Dr. Rouhana is an assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at New Mexico State University. He received his PhD from the University of California, Santa Cruz, in 2021. Before joining the Sociology Department at NMSU, Dr. Rouhana was a postdoctoral research associate at the Centre for the Comparative Study of Civil War at the University of York, UK, where heconducted a comparative study of the role that sect identities play before, during, and after the wars that took place in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon.

Research

Dr. Rouhana’s interdisciplinary research focuses on war, social movements, religious sectarianism, and political emotions, both online and offline. It combines sociological theory with computational methods and fieldwork, including research conducted in Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, to examine how sect identities are constructed, mobilized, and transformed over time. Hebuilt an extensive online data collection around the Syrian civil war, comprising millions of tweets, Facebook posts, and news articles. To capture the production and reproduction of sect identities online and offline, he combines traditional ethnographic fieldwork with AI andmachine-learning methods. His work employs innovative methodologies, including ethnography, discourse analysis, digital data analysis, and ethnographically informed computational methods,to understand how sect identities manifest and are reproduced in daily life. He published articles in Information, Communication and Society, First Monday, and Ethnopolitics. 

Learn more about my work at my website: tonirouhana.com