Status

Graduated

Email Address

omar.sirri@utoronto.ca

Major

Comparative Politics

Minor

Development Studies

Supervisor(s)

Courtney Jung

Sirri, Omar

Dissertation:

Scarecrows of the State: Security Checkpoints in Contemporary Baghdad

Biography

Omar Sirri is currently an Affiliated Scholar at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. His doctoral dissertation is an ethnography of urban checkpoint practices in Iraq’s capital city.

Publications

2021 – Destructive Creations: Social-spatial Transformations in Contemporary Baghdad. LSE Middle East Centre. Paper Series, 45.

2020 – Of Bakeries and Checkpoints: Stately Affects in Amman and Baghdad (co-author with José Ciro Martínez). Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 38(5): 849-866.

2020 – When the Lights Go Out: Iraq in Revolution. Society and Space Magazine.

2020 – Seeing the Political in Baghdad’s Shopping Malls. LSE Middle East Centre Blog.

2019 – Surviving on Violence: Iraq’s Political Elite. Mada Masr (co-author with Renad Mansour).

2019 – Siting the State: Intersections of Space, Religion and Political Economy in Baghdad. In Religion, Violence, and the State in Iraq. Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) Studies, 35: 33-37.

Research Interests

ethnography; the state; city spaces; infrastructure; affect; critical security studies; Middle East politics

Teaching Experience

Ethnography of Security in the Middle East

Politics of Development

International Law

Introduction to Global Politics