Mohammed Almahfali
Research Topic:
A Critical Review of the Human Rights Literature on the Arab World in Arabic
Almahfali obtained his Ph.D. in Arabic Literature at Cairo University in 2014, with a dissertation on textual transformation in modern Arabic novels. He worked at Hadhramout University as a lecturer from 2004 to 2009, and in 2014 he was appointed as an assistant professor. In 2017, he was awarded a two-year fellowship from the International Institute for Education—Scholar Rescue Fund IIE-SRF to work as a researcher at Lund University’s Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies, Sweden. Since 2019, he has been working as an affiliated researcher at the same Center. During this fellowship period, he primarily worked on the project Research Advocacy and Public Policymaking in the Arab World. The project’s main goal was to create an annotated bibliography for human rights in the Arab World, and it involved a critical review and classification of over 400 Arabic-language sources.
Almahfali’s research interests include Arabic discourse analysis, capacity-building in higher education and sustainable post-conflict recovery strategies to address the challenges in Yemen for the coming years. He has also been involved in work concerning how art and media can be used as tools to enhance democracy, gender equity and social justice in Yemen. He is currently working in the EU-funded EMME project (Environmental Management in the Middle East), which aims to develop capacity in universities in Yemen and Iran, to deal with environmental issues in these countries.
At the Columbia Global Centers in Amman, he is working on his project: A Critical Review of the Human Rights Literature on the Arab World in Arabic. The project will build a knowledge base and provide global access to the largely unexamined Arabic-language documentation on human rights in the Arab world.
Recent Articles:
Almahfali, M., LeVine, M. & Muthanna, A. (2023). Mapping Arabic human rights discourse: A thematic review. The International Journal for Human Rights. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642987.2023.2250990
Almahfali, M. & Avery, H. (2023). Human rights from an Islamic perspective: A critical review of Arabic peer-reviewed articles. Social Sciences, 12(2), 106. https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci12020106
Muthanna A, Almahfali M, Haider A. The Interaction of War Impacts on Education: Experiences of School Teachers and Leaders. Education Sciences. 2022; 12(10):719. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12100719
Almahfali, M. (2021). Transformation of dominant political themes from the founder to the current leader of the Huthi movement. In A. Hamid Aggin (Ed), The Huthi Movement in Yemen: Ideology, Ambition and Security in the Arab Gulf. Bloomsbury. https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/huthi-movement-in-yemen-9780755644285/
Almahfali, M. (2020). Discourse of Yemeni TVs and the dilemma of regime criticism, 2015-2019. Journal of Arab and Muslim Media Research (JAMMR), 13(1), 67-84.
Wasel, E & Almahfali, M. (2021). The stereotype of women in the book of “Yemeni Tales and Legends”. Ansaq Journal – College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, 5(1), 101-121. (Arabic). https://journals.qu.edu.qa/index.php/ANSQ/article/view/2033
Almahfali, M. (2021, August). Racism against blackness in Yemen between Resistance and counter-resistance. Arab Reform Initiative ARI. https://www.arab-reform.net/publication/anti-black-racism-in-yemen.
Almahfali, M & Root, J (2020, February). How Iran’s Islamic revolution does, and does not, influence Houthi rule in northern Yemen. Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies. https://sanaacenter.org/publications/analysis/9050.