Manami Goto
Honorary Appointment
About me:
Manami Goto obtained her BA in Law from Seikei University in Tokyo in 2011 and MA in Gulf Studies at Qatar University in 2015. She is currently studying for her PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies with a doctoral studentship from the Centre for Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter. Her thesis is entitled, “Voices of the Masked: Material Culture, Identity, and Agency in the Gulf”, which investigates the links between the socio-cultural identities of women in the Persian Gulf region and the role of the face mask by focusing on three main aspects: the symbolic meanings of the mask’s material features, women’s agency towards veiling, and the impact of national narratives. For her PhD research, she has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on both sides of the Persian Gulf including interviewing more than 250 women in Arabic and Persian. This research is supervised by Prof. Christine Robins, Dr. John P. Cooper, and Dr. James Onley.
Manami is currently teaching a module on Gender, Sexuality and Violence in Palestine/Israel as a Postgraduate Teaching Assistant at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, which builds upon her previous experience in the Gulf Studies Centre at Qatar University (April 2016) and in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates (February-March 2018), where she was a visiting researcher.
Her main areas of interest are dress, material culture, oral history, and the rituals of women in the Persian Gulf. Her master’s thesis also focused on generational changes in the traditional attire of Qatari women, which was explored from an anthropological perspective.
Before starting her postgraduate studies, Manami also completed the Arabic for Non-Native Speakers Programme at Qatar University (2012-2013), and the Arabic Language Unit at Kuwait University (2011-2012). Additionally, as part of her PhD field research, she studied Persian at the Dhkhoda Lexicon Institute at the University of Tehran in Iran (2016). As a result, she has mastered modern standard Arabic and also some Gulf dialects and is near fluent in modern standard Persian. By living in the Gulf states and Iran for five years and travelling to 69 countries, many of which are in the Middle East, she has had opportunities to develop an in-depth knowledge of the region’s socio-politics, culture, religion and languages.
Research Unit:
Centre for Gulf Studies and Centre for Islamic Archaeology
Research Project:
Investigation of the links between the socio-cultural identities of women in the Arabian-Persian Gulf region and the role of the face mask by focusing on three main aspects: the symbolic meanings of the mask’s material features, women’s agency towards veiling, and the impact of national narratives. In-depth ethnographic fieldwork was conducted throughout the region including Iran, the UAE, Oman, and Qatar by using Arabic, Persian, and English.
Research Supervisory team:
Prof. Christine Robins (Director of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Ibrahim Ahmed Professor of Kurdish Studies)
Dr. John P. Cooper (Senior Lecturer in Arabic Studies and Islamic Material Culture)
Research Wider Research Interests:
Dress, material culture, oral history, and the rituals of women in the Persian Gulf.
Education:
January 2015 January 9999
The University of Exeter
Mphil/PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies
Thesis title: Voices of the Masked: Material Culture, Identity, and Agency in the Gulf.
Supervisors: Prof. Christine Robins, Dr. John P. Cooper, and Dr. James Onley
January 2013 January 2015
Qatar University
MA in Gulf Studies
Dissertation title: Attitudinal Change towards Traditional Attire among Qatari Women over One Generation.
Supervisor: Prof. Baqer AlNajjar
January 2007 January 2011
Seikei University
BA in Law, Jurisprudential department.
