Theoretically, I am interested in action theory (why do people do what they do?), cultural change (why do people change ideologically and morally?), and solidarity and polarization (why do people sometimes create strong bonds despite their differences, but in other times these differences lead to brutal conflicts?). I often study these questions with political and cultural empirical cases from the contemporary Middle East, but with an emphasis on historical and global comparisons: e.g., modern and premodern, Global South and Global North.

From 2018 to 2025, I studied these questions through the political stances of religious intellectuals during the Arab Spring. My work argued that while self-interest can explain some intellectuals' political inconsistencies, moral dilemmas are also crucial to explain some intellectuals' political inconsistencies. Thus, I provide a new theory of why actors experience dilemmas, especially political moral dilemmas between conviction and responsibility ethics, and how that dilemma is often resolved in favor of responsibility ethics through threat perception, leading to inconsistency. This tension between conviction and responsibility ethics, or universalist and solidarist ethics, informs my PhD dissertation.

My PhD dissertation project studies twenty-five years of changing political solidarity and polarization between different political actors in Egypt, 2000-2025. I compare solidarity in Egypt's center and periphery and examine the relationship between solidarity within Egypt and international politics.