialisation and justice. Its questions would focus on such things as how Iraq's past is (variously) represented, what forms memorialisation practices take (from literal memory infrastructure in the form of museums and memorials to more diffuse, vernacular work of curating and communicating memory at individual and community level). This kind of project could plausibly have both empirical dimensions (how is memory work being done) and normative ones (how ought memory work to be done).

Dr Richard Stupart, Communication & Media

 

10. Multimodality in the ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’ project

 The UNESCO campaign to support the recovery of the city of Mosul and demonstrate the value of culture in post-conflict reconstruction and peace-making has widely been seen as a success story and this PhD project is designed to explore the multimodal dimensions of the project. Analysing critically the texts, maps, images, and soundscapes of the ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’ project, this PhD project is grounded in areas of sociolinguistics and calls for a qualified and motivated student with an interest in the Linguistic Landscape as a methodology and an approach to interrogating meaning-making in the public space. Given the potential applicability of this kind of project to sites rebuilding after conflict, natural disaster, or other societal transformations, the project will explore how narratives are sustained, subverted, and silenced in the transformation of a site of major cultural and human value.

Professor Robert Blackwood, Languages, Culture & Film