Chelsi Mueller is an Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the Hamilton School. She is also a research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University and a fellow of the Forum for Regional Cooperation. She authored The Origins of the Arab-Iranian Conflict: Nationalism and Sovereignty in the Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 2020) and is a co‑editor of the journal Israel Affairs.
Her scholarly articles have appeared in Iranian Studies, the Journal of Arabian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, the Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and History and Memory. Before joining the Hamilton School, Mueller was an Assistant Professor of Security Studies and International Affairs at Embry‑Riddle Aeronautical University.
Mueller’s current research draws on Iranian archival documents that shed fresh light on Arab–Iranian relations during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah. This work extends her longstanding interest in the interwar origins of the Arab–Iranian conflict into the mid‑twentieth century and the early Pahlavi period. She is also pursuing a project that examines how the Arab–Iranian conflict in the Gulf interacts with the Israeli–Palestinian arena, and she is engaged in a broader study of global power involvement in the Middle East
“Ha‑Hutim: ha‑Oyev she‑Gimru lelo Hatzdaka ve‑Hiftiʿa [The Houthis: An Unjustly Minimized Threat that Surprised],” in Be‑ʿEynayim ʿAtzumot u‑Meqorot Petuhim: Milhemet 7 be‑Oktobar [Closed Eyes and Open Sources: The October 7 War], ed. Amos Nadan and Jonathan Franco (Tel Aviv: Maarachot, 2026).
“Memory Politics in Bahrain: The Invocation of the Early-Modern Past in the aftermath of the 14 February 2011 Uprising,” History and Memory, Vol. 35, No. 1 (2023).
“Changes, Challenges and Transitions in the Persian Gulf, 1919–1939,” The Journal of Arabian Studies, Vol. 8, Is. 2 (2018).
“The Geopolitics of Sectarianism in the Gulf,” with Uzi Rabi, in The Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2018).
“The Gulf Arab States and Israel since 1967: from ‘no negotiation’ to tacit cooperation,” with Uzi Rabi, The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 4, Is. 4 (2017).
“Nationalist Representations of the Persian Gulf under Reza Shah Pahlavi,” Constructing Nationalism in Iran from the Qajars to the Islamic Republic, ed. Meir Litvak (Routledge, 2017).
“Anglo-Iranian Treaty Negotiations: Reza Shah, Teymurtash and the British Government, 1927-1932,” Iranian Studies, Vol. 49, Is. 4 (2016).
“From Arab-Palestine to Arab-Islamic Palestine in the Palestinian Educational Philosophy and Curriculum of the Palestinian National Movement,” Middle East Studies, Vol. 48, No. 3 (2012).
“Egyptian and Saudi Intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2006–09): Local Powers Mediation Compared,” with Joseph Kostiner, in International Intervention in Local Conflicts: Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution since the Cold War, ed. Uzi Rabi (I.B.Taurus, 2010).
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