Christin is a PhD student and employee at the Institute of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. She holds a BA in History and Philosophy and an MA in History from the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her research focuses on Syrian history in the 20th century, particularly the intellectual and social history of the Arab Left and Marxism. She is interested in the question of how historiography is and can be rewritten after the Arab Uprisings.

Research Project

Localizing the Global Arab Left: Communist Perspectives on Oppositional Unrests in Syria, 1976–1982

The historiography on Syria tends to neglect or distort the domestic oppositional unrests in the 1970s and early 1980s, reproducing a ‘stability’ narrative grounded in sectarianized divisions. However, this historical moment represents a nucleus of accelerated change that raised controversial questions about the making of postcolonial Syria. My PhD project initially researches the neglected history of the Rabitat al-ʿAmal al-Shuyuʿi (Communist Labor League/Party, founded in 1976) and subsequently explores its perspectives on the oppositional unrests. The league/party's publications provide a contemporaneous, violently oppressed, and hitherto overlooked perspective that is supplemented by recent recollections from former party members. Contributing to a historiography of a violently repressed local Left, which was part of a similarly defeated global Left, I situate my research in a social and intellectual history of the Arab New Left.