2010 Academic Grant Scholar – Thanos Petouris – School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London
Thanos Petouris is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Politics, School of Oriental & African Studies London. He is researching the nationalist, anti-colonial movement in South Arabia and the subsequent decolonisation process from British rule in the years 1937–67. The theoretical focus of his thesis is to explain the emergence of national identities during periods of decolonisation, by using South Yemen as the historical case study.
What makes this paradigm particularly relevant, is the ways in which South Yemeni identity is being employed in current Yemeni affairs as a way of politicising the grievances of the Southern Movement.
Thanos is a regular contributor to Chatham House Yemen Forum events as well as providing advice to the FCO and DfID on Yemen. He has spoken at the Universities of London, Harvard, Athens, and Exeter, and was the convenor of the “Yemen: Challenges for the Future” conference at SOAS in 2013.
He has been visiting Yemen regularly since 2005, having lived and worked as an English teacher, and NGO volunteer in Aden which enabled him to travel to almost every part of the country. He was a committee member of the British Yemeni Society (2010–15), and is the current Editor of the British Yemeni Society Journal.
