Alexander Henley, PhD Candidate, UK

Alexander Henley is a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester, UK, conducting research on the roles of religious leaders in twentieth-century Lebanese history. Particularly focusing on the Maronite Patriarch and Sunni Grand Mufti, this project looks at their respective relations with the confessional state and explores questions of identity in the context of the 1975-90 war. Alexander Henley obtained his BA in Theology and MA in Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies from the University of Durham, UK. He has been working on religious affairs in Lebanon since 2007, when he wrote his MA dissertation on the politics of the Maronite Church. He writes occasionally on Lebanon for current affairs publications in the UK, and is a founding editor of the peer-reviewed graduate journal New Middle Eastern Studies, published online under the auspices of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies. He was first affiliated to LERC in 2008 as a research assistant on a Maronite diaspora project.

alexanderhenley@yahoo.co.uk