Dr Dara Conduit

Dr Dara Conduit is an Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellow in political science at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, and a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. Dara's research interests centre around authoritarianism, with a regional focus on the Middle East, especially Syria. Her research focusses on questions related to contentious politics inside authoritarian regimes, including the relationships between governments and their opponents, and each party's tactical (especially online) innovation.

Dara's book The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (2019, Cambridge University Press) received the inaugural Oceania Book Prize in International Studies in 2020, and was ranked by International Affairs in 2020 as one of the ‘Top 10 books’ written by women and reviewed by the journal in the previous 12 months. In a review, Biasi concluded that the book was  ‘essential reading’ and a ‘a timely and brilliantly written book on a critical actor in Syria’ (Biasi, International Affairs, 2020). A Perspectives on Politics review found that 'The book’s value lies in historicizing and contextualizing the group’s conduct during the uprising by reference to a variety of qualitative evidence, including memoirs, contemporary periodicals, and interviews. In so doing, Conduit’s work puts another spade of soil on the idea that the Brotherhood can be analyzed as a purely or even primarily an ideological actor' (Brooke, Perspectives on Politics, 2020). Freer (2020) argued on the LSE Middle East Centre’s blog that the book ‘provides much-needed clarity about the history of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood…[and] is a very important contribution to the study of Syria and to the study of the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamism more broadly.’

Dara's other academic work has been widely published in journals, including Democratization, Political Geography, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and The Middle East Journal. Several of these journals were ranked as A* or A by the Australian Political Studies Association at the time of publication. She is a regular media commentator, has been invited to provide advice to the UNESCWA and the UN OHCHR’s Working Group on Mercenaries, and her work has been cited in UN reports. She is co-convenor of the women Middle East researchers in Australia network (WoMENA).

Dr. Conduit holds a PhD from Monash University, a M. Litt from the University of St. Andrews, was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge in 2015.