Samar Al-Bulushi
· Associate ProfessorUniversity of California, Irvine · Anthropology
Active 2010–2023
About
Samar Al-Bulushi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, who joined the department in 2019. She previously served as a University of California President's Postdoctoral Fellow at UCI from 2017 to 2019. Her academic background includes a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A. in International Affairs from Columbia University, as well as a Ph.D. in Sociocultural Anthropology from Yale University. Her research interests encompass feminist geopolitics, imperialism, militarism, policing, race, and transnationalism, with a particular focus on Kenya, East Africa, the Red Sea, and South-South solidarities. Al-Bulushi's scholarly work explores the entanglement of militarism, imperialism, and liberal-democratic governance, notably through her upcoming book 'War-Making as World-Making: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror,' which examines Kenya's role in the global 'war on terror' and its implications for security and policing practices. She is engaged in projects analyzing the possibilities of South-South solidarities in the context of shifting global power relations and the political economy of war-making in the Red Sea region, viewing these as lenses to understand broader debates about empire and the future of the global order. Al-Bulushi is the PI for the Global South and the World Order initiative at UCI, collaborates with Security in Context, and holds positions on various editorial and research committees, including MERIP, the Quincy Institute, and the Transition Security Project. Her work has been published in public outlets on topics such as the International Criminal Court and U.S. militarization in Africa.
Awards & honors
- Global South and the World Order (GSWO) initiative at UCI
- Security in Context (partnership with GSWO)
- Non-resident fellow at Quincy Institute
- Fellow at Transition Security Project
- Contributing editor at Africa is a Country
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