Ola Rifai is Deputy Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies (CSS) at the University of St Andrews, where her research focuses on the international politics of the Middle East. Her work examines identity politics, nationalism, sectarianism, and ethnic conflict, with particular attention to Syria and the broader contemporary region. Her scholarship engages with the…
Syria is often examined primarily through the angle of geopolitics, armed conflict, and regional power competition. Yet one of the most consequential, and comparatively underexplored, dimensions of the Syrian crisis concern identity: how Syrian identity was historically constructed, how it fragmented under the pressures of war, and whether it can be meaningfully reconstituted in a…
In this episode of the International Risk Podcast, Dominic Bowen speaks with Ola Rifai about the evolution of Syrian identity and how competing narratives of nationalism, sectarianism, and statehood have shaped Syria’s political trajectory and risk before and after 2011. Find out more about how identity was managed under the Assad regime, how sectarianisation unfolded…
