Arran Robert Walshe

My work focuses on the intersection of cultural politics, law, and bureaucracy in the contemporary Middle East, and I explore these ideas in the Culture & Representation Track of MEIS at NYU. My dissertation, “Martyred Citizenship,” examines how certain narratives and values around martyrdom were bureaucratized by the post-2003 Iraqi state and embedded, mediated, and exchanged through global governance and international development institutions. More broadly, I’m interested in how and for what projects we are asked to sacrifice in our contemporary world, and how we respond to those demands in our personal, social, political, and cultural life. I’m also interested in how these specific and local demands intersect with the politics of broader struggles for justice, dignity, and democracy. 

I received my BA (Hons) in History from the University of British Columbia in 2012, and an MPhil in Modern Middle East Studies from Oxford in 2016. My disciplinary background and research questions have led me to develop interdisciplinary frameworks rooted in media studies and anthropological theory, and to employ ethnographic methodologies. I’m keen on producing and engaging with multimedia work (scholarly or otherwise), particularly photography, collage, and digital media. I am grateful for the support of a Wenner Gren Fieldwork Grant, a Dissertation Fieldwork Grant from NYU Shanghai, and a Dean’s Writing Dissertation Fellowship from NYU.

Latest Pubilication: 

“Sealed with a Thumbprint: The Epistemology and Poetics of an Al-Qaida Martyrdom Contract,” Book Chapter in ISIS and the Current Political Order: Practices and Imaginations of Hybrid Sovereignty and Revolutionary Change. Eds. Ondrej Ditrych, Jakub Zahora, and Jan Daniel. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh. 2022