2013-2014 Postdoctoral Fellow

Dr. Matt Buehler

Dr. Matt Buehler holds degrees in government from the University of Texas at ‎Austin (Ph.D. and M.A.) and Willamette University (B.A.). In Fall 2014, he began ‎a tenure-track position at the University of Tennessee’s Department of Political ‎Science. ‎Dr. Buehler’s research area is comparative politics with expertise in the Middle ‎East. He has been traveling to the region since 2006, completing over three years ‎of fieldwork and Arabic training in North Africa, Syria, and the Persian Gulf. His ‎main research interests include democratization, authoritarianism, the Arab Spring, ‎Islamist movements, North African political parties, and Moroccan politics.‎

While posted at the Center for International and Regional Studies, Dr. Buehler aimed ‎to complete his book project, entitled “the Social Base of Divide-and-Rule: Left-‎Islamist Opposition Alliances in North Africa’s Arab Spring.” This project examines ‎the success and failure of opposition coordination between Islamists and leftists, ‎drawing on original interviews, archival research, and statistical data from Tunisia, ‎Morocco, and Mauritania. Work from this project has been published in the ‎Journal of Terrorism and Political Violence and Middle East Law and Governance. Dr. Buehler’s publications can be downloaded below: