Karim El Taki completed a PhD in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research explores the quest for social recognition amidst the tension between sovereignty and hierarchy in the modern international. In his doctoral thesis, Karim studied sovereigntism, conceptualised as an ideology seeking the social recognition of a state's own sense of sovereign status and agency in reaction to subordination dynamics across domestic, regional, and global hierarchies. He empirically investigated sovereigntism in Egypt and Qatar during two episodes in which they were subjected to normative and material subordination dynamics that they experienced as social misrecognition.

As a Max Weber Fellow, Karim will develop his thesis into a book manuscript while launching his next research projects. He will research the genealogy of sovereignty in its dual agential and discursive ontology as it emerged in nineteenth-century Egypt within imperial and colonial hierarchies. He is also interested in researching the historical sociology of sovereigntism in European contexts.

Prior to joining the EUI, Karim was a visiting doctoral student at Georgetown University Qatar, a visiting scholar at The George Washington University, and a doctoral fellow at the Orient-Institut Beirut. He holds bachelor's and research master's degrees from Sciences Po Paris.

Karim has experience teaching undergraduate courses in comparative politics and on the politics of the Middle East.