The British Institute in Amman

Department Member, British Institute in Damascus

Other Affiliations: University of Exeter, College of Social Sciences

Research Director (Syria)

Council for British Research in the Levant

About

Daniel Neep is a social scientist who works on state-society relations, authoritarianism, and the politics of social knowledge in the Middle East. His research draws on three disciplinary areas: historical and political sociology, post-colonial critique, and interpretive approaches to social science. His principal empirical focus is Syria and, more recently, Jordan.

Neep's first book (Cambridge University Press, August 2012) argues that colonial state formation in the Middle East was not just shaped by politics, but warped by practices of patterned violence, insurgency, and space. Focusing on the French occupation of Syria, it shows how armed conflict between armed Syrian insurgents and French forces was not simply a threat to colonial rule: it fundamentally transformed how the colonial state understood and organised the society, geography, and population of Syria. The book is based on his doctoral thesis, which won the BRISMES Leigh Douglas Memorial Award presented annually to the best PhD dissertation in Middle East Studies at a British university.

Daniel is currently on secondment to the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) as Research Director (Syria). Now based at the British Institute in Amman, he follows developments in Syria closely and is leading a new research project on social research in Jordan.

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