Teije Hidde Donker (Zwijndrecht, 1983) received his Bsc. from the Radboud University Nijmegen (2006) Msc. in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam (2008). During and after his studies he worked at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael in the Hague and held a research position at the University of Amsterdam. From January until May 2013 he was a visiting student at the Near Eastern Studies department at Princeton University. He has worked and lived in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia for over two years and speaks fluent Arabic.

Teije Hidde’s research interests lie at the intersection of Middle East area studies, social movements studies and the sociology of Islam. He studies mobilization strategies of Islamist movements in Arab regimes affected by the Arab Spring, specifically focusing on mobilization aimed at state bureaucracies and public organizations. His thesis, defended on 17 October 2013, built on a paired-comparison between Syria and Tunisia, using Egypt, Libya and Yemen as shadow cases.

He is currently residing in Istanbul, Turkey, gaining fluency in Turkish while being affiliated locally with the Institute Français des Etudes Anatoliennes (IFEA). Concurrently he is a temporary research assistant (February-April 2014) at the Mobilizing 4 Democracy project and set to start a three year post-doc at the University of Bergen (Norway), starting August 2014.

Research interests: Social Movement Studies, Islamism, and Tunisia and Syria