MENAS Welcomes New Faculty Member Hsain Ilahiane

The School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies is pleased to welcome new faculty member Dr. Hsain Ilahiane! Dr. Ilahiane's fascinating research will bring important anthropological perspectives to our department and curriculum. Learn more about Dr. Ilahiane here:

Hsain Ilahiane (Ph.D., University of Arizona) is an applied cultural anthropologist and professor at the School of Middle Eastern & North African Studies and the W.A. Franke Honors College. Prior to joining the University of Arizona, he served as Professor and Head of the Department of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University (2018-2023); as Associate Professor of Applied Anthropology at the University of Kentucky (2009-2018); as Senior Social Scientist at Intel Corporation Research Labs in Oregon (2006-2007); and as Assistant and Associate Professor of Anthropology at Iowa State University (1999-2009).

His research interests are economic development; arid lands ecology; oasis agriculture and irrigation systems; technology and social change; urban information economies; economic anthropology; and political ecology. He has conducted ethnographic research in Morocco, the United States of America, Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. He is the author of Ethnicities, Community Making, and Agrarian Change: The Political Ecology of a Moroccan Oasis (2004), Historical Dictionary of the Berbers (Imazighen) (2017), and The Mobile Phone Revolution in Morocco: Cultural and Economic Transformations (2022).