Non-Resident Fellow
Eman Alhussein is a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. She is a visiting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She previously worked as a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Her research focuses on Saudi Arabia and the Gulf region. Alhussein’s areas of interest include identity and nationalism, gender, cultural and societal change, and religious discourse and reforms.
Alhussein holds an MA in Gulf studies from the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. She completed her bachelor’s degree at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. She is currently based in Oslo, Norway.
The Saudi government is moving forward steadfastly with its social modernization project, but the new policies are clashing with established norms, creating inconsistencies and uncertainties in social spaces.
For decades, the religious establishment in Saudi Arabia succeeded in maintaining a homogenous religious discourse.
