Visiting Fellow
Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies
Contact info
dima.hussain@eui.eu
Dima Hussain is a legal anthropologist working at the intersection of legal pluralism, local governance, and traditional societal legality. Her research focuses on living law and non-state legal systems, tribal justice and Islamic law, Indigenous law, gender dynamics in societal legality, and the codification of law.She holds a PhD in Law from the European University Institute, where she was also a Max Weber Fellow. During her fellowship, she examined local governance and non-state legal systems in Syria, the impact of codification and state-building pressures during and after the colonial Mandate period in the Arab region, and the digital transformation of tribal communities in Syria. Before joining the EUI, she was a CIVICA Postdoctoral Fellow at the Central European University, where she explored the historical relationship between tribal justice and Islamic law in Syria and their contemporary interconnections. She has also served as a Scientific Collaborator at the Centre for Legal History and Legal Anthropology at the Université libre de Bruxelles and as an Associate Researcher with the Mediterranean Platform at Luiss University.Her current research examines legal pluralism in Syria through two complementary projects: documenting tribal women's narratives on transformations in tribal legal history and culture over recent decades, and conducting qualitative research on the local reconciliation councils established by Syria's interim government across different governorates.