Since April 2022 Freie Universität Berlin: Research Assistant at the Institute of Islamic Studies

2019 - 2021 University of Hamburg: History (M.A.)

2015 - 2019 University of Hamburg: History major, Philosophy minor (B.A.)

Localizing the global Arab Left

Communist Perspectives on Oppositional Unrest in Syria 1976-1982

The Historiography on Syria tends to neglect or distort the domestic oppositional unrests in the 1970s and early 1980s. However, this historic moment represents a nucleus of accelerated change that raised controversial but fundamental questions about the making of postcolonial Syria. Questioning the 'stability' narrative that has dominated Syrian historiography, a history of Syrian opposition beyond a sectarianized division of society has yet to be written. The Syrian regime of Hafiz al-Asad either co-opted, or banned, suppressed, and persecuted any opposition. Nevertheless, there was a diverse yet fragmented Left in Syria whose traces enrich historiography. Originating from communist reading circles, the Communist Labor League (Rabitat al-ʿAmal al-Shuyuʿi, abbreviated CLL) was founded in Aleppo in August 1976 and became a party (Hizb al-ʿAmal al- Shuyuʿi, abbreviated CLP) in Beirut in August 1981 and dissolved when its last active members were arrested in February 1992. My PhD project initially researches the neglected history of the CLL/CLP and subsequently explores its perspectives on oppositional unrest in Syria 1976-1982. Contributing to a historiography of a violently repressed local Left, which was part of a similarly defeated global Left, I situate my research in a 'less than global' intellectual history of the Arab New Left. The league/party's publications provide a contemporaneous, violently oppressed, and hitherto overlooked perspective that is enhanced by recent recollections from former party members speaking about their past. Analyzing the CLL/CLP's perception of 'thinking the world' in its historical 'problem-space' might question existing understandings of opposition and enrich the understanding of the Arab Left.