IMES has been a leader in research in our subject area for many years. In the 2008 UK Research Assessment Exercise, we achieved the second-highest national result (equal with Oxford), confirming the department's continuing role as a centre of international standing for research and study of Islam, the Middle East, and related subjects. Over 70% of research activity in IMES was classified as being 'world-leading in terms of originality, significance and rigour'.
We offer several research strands within IMES which involve overlapping areas of staff expertise: the emergence of Islam; Islam, activism and cultural expression in the world; the multiethnic and multilinguistic world of the 19th-century eastern Mediterranean; Sufism; Translation; and Middle Eastern Diasporas. As an area studies unit, we foster cross-disciplinary research amongst ourselves and collaborate with researchers from other academic institutions.
Another mark of the research standing of IMES both nationally and internationally was its successful competitive bid (with the Universities of Durham and Manchester) to establish the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World, and most recently the large donation received by the University to establish the Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of the Study of Islam in the Contemporary World.
