Courtney Freer
Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow, Emory University
Courtney Freer is the provost’s postdoctoral fellow at Emory University. She served as an assistant professorial research fellow at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science from 2015-20. She is also a nonresident fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution.
Her academic work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf Arab states and Islamism. She received her DPhil in politics from the University of Oxford in 2015, having written a thesis revising rentier state theory by examining the sociopolitical role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The findings of this work were published by Oxford University Press in 2018 as Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies. She previously worked at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar and the U.S.-Saudi Business Council in Washington, DC. Freer holds a BA in Near Eastern studies from Princeton University and an MA in Middle Eastern studies from the George Washington University.
Analysis
The Changing Islamist Landscape of the Gulf Arab States
Independent political movements, Islamist or otherwise, are often overlooked in the Gulf Arab states that benefit from substantial incomes due to oil wealth.
Pessimism of the Kuwaiti Opposition in the Face of Upcoming Elections
If held as scheduled in June 2017, Kuwait’s legislative elections would mark the end of the first Kuwaiti Parliament to serve its full four-year term since 2003. The present Parliament, elected amid a wide-ranging opposition boycott, is unsurprisingly loyalist and thus has not challenged the government to advance a political reform agenda.
Kuwait’s Oil Workers’ Strike: Domestic and Market Reactions
April 20 marked the end of the first oil workers’ strike in Kuwait since 1996. Some 7,000 workers (out of a workforce of around 13,000) walked off their jobs in Ahmadi, home of Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) – a subsidiary of the Kuwait Petroleum Corporation – to contest proposed amendments to public sector wages and...
Events
Book Launch – Tribalism and Political Power in the Gulf: State-Building and National Identity in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE
On December 1, AGSIW hosted a discussion examining the roles that tribes play in popular participation in government and policymaking in the Gulf.
Speakers
Sep 30, 2021
What to Expect From Qatar’s First Legislative Elections
On September 30, AGSIW hosted a discussion ahead of Qatar's first legislative elections.
Speakers
