Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations
Hessa Alnuaimi is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Relations at The Asia Institute, Global Studies University (GSU). Before joining GSU, she served as an Assistant Professor at the University of Sharjah and an Associate Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, where she earned her Ph.D. Her dissertation received the APSA MENA Best Dissertation Prize. She also held a research fellowship at Harvard University, where she examined migrant mobilization in the Arab Gulf. Her research examines how the Gulf’s integration into modernity and the global capitalist economy has shaped the politics of legitimacy, authority, and migration.
Research
Her research interests include migration, colonialism, race, and political legitimacy.
Publications
- Alnuaimi, Hessa. “‘We Would Gather These Grieved’: Recentring South Asian Migrants and Their Political Mobilisation in British Arabia.” Middle East Critique (2026). https://doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2026.2704404.
- Akinci, Idil, and Hessa Alnuaimi. “From Periphery to Centre: The Arab Gulf in the Global Formations of Race, Citizenship and Migration.” Ethnic and Racial Studies (2026): 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2026.2662516.
- Alnuaimi, Hessa. “Towards a Race and Coloniality Research Agenda: Exploring the Exclusionary Racialisation of Arabs in the Gulf States.” Journal of Arabian Studies 13, no. 2 (2023): 276–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/21534764.2024.2384583.
- Alnuaimi, Hessa. “The Role of Colonial Knowledge in Building the Arab Gulf’s Migration Regime.” Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies 16, no. 4 (2022): 382–401. https://doi.org/10.1080/25765949.2022.2151079.
