Adam Hanieh Fellow

Hanieh is the author of three books on the Middle East, including Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize. Alongside dozens of academic articles, his essays on contemporary politics have appeared in influential journals and on-line publications such as New Left Review, Jacobin, Socialist Register, Jadaliyya, MERIP, and Monthly Review.

In recent years, Hanieh has turned his attention to the intertwined histories of oil and global capitalism. Part of this research examines the out-sized role that Gulf oil companies play in global energy markets, their links with capitalist development in China and East Asia, and the implications of this for climate justice struggles. These issues are explored in his forthcoming book, Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market, which will be published by Verso Books in September 2024. Moving beyond politically misleading narratives that frame oil as simply a ‘prize’ or ‘curse’, Crude Capitalism traces the ways that oil has been woven into the fabric of our modern world: the rise of an American-centered global order; the breakdown of Empire and anti-colonial rebellion; contemporary finance and US dollar hegemony; debt and militarism; and the emergence of new forms of synthetic consumption. 

Hanieh currently holds a Political Economy Fellowship with the Independent Social Research Foundation, which supports his research into the deepening ties between the Middle East and East Asia in the area of petrochemicals and plastics production. He sits on the editorial board for the UK’s Political Studies Association flagship journal, Politics, and has been a member of the International Advisory Board for the journal Studies in Political Economy since 2015. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of MERIP, the Middle East and Research Information Project, based in Washington D.C., and convenes the ‘New Regionalisms’ Working Group at the Arab Council for Social Sciences in Beirut, Lebanon.

Areas of Expertise

Political Economy; Finance; Middle East; Oil and Climate Change

Honours/Awards

Political Economy Fellowship, Independent Social Research Foundation (2023-2024)

2019 British International Studies Association International Political Economy Group Book Prize for Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2018)