Research centres
Our research centres are central to research success at the Institute. The following research centres are based within the Institute.
The Centre for Gulf Studies has the world’s largest concentration of researchers in humanities and social sciences interested in the Gulf region, including the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran. Our expertise encompasses: archaeology, history, international relations, Islamic studies, material culture, political economy and politics.
We place the Kurds and Kurdistan at the centre of our research and teaching activities, while valuing a strong grounding in different academic disciplines. We focus particularly on issues of ethnicity, ethnic conflict, cultural production, and memory. We were established in 2006 thanks to generous funding by the Ibrahim Ahmad Foundation and the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, HE Nechirvan Barzani.
The Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies was created in 2008 to coordinate and enhance the activities of scholars at the University of Exeter, within history, literature, philosophy, religious studies, politics, classics, and other fields relating to Persian and Iranian academia.
The Centre for the Study of Islam brings together the core teaching staff in Islamic Studies, other staff who have an interest in Islamic culture and civilisation, and all interested postgraduate students (at MA and PhD level).
The European Centre for Palestine Studies (ECPS) aims to function as a hub for intellectual engagement with the Palestine question, facilitating scholarly research, helping to refine public discussion, and offering programmes for postgraduate study
Founded in June 2017, the Centre for Islamic Archaeology in the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter is a centre for teaching and research on all aspects of Islamic archaeology and Islamic material culture studies across the World, and for all periods
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The Centre for Middle East Politics (C-MEP) is a cross-departmental and multi-disciplinary centre addressing issues in Middle East Politics past and present. Together C-MEP members span most countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as well as a broad range of topics, including – but not limited to - electoral politics, tribalism, gender studies, colonial studies, democratization and security.
Maqam for Arabic Studies (MAS) is an interdisciplinary research and teaching centre established in 2020 to serve as a platform for activities related to teaching Arabic as a foreign language and developing teaching methods at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.
An Interdisciplinary Centre at the University of Exeter explores topics related to the history of magic, occult, and esoteric literatures using a ground-breaking approach by studying many different cultures and languages all in dialogue with one another.