Chris Cooper-Davies

Chris Cooper-Davies is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford's Faculty of History, affiliated with the 'Moving Stories: Sectarianisms in the Global Middle East' ERC project. His research focuses on the political and intellectual histories of religion, nationalism, civil society, and migration in Iraq and Lebanon during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

He is currently completing a monograph titled 'The Najafi Nahda: Consociation, Journalism and Reform in a Shi'i Holy City, 1860–1941', examining Najaf's intellectual and political transformations under Ottoman and Iraqi state-formation. His next project explores global Shi'ism's transnational connections across Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, India, and the Americas.

Research specializations include Arab Shi'i political thought, Ottoman urban associational life, and the interplay between colonialism, nationalism, and religious identity. He contributes to fields of Global & Imperial History, Religious History, and Political History.