Photo by Jake Hill, 2026.
By CNES
The UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies has awarded nine Mosafer fellowships during the AY 2026-27 application cycle. The increased number of fellowships reflects the Center’s dedication to supporting the research and professionalization of graduate students across UCLA campus whose work focuses on the Middle East and North Africa. The fellowships have been awarded to graduate students in Anthropology, Archaeology, Architecture and Urban Design, French and Francophone Studies, History, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and Sociology.
Rohan Advani, a PhD candidate in Sociology, works at the intersection of comparative political economy, state capitalism, and Middle East politics, with a particular focus on sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The Mosafer Fellowship will support Advani’s participation in two upcoming conferences: the American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting in New York and the Finance and Society Conference in Copenhagen. At the ASA meeting, Advani will present “Catch-Up Financialization: Sovereign Wealth Funds in Comparative Perspective,” which traces the organizational evolution of two major sovereign wealth funds, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Company. At the Finance and Society Conference, he will present “What Counts as Infrastructure? Assetization as Categorical Work in Contemporary State Capitalism,” examining infrastructure investment practices at Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds.
Ahmed Alzohairy, a PhD candidate in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (Arabic), is finalizing his dissertation on fictionality in pre-modern Arabic literature. His doctoral project examines two early Arabic literary works: Risālat al-Ghufrān by al-Maʿarrī and Risālat al-Tawābiʿ wa-l-Zawābiʿ by Ibn Shuḥayd. The project enables a better understanding of Arabic literary criticism from within its own tradition. Instead of using only modern categories, Alzohairy focuses on how pre-modern Arabic scholars themselves understood language, imagination, and literature. During his research trip supported by the Mosafer fellowship, he examined several manuscripts at Princeton University Library, especially Yatīmat al-Dahr by Abu Mansur al-Thaʿalibi, which includes important material about Ibn Shuḥayd.
Mahade Hasan, a PhD student in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (Islamic Studies), also traveled to Princeton University to conduct research with Islamic manuscripts housed in its Garrett collection. Hasan’s project examines the Islamic legal principle of rukhṣah (legal concession), exploring how Muslim jurists from the medieval through the early modern periods conceptualized and applied legal concessions in response to hardship, ignorance, coercion, and moral constraint. Moving beyond the published legal canon, the study draws on largely understudied manuscript collections from Central Asia, a major center of Ḥanafī jurisprudence between the fifth/eleventh and twelfth/eighteenth centuries. During his trip to Princeton University supported by the Mosafer fellowship, Hasan conducted research on unpublished Central Asian manuscripts.
Jake Hill, a PhD student in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (Near Eastern Archaeology), traveled to southern Jordan to conduct archaeological fieldwork on the Karak Plateau, which was occupied by the kingdom of Moab during the Iron Age. Hill examined Iron Age settlement patterns on the Karak Plateau through a comprehensive reevaluation of pottery collected during earlier archaeological surveys, combined with research in Jordanian libraries and archives and field visits to key archaeological sites.
Sara Hussein, a PhD candidate in History, is conducting research on Cairo’s role in the global history of decolonization. Hussein’s doctoral project, entitled “Locating Revolutionary Cairo Between Pan-Africanism and Afro-Asianism 1952-1975,” highlights how the city emerged as a major hub for pan-African and Afro-Asian intellectual exchange and international political mobilization. During her research trip supported by the Mosafer fellowship, Hussein conducted additional archival research and oral history interviews in Egypt, and also presented her findings at three international conferences in Senegal, Morocco, and France.
Mustapha Outbakat, a PhD candidate in Anthropology, conducted the final stretch of his year-long dissertation fieldwork in Agadir, Morocco. Outbakat’s research examines how tourism-driven urbanization and the expansion of agribusiness have transformed the lives of Indigenous communities in the Anza, Drarga, and Ait Toukt districts of Agadir, Morocco. It investigates the interconnected roles of global capital, commercial agriculture, tourism development, and land acquisition in reshaping patterns of land ownership and resource access, often resulting in the displacement and marginalization of Indigenous populations.
Ryan Schaller, a PhD candidate in French and Francophone studies, used the Mosafer fellowship to support his travel to Algiers, Algeria, to conduct research on images of Algeria produced and circulated through contemporary Francophone literature, cinema, and photography in the country. During his trip, Hill visited various cultural institutions, including the Musée d’art moderne and the Cinémathèque d’Alger, exploring how images “live” and circulate within the local context.
Sarp Tanrıdag, a PhD candidate in Architecture and Urban Design, conducted archival research at the Deutsche Bank Historical Archive and the German Federal Archives in Germany. His project, which is part of a broader dissertation research on refugee settlement and agricultural modernization in the Ottoman Crown Estates, situates Konya within the transimperial networks that connected the Ottoman Empire, Germany, and the Russian borderlands. The project examines how the settlement of Muslim refugees (muhacirs) on the Konya Plain formed part of a broader effort to transform the region into an engineerable, investable landscape of property.
Mosafer Centennial Fund for Near Eastern Studies was established in 2019 to support student fellowships in honor of the late Dr. Al R. Harris, aka Alireza Hariri. The Fund pays tribute to the Harris Family's commitment to support interdisciplinary studies of the Middle East and North Africa. In both Persian and Arabic, "mosafer" means "traveler," and the fellowships are meant to support students to attend conferences or travel for research on the Middle East and North Africa.