Draft:Benjamin Isakhan

Benjamin Isakhan is an Australian political scientist whose research examines Middle East politics, cultural heritage and conflict. He is Professor of International Politics at Deakin University and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He also holds research affiliations with the University of Johannesburg and the Penn Cultural Heritage Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Academic career and research

Isakhan completed a PhD at Griffith University on the democratisation of Iraq in 2009.

Following his PhD, Isakhan held postdoctoral research fellowships at Griffith University and La Trobe University before joining Deakin University as a research fellow in 2011. He was appointed Professor of International Politics in 2021.

His visiting research appointments have included positions at the University of Oxford, Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago.

His early research examined the history and practice of collective governance in Iraq and the wider Middle East. He extended this line of inquiry in Democracy in Iraq: History, Politics, Discourse, which traced political participation and democratic ideas in Iraq from ancient Mesopotamia to the post-2003 period. With Stephen Stockwell, he also co-edited The Secret History of Democracy, a collection examining non-Western and lesser-known democratic traditions. Reviews highlighted both the volume's attempt to broaden histories of democracy beyond conventional Western narratives and limitations in its conceptual framework. Christopher Hobson described it as an "important corrective" to the tendency to identify democracy as a Western product, while Roland Axtmann praised its wide-ranging case studies but argued that the collection lacked a shared analytical framework and methodological rigour. The book was subsequently translated into Japanese in 2012 and Arabic in 2015.

Isakhan's research has also examined state–society relations, political violence, civil society and the consequences of the 2003 Iraq War. He edited The Legacy of Iraq: From the 2003 War to the 'Islamic State', which analysed the political and social legacies of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Reviewers highlighted the volume's broad treatment of post-invasion Iraq. Kieran McConaghy characterised it as a holistic account of political developments and relationships since 2003, while Kawu Bala emphasised its treatment of de-Ba'athification, sectarian polarisation and the relationship between the legacies of the invasion and the rise of Islamic State. He later co-edited State and Society in Iraq: Citizenship Under Occupation, Dictatorship and Democratisation with Shamiran Mako and Fadi Dawood. The volume was reviewed by the Australian Institute of International Affairs, which highlighted its long historical perspective on state–society relations and political activism in Iraq.

Isakhan's more recent research has increasingly addressed the destruction and reconstruction of cultural heritage sites in the Middle East. His work has examined the destruction of archaeological, religious and minority heritage by the Islamic State, the relationship between heritage destruction and political violence, and local responses to reconstruction. In 2015, ABC Radio National profiled his research on documenting damaged and destroyed heritage sites, including a database covering around 600 sites in Iraq and its subsequent extension to Syria. This research also informed work with the Australian Department of Defence, including the provision of geospatial information intended to help reduce damage to culturally significant sites during military operations. His later research included studies of religious and political iconoclasm under the Islamic State, local responses to heritage reconstruction in Mosul and Aleppo, and the destruction and reconstruction of Yezidi heritage after genocide.

Isakhan has received funding from the Australian Research Council through several schemes. In 2012, he received a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) for Measuring the Destruction of Heritage and Spikes of Violence in Iraq. He later served as Chief Investigator of the Discovery Project After Islamic State: Local-State-Global Heritage Dynamics in Syria and Iraq. In 2025, he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship for Heritage and Displacement: Intersections of Exile, Culture and Conflict, a project examining relationships between displacement and cultural heritage among Middle Eastern populations affected by conflict.

Recognition

In 2020 and again in 2022, Isakhan was named the Australian field leader in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in the annual Research rankings published by The Australian. These identify field leaders on the basis of citations to papers published during the preceding five years in the 20 leading journals in each field. SBS profiled Isakhan following the 2020 ranking.

Isakhan also received a special commendation in the Australian Political Studies Association's 2020 Academic Leadership in Political Science Award, which recognises outstanding, inclusive and collaborative leadership in the discipline.

Selected works

Selected books and edited volumes

• Isakhan, Benjamin; Stockwell, Stephen, eds. (2011). The Secret History of Democracy. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Isakhan, Benjamin (2012). Democracy in Iraq: History, Politics, Discourse. Farnham: Ashgate.
• Isakhan, Benjamin, ed. (2015). The Legacy of Iraq: From the 2003 War to the 'Islamic State'. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Isakhan, Benjamin; Mako, Shamiran; Dawood, Fadi, eds. (2017). State and Society in Iraq: Citizenship Under Occupation, Dictatorship and Democratisation. London: I.B. Tauris.

Selected journal articles

• Isakhan, Benjamin; Zarandona, Antonio (2018). "Layers of Religious and Political Iconoclasm under the Islamic State: Symbolic Sectarianism and Pre-Monotheistic Iconoclasm". International Journal of Heritage Studies. 24 (1): 1–16.
• Isakhan, Benjamin; Meskell, Lynn (2019). "UNESCO’s Project to ‘Revive the Spirit of Mosul’: Iraqi and Syrian Opinion on Heritage Reconstruction after the Islamic State". International Journal of Heritage Studies. 25 (11): 1189–1204.
• Isakhan, Benjamin (2020). "The Islamic State Attacks on Shia Holy Sites and the ‘Shrine Protection Narrative’: Threats to Sacred Space as a Mobilization Frame". Terrorism and Political Violence. 32 (4): 724–748.
• Isakhan, Benjamin (2023). "Civil Society in Hybrid Regimes: Trade Union Activism in Post-2003 Iraq". Political Studies. 71 (2): 295–313.
• Childs, Eleanor; Isakhan, Benjamin (2025). "Gender and Cultural Violence: Feminist Perspectives on Islamic State’s Heritage Destruction". International Affairs. 101 (1): 157–175.
• Isakhan, Benjamin; Meskell, Lynn (2026). "Modelling Norm Cluster Expansion: The Case of UNESCO’s Heritage Mandate". European Journal of International Relations. 32 (3): 917–941.

External links

• Official profile at Deakin University
• ORCID profile