About me

Dr Rim Turkmani is the Syria Research Director at the Conflict and Civicness Research Group and within the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform (PeaceRep). She is also a Senior Policy Fellow at LSE IDEAS, a member of LSE Middle East Centre Academic Committee and a member of the Women’s Advisory Board to the UN Special Envoy to Syria.

She has led several research projects, serving as the Principal Investigator on ‘Legitimacy and Citizenship in the Arab World’ funded by the Carnegie Corporation. She was also a Co-PI for the research project ‘The Responsible Deal: Where and How to Best Protect and Integrate Syrian Refugees?'

Dr Turkmani’s research is centred around legitimate governance in the Middle East, local conflict and peace drivers and the role of civil society in conflict zones. She has produced wide -reaching research on the lack of democracy and persistent violent conflicts in the Arab World. Using historically grounded and contextualised approaches, she tackles key issues that continue to drive protests and conflicts in the region.

Currently, Dr Turkmani is developing a new methodology to capture and frame legitimacy in conflict and authoritarian settings, beyond the standard wide-lens approach. The framework builds on existing methodologies, and expands them to include performance legitimacy. The framework is also unique in its focus on different variations of public authorities beyond the state. To test this model empirically, Rim developed an independent, secure conflict mapping platform that harvests data from across Syria and uses this data in her research to answer important questions such on the fragmentation and legitimacy of public authority, as well as interactions with civil society.

Prior to joining LSE in 2014, Dr Turkmani was an Astrophysicist working at the Imperial College and Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow of the Royal Society. The escalation of war in her home country prompted her to make the gradual transition into conflict studies. Her scientific background influences her empirical approach and emphasis on using technology and science for modelling and data collection. She pioneered new methods of collecting data in conflict zones and co-developed the database: Crowd-seeding Conflict and Peace Events in the Syrian conflict project (CCPE). She has also built an extensive, unique archive of local agreements in Syria.

In 2018, Dr Turkmani was awarded a two-year grant from the prestigious Carnegie Corporation of New York to fund her research project, Legitimacy and Citizenship in the Arab World. This was the first time LSE received a grant from Carnegie Corporation. In 2021, she was awarded a further grant from Carnegie to continue the project.

Outside of academia, Dr Turkmani has been solicited as an expert on numerous occasions including three times to the Parliamentary Foreign affairs select committee and the Defence select committee in their review of the UK policy on Syria and the expansion of the operations against ISIS. She was invited twice as an expert witness to give evidence in UK courts on terrorism and the Syrian conflict. She is also active in the field of Historic Arabic and Islamic science and its influence on Europe. She curated the international Arabick Roots exhibitions which traced the influence of Arabic/Islamic science and culture on 17th century Europe, exhibited at The Royal Society in London in 2011 and at the Doha Museum of Islamic Art in 2012. Amongst her publications, she has authored a book entitled ‘Arabick Roots’ She has contributed to several exhibitions and documentaries including Cosmos and Culture at the Science Museum in London, and 1001 Inventions. In 2015 she was named in the top twenty most influential women in Science in the Islamic World by Muslim science magazine.

Academic publications in social science:

Peacebuilding Journal, Taylor & Francis 2/21/2022

Al-Zoubi, Z., Turkmani, R., & Gharibah, M. (2023). From Federalism to Hyper-centralisation: The History of Decentralisation in the Syrian Constitutions. Journal of Syrian studies(Accepted ).

Turkmani, R. (2022a). How local are local agreements? Shaping local agreements as a new form of third-party intervention in protracted conflicts. Peacebuilding, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2022.2032942

Turkmani, R. (2022b). Local agreements as a process: the example of local talks in Homs in Syria. Peacebuilding, 10(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2022.2032941

Kaldor, M., Theros, M., & Turkmani, R. (2022a). Local agreements - an introduction to the special issue. Peacebuilding. https://doi.org/10.1080/21647259.2022.2042111

Kaldor, M., Theros, M., & Turkmani, R. (2022b). Local Agreements in Protracted Conflicts Peacebuilding Volume 10(Special Issue 2). https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rpcb20/10/2

Theros, M., & Turkmani, R. (2022). Engendering civicness in the Syrian peacemaking process. Journal of Civil Society, 18(2: Civicness in Conflict). https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2022.2068625

Bojicic-Dzelilovic, V., & Turkmani, R. (2018). War Economy, Governance and Security in Syria’s Opposition-Controlled Areas. Stability: International Journal of Security and Development, 7(1). https://doi.org/10.5334/sta.569

Turkmani, R. (2018). EU Syria Engagement from a Human Security Perspective. In M. Kaldor, I. Rangelov, & S. Selchow (Eds.), EU global strategy and human security. Rethinking approaches to conflict: . Routledge. https://doi.org/10.1080/09662839.2020.1735369

Academic Scientific publications

14 peer reviewed scientific publications in theoretical Astrophysics between 2002 and 2012 that received 418 citations. It is available at Harvards’s ADS database at this link.

Policy Publications & Working Papers:

Turkmani, R., Mehchy, Z., & Gharibah, M. (2022). Building resilience in Syria: assessing fragilities and strengthening positive coping mechanisms (PeaceRep Interim Transition Series, Issue. https://peacerep.org/publication/building-resilience-in-syria-fragilities-coping-mechanisms/

Kaldor, M., Theros, M., & Turkmani, R. (2021). War Versus Peace Logics at Local levels; findings from the Conflict Research Programme on Local Agreements and Community Level Mediation (Conlict Research Programme reports, Issue. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/112593/

Mehchy, Z., & Turkmani, R. (2021). Understanding the impact of sanctions on the political dynamics in Syria (Conflict Research Proogramme reports, Issue. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/112593/

Mehchy, Z., & Turkmani, R. (2021). Understanding the impact of sanctions on the political dynamics in Syria (Conflict Research Proogramme reports, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/108412/

Turkmani, R., Gharibah, M., & Mehchy, Z. (2020). COVID-19 in Syria: policy options (LSE Conflict Research Programme Policy Memo, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105823/

Draji, I., & Turkmani, R. (2020). The question of religion in the Syrian Constitutions: historical and comparative review (Legitimacy and citizenship in the Arab, Working papers series, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103660/

Turkmani, R., & Mehchy, Z. (2020). New Consumer Price Index estimates for Syria reveal further economic deterioration and alarming levels of humanitarian need (Conflict Research Programme reports, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103280/

Mehchy, Z., & Turkmani, R. (2020). Forecasting the scenarios for COVID-19 in Syria with an SIR model (till the end of August 2020) (Conflict Research Programme reports, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105869/

Turkmani, R., Gharibah, M., & Mehchy, Z. (2020). COVID-19 in Syria: policy options (LSE Conflict Research Programme Policy Memo, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/105823/

Turkmani, R. (2019). Devolution of power or decentralisation of oppression in Syria? . Conflict Research Programme Blog http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102033/

Turkmani, R. (2019). Realism vs realism; Syrian Civil society participation in the constitutional process (Conflict Research Programme policy memos, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103661/

Turkmani, R., & Saffour, H. (2019). Syrian visions: mapping Syrian constitutional papers since 2011 (Conflict Research Programme reports, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102252/

Turkmani, R., & Theros, M. (2019). A process in its own right: the Syrian Civil Society Support Room (Conflict Research Programme reports, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/101034/

Turkmani, R., Theros, M., & Hadaya, S. (2019). Political economy and governance in Syria report (Conflict Research Programme reports, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/100732/

Youssef, M., Turkmani, R., & Gharibah, M. (2019). Progress in the wrong direction: the 2018 Local Council Elections in Syria (Conflict Research Programme reports, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/100171/

Saffour, H., Turkmani, R., & Gharibah, M. (2019). An analysis of commonalities and divergences of Syrian constitutional papers since 2011, (Conflict Research Programme reports, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102253/

Solana, J., Kaldor, M., Selchow, S., & Turkmani, R. (2016). From Hybrid Peace to Human Security: Rethinking EU Strategy towards Conflict (The Berlin Report of the Human Security Study Group,, Issue. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/london/12373.pdf

Turkmani, R., & Haid, M. (2016). The role of the EU in the Syrian conflict (Security in Transition, Issue. https://brussels.fes.de/fileadmin/public/editorfiles/events/Maerz_2016/FES_LSE_Syria_Turkmani_Haid_2016_02_23.pdf

Turkmani, R. (2015). ISIL, JAN and the war economy in Syria (LSE, Issue. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/118108/

Turkmani, R., Kaldor, M., Ali, A., & Bojicic-Dzelilovic, V. (2015). Countering the logic of the war economy in Syria. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/64574/