The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold: first, it aims to examine the impact of transnational political and religious currents on education in Qatar from the late 1940s to the present-day; second, the dissertation provides an account of how these developments impacted the experiences of Qatari women in schools and universities, culminating in in-depth qualitative analysis of women’s education in Qatar today. In the introductory chapter, I present the purpose of the dissertation, along with three core research questions. I also introduce three primary bodies of literature and highlight the gaps that this work aims to address: rentier state theory, theories of tribal and family structure in the gulf, and the emerging literature on western satellite campuses in GCC state. I conclude the chapter by presenting and justifying my choice of qualitative research methods, specifically semi-structured interviews and critical discourse analysis. In the second chapter, I elaborate on the key theoretical concepts that guide my analysis. Some of these concepts include Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory, Michel Foucault’s writing on discipline, Paulo Freire’s work on education and pedagogy, and Benedict Anderson’s views on nationalism. I also present a fresh synthesis of their arguments to give more depth to my inquiry and reasoning. In the third chapter, I examine the education field’s response to the socio-political realities that existed in Qatar and the region during its early formation. Since the field has been sanctioned and financially supported by the leadership, I focus on uncovering the mechanics of reproduction within schools and their efficacy through the lens of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and Foucault’s notions on discipline and punishment. In the fourth chapter, I examine the growth of religious ideologies within the Qatari power structure and community, particularly during two Sahwa eras. First, I conduct a historical analysis to uncover the strategic ways through which the government recruited and formed alliances with the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the 1960s and 70s. I also present data collected from oral history interviews to lead and augment my discussions on rentier politics and the instrumentalization of religion in the education field. Later on in the chapter, I focus on the Sahwa of the 1980s and its discourse on women. I investigate how its teachings, which were promoted in Qatari public schools and the national university, reinforced the female habitus as well as the Qatari gendered expectations today based on female social agents’ experiences at the time. In the fifth chapter, I study developments in the higher education field in the post-Islamic Sahwa era. Considering that members of the Qatari society were becoming increasingly exposed to Wahhabi fundamentalism, I closely examine the western higher education field (Education City) vis-a-vis power dynamics. More specifically, by employing Benedict Anderson’s theory on nationalism, I consider the new leadership’s strategic efforts to introduce their vision to the Qatari community while mitigating objections and concerns. Moreover, considering the Sahwa’s discourse on women, I analyze first-hand experiences of Qatari female social agents in this relatively liberal field, while paying close attention to the factors that transform habitus. In the sixth chapter, I analyze state efforts to move away from a rentier-based economy and towards a knowledge-based economy. Given that the economy is still undergoing a transformational process, I focus on rentier-based practices that are still sustained based on Bourdieu’s theory of field and capital, and their connection to the overall power structure. I center the analysis around an account of the experiences of Qatari females who graduated from Education City universities. The chapter shows how they strategically make use of their capital to overcome both general and female-specific challenges and improve social mobilities in their professional fields and other fields as well. In the conclusion, I first discuss theoretical limitations that the process of data analysis and contextualization revealed. These limitations, I argue come from applying western scholars' philosophies, particularly Pierre Bourdieu's, to empirical data collected from a non-western context. I thus provide examples from various chapters to demonstrate how I overcome limitations and produce inferences. I then move on to emphasize the direct link between geopolitics and educational transformations over decades. Finally, I discuss how Qatari females perceive and navigate the challenges they face as a result of transitioning from different educational systems and ultimately into the workforce.