LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts: Recent Episodes
LSE Middle East Centre
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The MEC builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE.
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The LSE Middle East Centre hosted the launch of Shabnam Holliday's new book, Sovereignty in Iran: Challenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic. This multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborative project examines sovereignty as a plural concept through the case of Iran, challenging Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The discussion explored the book's examination of sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic, including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
KFAS). Ibrahim Alhouti (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of the comparative politics of education at Kuwait University and a non-resident fellow at Gulf International Forum in Washington, DC. He obtained his PhD from University College London's Institute of Education, where his thesis explored the politics of reforming the education system in the Arab Gulf region, and holds two master’s degrees on Leadership and Comparative Education, both from University College London's Institute of Education. He also serves as a consultant for a number of educational institutions in the Gulf. Alhouti has published several research studies about education and education reforms in the region. His research interest encompasses the politics of education, education reforms, comparative education, and education policies.Dr. Sonia Exley is an Associate Professor in the LSE Department of Social Policy. She is Programme Director for the MSc in International Social and Public Policy, and teaches on a range of postgraduate and undergraduate courses. Sonia’s specialist area of research is education policy. She has a particular interest in the marketisation and privatisation of education systems across the world. Sonia has published in a wide range of education and social policy journals. She holds a DPhil in Social Policy from Oxford University (Nuffield College). Prior to joining LSE, she was a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the (now UCL) Institute of Education in London.Meet our chairDr Nidal Al Haj Sleiman is the Kuwait Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre. She is a sociologist of education policy, leadership and international education. Her work generally draws on theories of policy sociology, social and cultural justice, critical pedagogy and transformative learning, particularly in West Asia: Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Lebanon and Palestine. Her publications broadly address interconnection of policy, leadership and society, the sociology of international education, the political economy of education, post-colonial and settler-colonial theory in education. Nidal is also a co-founder of the SWANA Forum for Social Justice, a UCL alumni- and student-led community. Prior to her research career, Nidal worked as teacher and a school leader in Lebanon and Qatar, in public and international education settings.
The LSE Middle East Centre hosted the launch of 'Turkey and the Liberal International Order', a new book examining Turkey’s complex and evolving relationship with the liberal international order from the end of the First World War to the present day.The book explores how Turkey, as a middle power, responded to major global transformations following the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War by appealing to the dominant principles of liberal internationalism. At the same time, it shows how Turkish political movements and foreign policy actors reinterpreted and challenged these principles, shaping how the liberal international order was understood and implemented in the Turkish context. Drawing on parliamentary records and the writings of key political figures, the book offers a rich historical account of how successive generations of policymakers understood Turkey’s national interest, its place in the international order and its role on the global stage.Meet our speakersMarc Sinan Winrow is a Teaching Fellow at SOAS, teaching the International Relations of the Middle East and Risk and Policy Analysis, and he is also a Research Assistant at LSE. He completed his PhD in the Department of International Relations of the LSE. The topic of this talk is based on his first published book, Turkey and the Liberal International Order, published by Agenda in 2025. His research continues to be concentrated on different (post-) liberal conceptions of international order, geopolitics and the history and theory of sovereignty in International Relations, with a focus on Turkey and the southeast European, Eastern Mediterranean and the MENA region.Ayla Göl is Course Lead in Politics and International Relations, and a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of Humanities, York St John University, UK. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where she had an early career position at the Department of International Relations. She is the author of Turkey Facing East: Islam, Modernity and Foreign Policy (Manchester University Press) and numerous articles in journals such as Nations and Nationalism, Third World Quarterly, Information and Education Technologies, the Global Discourse and International Affairs, as well as book chapters on Turkey, the Middle East and international relations.Senem Aydın-Düzgit is a Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University and the Director of the Istanbul Policy Center. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University. In 2024-2025, she was based at the Harvard Kennedy School as the Pierre Keller Visiting Professor of Public Policy, and in 2023-2024, she was a Richard von Weizsacker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Her main research interests include identity, history, and discourse in the study of international politics, with an empirical focus on European and Turkish foreign policies; and more recently, the nexus between domestic and foreign policies of middle powers in the changing international order.Meet our ChairKaterina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. She held a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust between 2021 and 2024. The project findings will shortly be published as a book monograph by Cambridge University Press, under the title Islamic International Thought in Turkey: History, Civilisation and Nation.
As part of the British Academy Conference 'Algeria: Historical Struggles and Imagined Utopias' organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Centre for Peace and Security, Coventry University.A fascinating conversation between Abderrahmane Hadj Nacer, former Governor of the Bank of Algeria, and Francis Ghiles, former journalist with the Financial Times and BBC World Service, on the historical challenges and reforms from the 1980s to contemporary Algeria. Une riche conversation entre Abderrahmane Hadj Nacer, ancien gouverneur de la Banque d'Algérie, et Francis Ghiles, ancien journaliste du Financial Times et de la BBC World Service, sur les défis historiques et les réformes de l'Algérie des années 1980 à nos jours.
Professor Zahia Smail Salhi is Chair of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester since 2013 and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science at Sharjah University for the last three years. She specialises in Arabic literature, culture as well as women and gender in the Middle East and North Africa. Her Keynote talk “Algeria and the Anxiety of Decolonisation: Case Studies in Language and Gender” takes us from the traumas of colonialism and the War of Independence to the challenges of decolonisation of both colonised and colonizer. She focuses in on questions of language and culture in newly independent Algeria, before moving on to her recent research into the role of women. Drawing on their historical legacy as resistance fighters, and Fanon’s work on the malleability of the veil, Zahia explores contemporary roles where women contest and affirm their place in the constantly shifting social environment of Algeria, via processes of ‘a quiet’ and ‘soft altering’ of social reality that subverts patriarchal power.
This plenary session, delivered as part of the 2026 Kurdish Studies Conference by Marlene Schäfers, University of Utrecht and Kurdish Studies Journal and Welat Zeydanlıoğlu, Kurdish Studies Network, was a conversation about the state of Kurdish Studies as a scholarly field. The session was moderated by Veli Yadirgi. Marlene Schäfers is associate professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the impact of state violence on intimate and gendered lives, voice and memory, and the politics of death and the afterlife. She specializes in the anthropology of the Kurdish regions and modern Turkey. Her first monograph, Voices that Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey (University of Chicago Press, 2022), is based on long-term ethnographic research with Kurdish female singers and poets and sets out to theorise the voice as an object of aspiration, resistance, and cooptation. It was awarded the annual Book Prize of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association in 2024.Welat Zeydanlıoğlu is the founder and coordinator of the Kurdish Studies Network(KSN), a global academic research network. He is also the founder of Kurdish Studies, an international, peer-reviewed academic journal. He was the managing editor of the journal between 2013-2022. He is known for his work in the field of Kurdish studies, particularly regarding the Kurdish question in Turkey.For more information about the Kurdish Studies Conference, follow this link: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middleeastcentre/news/kurdish-studies-conference-2026
The LSE Middle East Centre hosted the launch of Richard Barltrop’s paper, 'Sudan’s Current War: A Longer View on Peacemaking and Prospects'.This hybrid event launched a new paper examining the ongoing war in Sudan, which broke out in 2023. Drawing on lessons from the history of peacemaking in Sudan and comparative insights from other civil wars, the paper reflects on pathways toward ending the conflict, including the urgency of de-escalation, the need for sustained, long-term peacebuilding efforts, and the importance of Sudanese leadership and ownership in shaping a durable peace process. Richard will be joined by discussants Raga Makawi and Abdel Salam Sidahmad, and the event will be chaired by LSE's Laura Mann.Meet our speakersRichard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre researching contemporary approaches to peacemaking and peace processes. He has worked for the UN in the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa and is the author of Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan (IB Tauris, 2011).Abdel Salam Sidahmed is Chairperson of the Sudanese HR Monitor (SHRM) and an academic and human rights specialist with a PhD in Political Science. He previously served as Senior Human Rights Advisor to the Sudanese Prime Minister and Minister of Justice during the transitional government (2020–2021). Dr. Sidahmed brings over two decades of international human rights experience, including nine years with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, where he served as Regional Representative for the Middle East (2013–2021). Prior to that, he spent ten years at Amnesty International (1995–2005) as a Researcher and later Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa. In academia, he served as Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada (2005–2011).Raga Makawi is a Sudanese British researcher on Sudan's civic politics and social movements at the London School of Economics. She is the ex Editor at African Arguments curating topical themes on the Sudan's, the larger Horn and the general political and social affairs of the continent at large. She is co-author of the book Sudan's Unfinished Democracy: The Promise and Betrayal of a People's Revolution and is currently working on a number of publications in edited volumes including; the sudanese revolution and authoritarianism, the sudanese social movement contribution to security sector reform and new civic formations and the future of peace politics and political settlements in Sudan.Meet our chairLaura Mann is a sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda) but she has also worked on collaborative research on ICTs and BPO in Asia and has conducted fieldwork in North America as part of a project on digitisation within global agriculture.
This webinar examines perceptions of social protection and conflict prevention in Lebanon and Jordan among policymakers and household recipients of state-provided cash transfers.Drawing on extensive qualitative fieldwork conducted between October 2022 and March 2024, Rana Jawad explores how global policy frameworks such as the Grand Bargain and the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (Triple Nexus) intersect with domestic social policy systems in conflict-affected low- and middle-income countries in the Middle East. The talk will highlight two key arguments: first, the narrowing of social policy towards targeted cash transfers and employment-based social insurance in contexts marked by high unemployment, informality, and reliance on foreign aid; and second, a mismatch between the preventive ambitions of the Triple Nexus framework and the actual scope of social policy in Lebanon and Jordan. The discussion will reflect on what meaningful ‘prevention’ might look like when social policy addresses the structural drivers of poverty, inequality, and limited employment opportunities.Meet our speaker and chairRana Jawad is a Professor of Global Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at the University of Birmingham. She specialises in the social policies and welfare systems of the Middle East and North Africa region, focusing on broad questions about institutional and political change, programme design and the impact of these on poverty and inequality. She is especially interested in the policy and political dynamics (including policy transfer issues) among international actors and the donor community, government officials and civil society organisations.Reza Omidi is a Visting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His research focuses on social inequalities, welfare regime, political economy, and social policy developments. He is currently focused on the politics of social policy reforms, their institutional dynamics of advance and retrenchment, and their interrelationship with broader social and political transformations.
I ecosystem through improved connections between LSE research and innovation and by building internal and external relationships to facilitate innovation.
In the final episode of this season, Ahmad Abu Hussien, an urban sociologist from Jordan, brings together academics and practitioners to explore theories of urban planning and design through case studies of Jordan and Dubai. This episode explores the concept of infrastructural citizenship, a framework that helps us understand infrastructure not simply as roads, public spaces, water or sewage networks, but as a political and social system that shapes belonging in the city. In this way, Ahmad and his guests look at how certain communities are excluded from the city, and how theory can inform practice in building apps, policies and physical spaces for the better.Ahmad Abu Hussien is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a sociologist specialising in urban inequalities. He is also the co-founder of AZHJ, a research consultancy focused on reducing disparities in cities and between cities, which works at the intersection of urban policy, governance, and research, with a focus on the Global South.Deyala Tarawneh is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Jordan, and Deputy Dean of Training and Alumni Affairs. She is deeply engaged in professional and institutional planning practice, including in roles with the Jordanian Engineering Institution, as well as supporting women in engineering and urban development.Harun Jweinat is Co-Founder and Director of Design and Logistics at AZHJ. His work bridges art and spatial justice with a strong focus on translating complex urban ideas through practice and community facing work.Huda Shaka is a chartered urban planner and a chartered environmentalist. Her work involves advising on city and regional plans, master plans and mega infrastructure projects as well as strategic policy frameworks for future-ready cities.https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/fellows/2023/ahmad-zeyad-abu-hussien
In this penultimate episode, Yara Shawky Shahin has a frank discussion with her colleague Yasmine D’Alessandro about how to create programmes of real economic empowerment for women in the Middle East and North Africa based on their decades long experience working with international and grassroots organisations in the region.Yara Shawky Shahin is an Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a researcher and civil society professional with more than 20 years of experience in the fields of development, human rights, policy analysis, and not-for-profit management. Yara has worked with different organisations including UNHCR, Save the Children, and UNDP in programs supporting youth participation, inclusion, and integration. With the Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute, and recently Ford Foundation, her work focused on programs supporting media reform, freedom of expression, digital rights, and the impact of technology on society as well as advocating for inclusive social protections across countries of the MENA region.Yasmine D’Alessandro is a senior development expert with over two decades of experience in the gender, economic empowerment, skills development and civil society fields. Yasmine has a solid grounding in program design, strategic planning, and program management across a wide spectrum of organisations, ranging from consultancy firms and international NGOs to independent grant-making institutions. Over the course of her career, she has successfully led initiatives that address complex social and economic challenges, in communities such as rural Upper Egypt, remote communities in Yemen, refugee camps in Jordan and pockets of poverty in urban centres in various countries, always with a focus on building sustainable and locally grounded impact. She has been consistently committed to bridging the gap between policy and practice, ensuring that programs are not only well-designed but also contextually relevant and responsive to community needs.Find out more about Yara's work here: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/fellows/2023/yara-shawky-shahin
In this episode, Diana Magdy, a gender equality specialist, feminist researcher and oral historian has a conversation with Professor Hoda Elsadda unpacking the politics of archiving, revealing archives as spaces of power and resistance rather than neutral repositories.Diana Magdy is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a feminist researcher and gender equality specialist from Cairo, Egypt. She has 12 years of experience in gender and development. As a feminist oral historian, she has worked on documenting the Egyptian feminist movement, producing feminist knowledge in Arabic, and archive building. In this area, she published a paper titled ‘Narrating Gender in Egypt's Public Sphere: The Archive of Women’s Oral History’.Professor Hoda Elsadda is a feminist activist, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cairo University, and Co-founder of the Women and Memory Forum. She previously held a Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University, and was Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in the UK. Her research interests are in the areas of gender studies, comparative literature and oral history. She is author of Gender, Nation and the Arabic Novel: Egypt: 1892-2008 (Edinburgh UP and Syracuse UP, 2012); and co-editor of Oral History in Times of Change: Gender, Documentation and the Making of Archives (Cairo Papers, 35:1, 2018).Find out more about Diana's work: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/fellows/2023/diana-magdyFind out more about Hoda's work: https://wmf.org.eg/en/member/hoda-elsadda/
Return of Tyranny explains why counterrevolutions both emerge and succeed, marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900. It also offers a fresh perspective and new evidence on the reversal of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, one of the most prominent recent episodes of counterrevolution. The book forwards a movement-centric argument that emphasizes the strategies revolutionary leaders embrace, both during their opposition campaigns and after they seize power. Movements that wage violent resistance and espouse radical ideologies establish regimes that are very difficult to overthrow. By contrast, democratic revolutions like Egypt’s are much more vulnerable – though the book also identifies a path by which they too can avoid counterrevolution. By preserving their elite coalitions and broad popular support, these movements can return to mass mobilization to thwart counterrevolutionary threats. In an era of resurgent authoritarianism worldwide, Return of Tyranny sheds light on one particularly violent form of reactionary politics.Meet our speakersKillian Clarke is an Assistant Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, affiliated with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. His research focuses on revolution, protest, democratization, and authoritarianism with a regional focus on the Middle East. He is the author of Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed (Cambridge University Press, 2025), as well as peer-reviewed articles in the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, and World Politics.Hazem Kandil is the Cambridge University Professor of Historical and Political Sociology, Fellow of St Catharine’s College and Head of Department. He studies power relations and social interactions, focusing on war, regime change, intellectuals and ideology in America, Europe, and the Middle East. He holds a PhD in Sociology from UCLA, and MA degrees in Political Theory and International Relations. His publications include Power Triangle: Military, Security, and Politics in Regime Change (Oxford University Press 2016), Inside the Brotherhood (Polity 2014), and Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen (Verso 2012). Kandil received the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2014) and a ProFutura Scientia Fellowship (2016). After finishing a book project on US military campaigns from 1960 to the present, he started a new one on encounters with Critical Theory. Meet our chairKaterina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. She held a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust between 2021 and 2024. The project findings will shortly be published as a book monograph by Cambridge University Press, under the title Islamic International Thought in Turkey: History, Civilisation and Nation.
Roses Award in the UK, and has been translated into Italian and soon in French. His short memoirs have been published in several anthologies, and he has written for The Guardian, The New Arab, Raseef22, My Kali, and more.Meet our chairHakan Sandal-Wilson is Assistant Professor of Gender, Peace and Security at the Department of Gender Studies. He is a political sociologist whose teaching and research explore how gender and sexuality intersect with democracy, conflict, and ethnic and religious difference.
The lecture examines the various economic, institutional, and political factors that are driving these approaches to health system reform drawing on work by the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (www.phssr.org) of which the LSE is a founding partner, and will consider what these mean for health outcomes. The lecture will also reflect on what these developments can reveal about the future direction of health policy in other parts of the Middle East.Meet our speakersProfessor Alistair McGuire is the Kuwait Chair of Health Economics at the Department of Health Policy and at the LSE Middle East Centre. Prior to this he was Professor of Economics at City University, London after being a tutor in Economics at the University of Oxford. Professor McGuire has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, the University of Sydney, the University of York, the Universitat of Barcelona and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona.George Wharton is Deputy Head of Department (Teaching) Department of Health Policy, with an academic background in International Relations (BSc, LSE) and Health Policy (MSc, Imperial). George’s work focuses on a broad range of themes in comparative international health policy.Meet our chairKaterina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. She held a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust between 2021 and 2024. The project findings will shortly be published as a book monograph by Cambridge University Press, under the title Islamic International Thought in Turkey: History, Civilisation and Nation.
Manar Alzraiy, a Palestinian education professional dedicated to resilience and equity in crisis-affected schools, brings together her colleagues from Gaza to talk about education since October 7 2023, how Israel's war on Gaza and forced displacement has destroyed the education sector, and what is needed to rebuild it both physically and intellectually. These interviews took place in the summer of 2025.Manar Alzraiy is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and an education professional from Gaza, where she worked for ten years with UNRWA. At LSE, Manar conducted research on embedded inequalities in how United Nations humanitarian principles are applied in UN schools in Palestine. She is currently a fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dr Alaa Ali Aladini is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction (TEFL). He has over 23 years of experience with UNRWA-Gaza, serving as an English teacher, educational supervisor and education specialist. Dr Aladini brings extensive expertise in language education, teacher training and inclusive education. Asma Mustafa is an English language teacher who received the title ‘Global Teacher of the Year 2020’ from the AKS Education Award in India, and the title ‘Palestine’s Innovative Teacher of the Year 2022’ for her applied eTwinning approach in English language teaching. Dr Mohammed Awad Shbeir holds a PhD in Educational Administration. He is also an education supervisor as well as an academic and educational researcher specialising in education and social issues.To find out more about Manar's work: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/fellows/2023/manar-alzraiy.
Modern Syria has seen violence, repression, and autocracy, suffering through tragedy after tragedy over the past century. Yet the history of Syria is not just a tale of dictators and generals. From the 1800s to the 2020s, the Syrian people have engaged in a passionate struggle for justice, equality, and a better future. Whether fighting for national independence from French colonial rule, battling local landowning elites to share the country's wealth, or rising up against the Assad regime, the Syrian people have fiercely clung to their right to live with respect and dignity. Theirs is a story of protest and perseverance in the long fight to reshape the political destiny of their nation. Daniel Neep’s new book, A History of Modern Syria, offers a gripping narrative of how Syrians have navigated the events of the last two centuries. Never losing sight of the fates of ordinary people, it provides a comprehensive account of how a nation born in conflict sustained a rich, complex, and diverse society that after the fall of Assad will chart a new path into the uncertain future.Daniel Neep is Non-Resident Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, and Senior Editor at Arab Center Washington DC. He has taught Middle East politics at George Washington University, Georgetown University, and the University of Exeter. He was previously Research Director (Syria) at the Council for British Research in the Levant and spent several years living in Syria and Jordan. He is also the author of Occupying Syria under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space, and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and articles in journals including International Affairs, Journal of Democracy, New Political Economy, and the Journal of Historical Sociology.Meet our discussant and chair Charles Tripp FBA is Professor Emeritus of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research interests include the nature of autocracy, state and resistance in the Middle East, the politics of Islamic identities, and the role of art in the constitution of the political. He is currently working on a project on the politics of memory in Tunisia.Jasmine Gani is Assistant Professor in International Relations Theory at LSE. She specialises in anti-colonial theory and history, and the politics of empire, race and knowledge production. She is author of 'The Role of Ideology in Syria-US Relations: Conflict and Cooperation' (2014), and co-editor of 'Actors and Dynamics in the Syrian Conflict's Middle Phase' (2022).
'Governance of Resistance in North and East Syria' examines the momentous development of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration since 2012. The creation of this unprecedented, ideologically radical entity is of immense significance in Kurdish, Syrian and Middle Eastern history and for discourses of nationalism and identity. This book presents new research from the expanding scholarship to interrogate Rojava as a political and social idea and explain the resistance narrative that underpins the ideology and governance structures. The contributions examine key aspects of the condition of the autonomous government, its successes, failures and impact, including the theory and nature of the political structures, their application in Arab areas, identity, education, gender and foreign relations. The findings demonstrate that North and East Syria has been revolutionary, that resistance there is resilient, and that there are constant and dynamic tensions between ideology and pragmatism in the evolution of this remarkable political and social project. The speakers at this event will also discuss fast-moving developments in north and east Syria.Meet our speakersStephen Knight is a doctoral student at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. His ethnographic research explores the application of international humanitarian law by the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Outside of the field of law Stephen's research also looks at the interaction between mythology and political movements. Stephen also practises as a barrister, specialising in the interactions between criminal law, protest law, immigration law, and public law. He has forthcoming works in the fields of trafficking law and Kurdish mythology.Thomas McGee is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of legal and social studies of the Middle East, with particular emphasis on Kurdish dynamics in the Syrian context. He is a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, and completed his PhD on “Syria’s Changing Statelessness Landscape: 2011 as Critical Juncture” at Melbourne Law School’s Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Thomas has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre and Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He has previously published on a wide variety of topics in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration Review, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Genocide Studies International and the Kurdish Studies journal. Currently, Thomas is developing his PhD for publication as a monograph.Dastan Jasim is a Research Engineer at the Dauphine University in Paris and an Associate Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. Her research focuses on political culture, democratization and security studies.William Smith is an analyst and researcher whose work has focused on Syria since 2013. He was worked as an independent adviser on a number of U.K.-government and EU funded peacebuilding and stabilisation projects, including as the lead for a ‘Track 2’ initiative in northeastern Syria in 2021-22 that brought representatives of the SDF and Autonomous Administration together in dialogue with local civil society. He currently provides conflict analysis for a Syria humanitarian project.
In this first episode of season 4, Hamidreza Vasheghanifarahani speaks with Azadeh Sobout and Rindala about how transnational solidarity networks can strengthen efforts towards social change. While both Azadeh and Rindala focus their discussion on Syria and the 2011 Revolution, the conversation explores broader approaches and challenges to political organising and revolutionary politics that can be applied globally.Hamidreza Vasheghanifarahani an Iranian researcher, activist and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. Currently, he works at the LSE International Inequalities Institute as a researcher. He has worked with and for civil society organisations and communities as a researcher, project manager and trainer, with a focus on civil society and community mobilisation, children’s rights, and disability.Azadeh Sobout is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. She is an Iranian activist, writer, and educator rooted in refugee justice, indigenous solidarity, Palestinian liberation, anti-racist, feminist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist movements for over a decade.Rindala is a Syrian member of the People’s Want transnational network and a co-founder of the cooperative space Darna in Montreuil, France.To learn more about the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/The Peoples Want: https://thepeopleswant.org/en/about_usHamidreza Vasheghanifarahani: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/fellows/2022/hamidreza-vasheghanifarahani
Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. He is the author of Moroccan Monarchy and the Islamist Challenge: Maintaining Makhzen Power and The Historical Dictionary of the Arab Uprisings. He is a specialist of North African Politics. Mohamed’s articles have appeared in Middle East Critique, The Journal of North African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, The British Journal of Middle East Studies, the Journal of Middle East Law and Governance, the Hudson Institute, the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, the Huffington Post, SADA of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Middle East Institute, Jadaliyya and Muftah. Mohamed has provided commentary to local and international media outlets such as: C-Span, al-Jazeera English, the BBC, El Pais, and The Irish Times.Michael J. Willis is King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). Before joining St Antony’s in 2004, he taught politics at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco for seven years. He is the author of Algeria: Politics and Society from the Dark Decade to the Hirak (Hurst, 2022); Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015).Richard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His research is on contemporary international approaches to peacemaking, and why peace processes fail or succeed, with a particular focus on Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan, and considering Libya, Syria and other examples.
With hardening authoritarianism and state capture by militias exacerbating the challenges faced by providers of development and political aid across the Middle East and North Africa, how can aid be made more effective? Can donors overcome the limitations of their outdated assistance playbooks? Analysing the fraught relationships between Western aid providers and MENA recipients, the authors of Making Aid Work suggest innovative, practical approaches for overcoming the chronic limitations—and disappointing results—of assistance aimed at encouraging economic development and political reform in the region.Meet our speakers and chairGuilain Denoeux is professor of government at Colby College. His areas of expertise include: Middle Eastern and North African politics, terrorism, insurgency and counter-extremism programming and democracy-building strategies and activities.Robert Springborg is nonresident research fellow of the Italian Institute of International Affairs and adjunct professor in the School of International Studies at Simon Fraser University.Greg Shapland is a Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Principal Investigator and UKRI FCDO Senior Research Fellow on the project, ‘The Political Economy of Water in the MENA Region: A Cross-Regional Assessment’.
This event was the launch of 'Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran' by Amina Tawasil.This groundbreaking ethnography on Iranian howzevi (seminarian) women reveals how ideologies of womanhood, institutions, and Islamic practices have played a pivotal role in religiously conservative women's mobility in the Middle East. This event was co-organised with the Department of Anthropology at LSE.Meet the speaker and chair:Amina Tawasil is an anthropologist serving as a Lecturer in the Programs in Anthropology at Columbia University's Teachers College since 2017. She has published several articles from her fieldwork in the Islamic Republic of Iran on seminarian women, and has recently published a book entitled, 'Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran' through Indiana University Press. Previously, she taught at the International Studies Institute, University of New Mexico after serving as the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Middle East and North African Studies program, with courtesy appointment in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. She is particularly interested in ethnographic and theoretical framings of anonymity, slow labor, time, urban situations, and performance. She is currently completing her fourth year of ethnographic fieldwork among graffiti writers in New York City, Philadelphia and urban New Jersey, which she has published a chapter on in the 'Ethnography of Reading at Thirty' edited volume. Yazan Doughan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at LSE. Yazan is an anthropologist whose work straddles the linguistic and socio-cultural branches of the discipline, with close engagements with social and legal theory, conceptual and social history, and moral philosophy. His work blends ethnography, genealogy, and history to shed light on the question of social justice in contemporary postcolonial contexts, with Jordan as a primary field site.
This keynote lecture delivered by Professor Hamit Bozarslan took place during the Kurdish Studies Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield.An expert in the Middle East, Turkey and the Kurdish question, Hamit Bozarslan has been director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris since 2006. A doctor of history and political science, he now focuses his research on the historical and political sociology of the Middle East, the revolutionary fact and violence present in the Arab world, and the formation of anti-democracies in the 21st century. Bozarslan is a regular contributor to French media such as Le Monde and is the author of a long list of works, including the essay 'Crisis, violence et dé-civilization' (2019), 'Révolution et état de violence: Middle East 2011-2015' (2015), 'History of Turkey: From the Empire to the Present' (2013), 'A History of Violence in the Middle East: From the End of the Ottoman Empire to al-Qaeda' (2008), 'From Political Struggle to Self-Sacrifice: Violence in the Middle East' (2004) & 'The Kurdish Question: States and Minorities in the Middle East' (1997).This event was chaired by Dr Zeynep Kaya. Zeynep is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Her main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender in the Middle East. She is author of 'Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism' with Cambridge University Press. Zeynpe is co-convenor of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre.
This talk delivered by Professor René Provost explored important lessons on the promises and limits of non-state justice in conflict zones, specifically looking at the Kurdish-dominated Democratic Autonomous Administration of North East Syria.Zones of armed conflict are spaces of disorder, which state and non-state belligerents alike aim to curtail through law. Starting in 2014, the Kurdish-dominated Democratic Autonomous Administration of North East Syria established its own courts and enacted its own laws, in civil as well as criminal matters. For a decade, this unrecognised system of administration of justice has struggled to bring social order to this war-afflicted territory. Meet our speaker and chair René Provost Ad.E. FRSC is the James McGill Professor of Justice Beyond the State at the Faculty of Law of McGill University. He joined the Faculty of Law of McGill University in 1994, where he was Associate Dean (Academic) from 2001 to 2003 and the founding Director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism from 2005 to 2010. Professor Provost teaches Public International Law, International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Environmental Law, Legal Anthropology, and various courses in legal theory. His latest book is 'Rebel Courts – The Administration of Justice by Armed Insurgents' (Oxford University Press 2021), winner of the 2022 ICON-S Prize for Best Book in Public Law and the 2023 American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit for Creative Scholarship. Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Co-Convenor of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria. He is Co-Editor of the Kurdish Studies Series, published by I.B. Tauris.
This event celebrated the work of Professor Charles Tripp through a new edited volume by Toby Dodge, Daniel Neep and Ali Ansari.The work of Charles Tripp – professor at SOAS University of London for over three decades – has shaped a distinct approach to the study of Middle East politics: an analytical sensibility that is empirically rich, theoretically insightful, and historically sensitive. This edited volume brings together contributions from ten political scientists and historians from across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, each of whom takes Tripp’s work as the intellectual point of departure for studying politics in the region. Speakers:Ali M. Ansari is Professor of Iranian History and founding Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews. Eberhard Kienle is Directeur de recherche (Research Professor) at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and teaches politics at SciencesPo Paris. Daniel Neep is a political scientist who works on conflict and state-building in the Middle East, with a focus on Syria. Evaleila Pesaran is Senior College Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.
What does Yemen’s political, economic and social history and experience tell us about what is realistic for the coming decade and beyond? This keynote lecture delivered by writer and researcher Helen Lackner discussed the main socio-political transformations since the 1960s, and addressed the most relevant features for the country's future. Lackner's presentation drew on her personal experience in different sectors throughout the country.Meet our speaker and chairHelen Lackner has been involved with Yemen for more than half a century, working in all three Yemeni states which have existed since the 1960s. She has worked as a consultant in social aspects of rural development in over thirty countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. Her two most recent books on Yemen are 'Yemen in Crisis, Devastating Conflict, Fragile Hope' (Saqi, 2023) and 'Yemen: Poverty and Conflict' (Routledge, 2023). Lackner was the Sir William Luce Fellow at Durham University in 2016, an associate researcher at SOAS from 2016 to 2022. She edited the Journal of the British-Yemeni Society for eight years and writes regularly for the Arab Digest and Orient XXI and has contributed longer academic papers to numerous books and other institutions.Richard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His research is on contemporary international approaches to peacemaking, and why peace processes fail or succeed, with a particular focus on Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan. He is the author of 'Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan' (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2011/2015).
This event was the launch of Seçkin Sertdemir's latest book 'Civic Death in Contemporary Turkey: Mass Surveillance and the Authoritarian State' published by Cambridge University Press. What does it mean for a government to declare its citizens 'dead' while they still live? Following the failed 2016 coup, the Turkish AKP government implemented sweeping powers against some 152,000 of its citizens. These Kanun hükmünde kararnameli ('emergency decreed') were dismissed from their positions and banned for life from public service. With their citizenship rights revoked, Seçkin Sertdemir argues these individuals were rendered into a state of 'civic death'. This study considers how these authoritarian securitisation methods took shape, shedding light on the lived experiences of targeted people.Meet the speakers and chairSeçkin Sertdemir is a Visiting Fellow in the European Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her research focuses on ideas of democracy, and current problems of political philosophy such as civil disobedience and political rights. Zerrin Özlem Biner is a Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at SOAS working at the intersection of political and legal anthropology. She is author of 'Dispossession: Violence and Precarious Co-existence in Southeast Turkey' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020). With Özge Biner, she co-edited a special section on the 'Politics of Waiting: Ethnographies of Sovereignty, Temporality and Subjectivity in the Margins of the Turkish State' in the Journal of Social Anthropology. Katerina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Dalacoura’s work has centered on the intersection of Islamism and international human rights norms. She has worked on human rights, democracy and democracy promotion, in the Middle East, particularly in the context of Western policies in the region.
This event, co-organised with the Department of International Development at LSE, was a discussion with Professor Naila Kabeer and Professor Ragui Assaad based on their co-authored report 'Women's Access to Market Opportunities in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa: Barriers, Opportunities and Policy Challenges'. Despite this paper being written in 2019, the situation of women's access to market opportunities in MENA and South Asia remains a challenge. Kabeer and Assaad will reflect on their findings and discuss the puzzles and paradoxes of women's employment in these regions, which have the lowest rates of women's labour force participation in the world. The conversation will also explore how to unlock the potential of women in these communities.Meet our speakers and chair Naila Kabeer is Emeritus Professor of Gender and Development in the Department of International Development at LSE. Naila is also a Faculty Associate at LSE’s International Inequalities Institute and on the governing board of the Atlantic Fellowship for Social and Economic Equity. Her most recent projects were supported by ERSC-DIFD Funded Research on 'Poverty Alleviation: Gender and Labour Market dynamics in Bangladesh and West Bengal'. Ragui Assaad is the Freeman Chair in International Economic Policy at the Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. He researches education, labor policy, and labor market analysis in developing countries with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His current work focuses on inequality of opportunity in education, labor markets, transitions from school-to-work, employment and unemployment dynamics, family formation, informality, labor market responses to economic shocks, international migration, including the effects of forced migration.
This event disseminated the findings of a series of papers produced for the LSE Middle East Centre by Ahmed Tabaqchali exploring the economic and financial interactions of the Iraqi economy with the outside world, particularly the use of the dollar in relation to Iran and the US. While the US’ Iraq policy is still fluid, there have been signs that America’s ‘maximum pressure campaign’ towards Iran will have spillover effects in Iraq, with the Trump administration viewing policy towards Iraq solely through the lens of a perceived threat of Iranian dominance in the country. Iran’s economic footprint in Iraq, both perceived and real, will be an issue for Iraq and its relationship with the US and the West. Meet the speaker:Ahmed Tabaqchali is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Ahmed is a capital markets professional with over 25 years’ experience in US and MENA markets. He is the Chief Strategist of the AFC Iraq Fund. Ahmed is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS), and non-resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council - Iraq Initiative. He is a board member of the Iraq Fund for Higher Education (IFHE)/Baghdad Business School (BBS). Access the papers here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/publications/paper-series
This event was the launch of Dr Anne Kirstine Rønn's latest paper as part of the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series on 'The Struggles of Labour Mobilisation in Lebanon and Iraq'. Despite facing significant challenges, including elite control and repression, labour movements in both Lebanon and Iraq have sought to assert their independence and challenge the status quo. This paper explores the main types of labour organisations in both countries – trade unions and professional syndicates – and the distinct structural and strategic obstacles they face. The paper discusses the internal debates within these organisations, where the tension between idealism and pragmatic goals often influences their strategies. By drawing on interviews with labour activists and secondary sources, the paper reflects on the potential for strengthening these movements and explores the trade-offs between formal and informal labour organising. It concludes by calling for further research to identify the conditions under which labour mobilisation can be effective in similar political contexts. Read the paper here: https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/127301/3/Struggles_of_Labour_Mobilisation.pdfMeet our speakers and chair Anne Kirstine Rønn is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Her research explores opposition movements in ethno-religiously divided societies with a particular focus on Lebanon and Iraq. Fuad Musallam is an Assistant Professor in Social Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. He focuses on activism, labour, the imagination, and how people come together to form community. Razaw Salihy is the Iraq Researcher at Amnesty International. Since 2014, she has investigated and reported human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.
The return of Donald Trump to the White House in 2025 comes on the back of extreme violence in the Middle East, led by Israel and with great financial and political investment from the United States. What impact will Trump's second term have on the Middle East region, and what can we learn from his policies in his first term as President of the United States? Between 2017- 2021 several major policies helped alter regional dynamics. From the Abraham Accords to the withdrawal from the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement; from a strengthening of ties with the Saudi monarchy to both airstrikes and calls for troop withdrawal in Syria. What are the current legacies of those policies, and what can the Middle East expect from Trump’s second term? Panellists discussed these questions from the perspective of the region, the United States, and global politics with a view to the impact on both citizens and states.Meet our speakers and chairGilbert Achcar is Emeritus Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS, University of London. Tom Bateman is an international correspondent with BBC News currently covering the US State Department in Washington DC. Sharri Plonski is a senior lecturer in international politics at Queen Mary University of London. Mezna Qato is Director of the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies at the University of Cambridge. Jasmine Gani is Assistant Professor in International Relations Theory at LSE.
This event was the launch of Dr Marouf Cabi's latest book 'Iranian Kurdistan Under the Islamic Republic: Change, Revolution, and Resistance' published by I.B. Tauris. Cabi presents a social, political, cultural, and socioeconomic history of Iranian Kurdistan since the 1979 Revolution. In this study, Marouf Cabi shines a spotlight on the modern history of Iranian Kurdistan – an area of Greater Kurdistan understudied in comparison to its regions in Syria and Iraq. The book provides a historical narrative and analysis of Kurdistan since the Revolution. It addresses key changes and events in detail, such as the participation of the Kurds in the Revolution, the reinvigoration of the Kurdish movements and the emergence of the women's movement, the armed struggle of the 1980s, socioeconomic and political change of the 1990s, and the emergence of civil society since 2000. Cabi draws on extensive primary sources, including oral history, various newspapers, journals, and books published during the period.Meet our speakers and chairMarouf Cabi is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. He received his PhD in History from the University of St Andrews, UK, and is a social and cultural historian of modern Iran. He is author of 'The Formation of Modern Kurdish Society in Iran: Modernity, Modernization, and Social Change 1921-1979' (2022).Kamran Matin is a Reader in International Relations in the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex where he teaches international history, international theory, and Middle East politics. He is the author of 'Recasting Iranian Modernity: International Relations and Social Change' (Routledge, 2013) and co-editor of 'Historical Sociology and World History: Uneven and Combined Development over the Longue Durée' (Rowman & Littlefield International, 2016).Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Co-editor of the Kurdish Studies Series, published by I.B. Tauris. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria.
This event was the launch of Jerome Drevon's latest book 'From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics' published by Oxford University Press.Drevon's timely book offers an examination of the Syrian armed opposition, tracing the emergence of Jihadi groups in the conflict, their dominance, and their political transformation. Meet our speakersJerome Drevon is Senior Analyst on Jihad and Modern Conflict at International Crisis Group (ICG) and Research Associate at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID). Drevon has conducted extensive field research in conflict zones, including Syria. He has interviewed hundreds of Jihadi militants and foreign fighters--from their military, political, and religious leaders to their foot soldiers--to gain a deeper understanding of their changing political views in armed conflicts.Haid Haid is a Syrian columnist and a consulting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House. Previously, Haid was a research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), King’s College London. Raihan Ismail is the His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford. Raihan’s research interests include Political Islam, sectarianism, and the intertwining nature of religion and politics in the Middle East. More about this event: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/how-syrian-jihadis-embraced-politics/from-jihad-to-politics-how-syrian-jihadis-embraced-politics
This event was the launch of Dr Sana Murrani's latest book 'Rupturing Architecture: Spatial Practices of Refuge in Response to War and Violence in Iraq, 2003–2023' published by Bloomsbury.Written by an Iraqi architect who has lived through the trauma of several wars, 10 years of UN-imposed sanctions, an invasion, and the subsequent violence, this book captures a broad spectrum of spatial responses to trauma and presents a fresh perspective on how ordinary Iraqis create refuge across the spaces of the home, the urban environment, and border geographies.In the face of spatial wounding and the many injustices suffered by the Iraqi people, there has also been a wealth of refuge-making practices that showcase their creative and imaginative design and adaptability to change and trauma over time. Rupturing Architecture employs methods such as creative deep mapping, memory work, storytelling, interviews, and case studies of architectural responses to the geographies of war and violence. At the core of the book are the lived and felt experiences of fifteen Iraqis from across Iraq, whose resilience underscores a broader narrative of spatial justice and feminist spatial practices.Meet the speakersSana Murrani is an Associate Professor in Spatial Practice at the University of Plymouth and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Her research interests are rooted in spatial justice, drawing on her interdisciplinary background in architecture, urban design, and art and media. Her creative, place-based research practice maps built, destroyed, remembered, and reimagined trauma geographies of war, violence, and displacement. Balsam Mustafa is a Lecturer in Translation Studies at Cardiff University. Her research cuts across translation studies, feminist studies, social movements, media and communication studies as well as politics and sociology, with a focus on the Middle East.Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty.Toby Dodge is a Professor in the Department of International Relations, LSE. He is also Kuwait Professor and Director of the Kuwait Programme, Middle East Centre. Toby's research concentrates on the evolution of the post-colonial state in the international system. The main focus of this work on the developing world is the state in the Middle East, specifically Iraq.
This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, discussed the online exhibition and research project 'Bridging Identities: The Cultural Odyssey of Kurdistani Jews' exploring the identity and heritage of Kurdistani Jews.The stories in this research project shed light on this community's past through the lens of their memories and nostalgic ties to the homeland they left behind as they migrated to Israel/Palestine, and reveal if and how the markers of Kurdishness are transmitted to generations next.Meet the speakersBahar Baser is Professor in Politics and International Relations at Durham University. Bahar is an expert in the area of diaspora studies, peacebuilding and conflict transformation, with a regional focus on the Middle East. She has conducted extensive research on diaspora engagement in peace processes, post-conflict reconstruction and state-building in the Global South. Duygu Atlas is part of the research team of the 'Bridging Identities' project. She is a historian and documentary maker and completed her doctoral studies at Tel Aviv University's School of History in 2019, with her dissertation titled 'Turkey’s Jewish Minority between Turkey and Israel from 1948 to the 1990s: Israel’s Impact on a Diaspora Community and its Identity Formation'.Mesut Alp is part of the research team of the 'Bridging Identities' project. He is a photographer and documentary maker, and is also a graduate of Ege University's Department of Near Eastern Archaeology. Moayed Assaf is part of the research team of the 'Bridging Identities' project. He is a Kurdish academic and photographer. https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2024/bridging-identities-cultural-odyssey-kurdistani-jews
This event brought together academics and healthcare professionals to shed light on the healthcare crisis in Sudan.With more than 70% of Sudan’s healthcare facilities currently non-functional according to the International Rescue Committee, speakers will discuss the challenges of delivering care during this increasingly protracted conflict, with insights from research and experience. The event will provide an opportunity to share reflections about what political and humanitarian responses, at local and international levels, may be helpful.Meet the speakersIbrahim Bani is Associate Professor Adjunct at the Yale School of Public Health. Bani is a public health physician by training with over 20 years of experience in International Public Health. Eva Khair is a British-Sudanese medical doctor, global and humanitarian health consultant as well as a political and parliamentary advisor on Sudan.Majdi Osman is a doctor and scientist at the University of Cambridge and the Wellcome Sanger Institute. He founded Nubia Health in Wadi Halfa, Sudan building community health worker programs and primary health care centres in the Northern State.Nahid Toubia is a researcher, practitioner and activist in the field of sexual & reproductive health and rights.
This event was a conversation around the special issue 'The Academic Question of Palestine' published by the journal Middle East Critique. This issue was guest-edited by Walaa Alqaisiya and Nicola Perugini.Drawing on the various contributions of the special issue, speakers discussed the sense of intellectual and political emergency that has triggered the need for this project—the emergency produced by thousands of instances of repression against scholarship, scholars, and students working on the question of Palestine across the world. Bringing together students and scholars, this event engaged with the epistemic ramifications of the question of Palestine, especially its theoretical and political relevance to freedom of speech, student mobilisation and academic boycott.Meet the speakers:Walaa Alqaisiya is a Marie Curie Global Fellow working across Ca' Foscari University of Venice, Columbia University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. Walaa is author of Decolonial Queering in Palestine (Routledge), which examines queer politics and aesthetics from a Palestinian native positionality. Nicola Perugini is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses mainly on the politics of international law, human rights, and violence. Lara Sheehi is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar. Lara’s work takes up decolonial and anti-oppressive approaches to psychoanalysis, with a focus on liberation struggles in the Global South. Anna Younes is a German Palestinian scholar. Her focus rests on what she has coined the "war on antisemitism" in her 2015 PhD dissertation, a counterinsurgency war following in the footsteps of a post-WWII new world order, framed by tactics used in the War on Drugs and most prominently the War on Terror.
This event was the launch of 'Making Sense of the Arab State' edited by Steven Heydemann & Marc Lynch, and published by University of Michigan Press.No region in the world has been more hostile to democracy, more dominated by military and security institutions, or weaker on economic development and inclusive governance than the Middle East. Why have Arab states been so oppressively strong in some areas but so devastatingly weak in others? How do those patterns affect politics, economics, and society across the region? The state stands at the centre of the analysis of politics in the Middle East, but has rarely been the primary focus of systematic theoretical analysis.'Making Sense of the Arab State' brings together top scholars from diverse theoretical orientations to address some of the most critically important questions facing the region today. The authors grapple with enduring questions such as the uneven development of state capacity, the failures of developmentalism and governance, the centrality of regime security and survival concerns, the excesses of surveillance and control, and the increasing personalisation of power. Meet the speakersLisa Anderson is Special Lecturer and James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations Emerita at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs. Anderson’s scholarly research has included work on state formation in the Middle East and North Africa; on regime change and democratisation in developing countries; and on social science, academic research and public policy both in the United States and around the world. Steven Heydemann is Ketcham Chair in Middle East Studies, Professor of Government, and Director of the Middle East Studies Program at Smith College. Heydemann is a political scientist who specializes in the comparative politics and the political economy of the Middle East. His interests include authoritarian governance, economic development, social policy, political and economic reform, and civil society.Salwa Ismail is a Professor of Politics, with a focus on the Middle East, at SOAS University of London. She is a member of the London Middle East Institute and the Center for Palestine Studies. She has authored multiple books, including 'The Rule of Violence: Subjectivity, Memory and Government in Syria' (2018); 'Political Life in Cairo’s New Quarters: Encountering the Everyday State' (2006) and 'Rethinking Islamist Politics: Culture, the State and Islamism' (2003).Marc Lynch is Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University Elliott School of International Affairs; Director of the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS); and Director of M.A. Middle East Studies. His recent books include 'The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research After the Arab Uprisings' (edited with Sean Yom and Jillian Schwedler) and 'The New Arab Wars: Anarchy and Uprising in the Middle East'.This event will be chaired by Toby Dodge.Toby Dodge is a Professor in the Department of International Relations, LSE. He is also Kuwait Professor and Director of the Kuwait Programme, Middle East Centre. Toby's research concentrates on the evolution of the post-colonial state in the international system. The main focus of this work on the developing world is the state in the Middle East, specifically Iraq.
This event, organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Department of International Relations, LSE was a discussion around the book 'How Sanctions Work: Iran and the Impact of Economic Warfare' by Narges Bajoghli, Vali Nasr, Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Ali Vaez published by Stanford University Press.Sanctions have enormous consequences. Especially when imposed by a country with the economic influence of the United States, sanctions induce clear shockwaves in both the economy and political culture of the targeted state, and in the everyday lives of citizens. But do economic sanctions induce the behavioural changes intended? Do sanctions work in the way they should?Meet the speakersNarges Bajoghli is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the Johns Hopkins-SAIS, is an award-winning anthropologist, scholar, and filmmaker.Vali Nasr is the Majid Khadduri Professor of International Affairs and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins-SAIS, and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s South Asia Center. Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. She was previously the Programme’s deputy director and senior research fellow, and led project work on Iran and Gulf Arab dynamics. Steffen Hertog is Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. He was previously Kuwait Professor at Sciences Po in Paris, lecturer in Middle East political economy at Durham University and a post-doc at Princeton University.
In this talk, Dr Olivia Mason traced the history of Jordan's nature reserves in the British archives, exploring how nature reserves bring global and situated resource narratives into conversation, how they continue imperial spatial imaginations after periods of administrative colonialism, and the connections between conservation agendas and imperial geopolitical alliances.Meet the speakersOlivia Mason is a Lecturer in the school of Geography, Politics, and Sociology at Newcastle University. Her work sits across cultural, environmental, and political geography, and is broadly centred on mobility politics and resource colonialism, and to date has mostly been focused on Jordan. She is currently PI of a research project entitled 'Cultural politics of nature reserves: resource tensions, (post)colonial state making, and Bedouin in Jordan' that explores relationships between Bedouin, environmental changes, and nature conservation.Frederick Wojnarowski is a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, LSE. Fred is interested in the political and economic anthropology and history of the Middle East, especially Jordan, as well as broader questions of social change and socio-political categorisation. His research at the LSE examines the intersection of discourses of water scarcity, environmental justice and corruption in rural Jordan.Michael Mason is Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment, LSE and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. This research addresses both global environmental politics and regional environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East.
With Israel’s assault on Lebanon increasing and its war on Gaza continuing without a diplomatic resolution in sight, the Israeli government is involved in a multi-front conflict across the Middle East. This panel discussion brought together academics and political analysts to discuss the growing regional ramifications of the conflict. How have regional and international responses to the latest Israeli assault on Gaza since October 7 2023 been different to those in the past? What is the likely future trajectory of the conflict in the region; with Hezbollah in Lebanon, the militias groups in Iraq and Iran? What will be the historical consequences of such an extended, multi-state conflict?Meet the Speakers:Nicola Pratt is Professor of the International Politics of the Middle East at the University of Warwick. She teaches and researches on the international politics of the Middle East, with a particular interest in feminist, queer and decolonial approaches and a focus on ‘politics from below.’ Mohammad Ali Shabani is the Editor of Amwaj.media, a platform focusing on Iran, Iraq and the Arabian Peninsula countries.Yezid Sayigh is a senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he works on the comparative political and economic roles of Arab armed forces, the impact of war on states and societies, and the politics of authoritarian resurgence. https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2024/israel-gaza-probability-broader-war
This event was a student careers panel, providing an opportunity to hear insights from panellists covering diverse fields of academia and research, journalism and consultancy in/around the Middle East.Meet the speakersRichard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Since 2001 he has worked for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen and regionally, and for the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan and the UN political mission in Yemen. He is the author of Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2011/2015).Nada Bashir is an award-winning International Correspondent based at CNN’s London bureau. From reporting on the war in Gaza, to devastating natural disasters, Bashir has delivered distinctive coverage of some of the most consequential stories impacting our world, with a particular focus on the Middle East and Europe. Alexandra Gomes is a Research Fellow responsible for coordinating spatial analysis across a range of projects at LSE Cities. Committed to shaping the future of cities through innovative research and education, her focus spans socio-spatial comparative analysis, urban policy, inequalities, health, sustainable mobility, public space, urban sensescapes, and visual communication. Mina Toksoz is an International Economist having worked at the Economist Intelligence Unit variously as Editorial Director of the Middle East, Europe, and the Country Risk Service. She was Senior Equity Strategist EMEA at AbnAmro, Senior Manager of Country Risk at Standard Bank and later Lloyds’ Bank.Toksoz is author of The Economist Guide to Country Risk published by Profile Books in 2014, and co-author of Industrial Policy in Turkey, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2023.This event was chaired by Professor Michael Mason, LSE Middle East Centre.Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty
In this lecture, Professor Amnon Aran will explore the interplay between domestic politics and strategy in Israeli foreign policy, from the end of the Cold War to the 2023-24 Israel-Hamas war. Reflecting upon this tumultuous period in Israel’s history, he shall examine key events and foreign policies shaping this era. Meet the speakerAmnon Aran is a Visiting Professor at the LSE Middle East Centre and Professor of International Relations at City, University of London, where he served as Head of the Department of International Politics (2020-2023). His research interests lie in the International Relations of the Middle East and Foreign Policy Analysis. His publications include three monographs, 'Israel's Foreign Policy towards the PLO: The Impact of Globalization' (Sussex Academic Press, 2009); 'Foreign Policy Analysis: New Approaches' (Routledge, 2016), with Chris Alden; and 'Israeli Foreign Policy since the End of the Cold War' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).
This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was the launch of Mustafa Kemal Topal's latest book 'Women Fighters in the Kurdish National Movement: Transforming Gender Politics and the PKK' published by I.B. Tauris.This book examines how the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has become a platform for shifts in gender politics through its women fighters. Based on fieldwork undertaken in Iraq, Syria and Europe - including in-depth interviews and participant observation within women's camps - the book examines Kurdish women fighters' motivations to join the PKK, as well as their personal life stories and views on gender, patriarchy, and ethnic minority experiences.This is the largest ethnographic study on the PKK to date and the book argues that in addition to seeking their nation's struggle for survival and a democratic society, Kurdish women fighters are driven by the prospect of improving conditions for themselves and for women across the entire region.Meet the speakerMustafa Kemal Topal is Assistant Professor at the Roskilde University in Denmark, where he also received his PhD. He is a fellow at the Bergen University in Norway, having been awarded the Independent Research Fund Denmark International’s Postdoctoral Grant for his new project ‘Kurdish Women’s Democratic Experiment in Post-Conflict Northern Syria’.This event was moderated by Robert Lowe.Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Center and Co-Editor of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series published by I.B. Tauris. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria.
This event was a launch of Professor Christopher Phillips' latest book 'Battleground: 10 Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East' published by Yale University Press.The Middle East is in crisis. The shocking events of the war in Gaza have rocked the entire region. More than a decade ago, the Arab Spring had raised hopes of a new beginning but instead ushered in a series of civil wars, coups, and even harsher autocracies. Tensions were exacerbated by the meddling of outsiders, as regional and global powers sought to further their interests. The United States, for so long the dominant actor, had stepped back, leaving a vacuum behind it to be fought over.Christopher Phillips explores geopolitical rivalries in the region, and the major external powers vying for influence: Russia, China, the EU, and the US. Moving through ten key flashpoints, from Syria to Palestine, Phillips argues that the United States’ overextension after the Cold War, and retreat in the 2010s, has imbalanced the region. Today, the Middle East remains blighted by conflicts of unprecedented violence and a post-American scramble for power – leaving its fate in the balance.Meet the speakersChristopher Phillips is Professor in International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. Phillips joined the School in January 2012, having previously worked as deputy editor for Syria and Jordan at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He is currently an associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, working primarily on the Syria conflict and its impact on neighbouring states and the wider Middle East. He is co-curator of ‘Syria: story of a conflict’ a public exhibition at the Imperial War Museum and the Imperial War Museum North. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in 2014 & 2015. Chris lived in Syria for two years, in Aleppo, Damascus and Latakia, and much of his research focuses on that country. Phillips is also author of The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East published by Yale University Press in 2016.Faisal Al Yafai is International Editor at New Lines Magazine. He is a journalist, playwright, and partner at Hildebrand Nord. He was previously an investigative journalist for The Guardian in London and a documentary journalist for the BBC, and has reported from across the Middle East, from Eastern Europe, Russia and Indonesia.This event was moderated by Rim Turkmani.Rim Turkmani is a Senior Research Fellow in LSE IDEAS and the Research Director for Conflict Research Programme work in Syria. Rim is also the Principal Investigator of the Legitimacy and Civicness in the Arab World research project at the LSE Middle East Centre. Rim's research focuses on legitimate governance in the Middle East with an emphasis on constitutional legitimacy and local conflict and peace drivers.
How did the radio, a major technological development in the history of sound and music, change the social, cultural and political landscape of the region? In this last episode of the season, we speak to audio curator Hazem Jamjoum, and Elias Anastas and Saeed Abu Jaber, two of the co-founders of the Palestinian radio station Radio Al Hara. We find out more about the history of the radio in the region and also it's present – specifically looking at how this new technology was used by imperialists, technocrats, intellectuals and liberation groups to broadcast and connect groups. Through Radio Al Hara's activity, we learn how radio works in similar ways to this day. Hazem Jamjoum is an audio curator and researcher with an interest in history of audio and music recording in the Arab world Elias Anastas is a co-founder of Radio Al Hara. He is an architect based in Bethlehem, Palestine and runs an architectural studio with his brother Yousef called AAU ANASTAS. They also run Wonder Cabinet, a not-for-profit cultural platform. Saeed Abu Jaber is one of the founders of radio al hara. He is a graphic designer and runs a studio called Turbo in Amman, Jordan.https://www.radioalhara.net/
As of April 2024, according to UN experts, over 80% of schools have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli assault on Gaza, with 5479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors killed and many thousands injured. Every university in Gaza is partially or wholly destroyed, whether by bombing or demolition. Amidst the systematic destruction of lives, communities and environments what possibility, if any, is left for education? What does learning mean under conditions of 'scholasticide'? Meet the speakersAhmed Abu Shaban is the Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine at Al-Azhar University — Gaza and an Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics. Abu Shaban spent two years as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin. In addition to his academic experience, Abu Shaban has conducted several consultancy studies on the socioeconomic assessment of national water and environmental infrastructure programs. He has extensive research and consultancy experience in analysing economic development in the Gaza Strip and designing intervention strategies for humanitarian, early recovery, and development programs.Esmat Elhalaby is an Assistant Professor of Transnational History at the University of Toronto. He works principally on the intellectual history of West and South Asia, particularly colonial and anti-colonial thought. His writing has appeared in Modern Intellectual History, American Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Boston Review, The Baffler and elsewhere.
This webinar was a launch of 'Industrial Policy in Turkey: Rise, Retreat and Return' by William Hale, Mustafa Kutlay and Mina Toksoz published by Edinburgh University Press.At a time when many advanced and emerging economies are adopting more active industrial policies, this book provides an in-depth historical–empirical account of industrial policy in Turkey – its rise, retreat and return.This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach and covers the role of the state in Turkey’s initial industrialisation to the current period of restructuring and potential technological upgrading of its manufacturing base. The analysis traces how industrial policy has been shaped by state capacity, the waves of reforms following economic crises, the dearth of long-term finance for industrialisation and, more recently, the need to address issues such as low-tech industrial structure and pre-mature de-industrialisation.The book aims to answer questions of what worked and what went wrong with previous policies. It asks how current policies could be shaped to overcome the problems of cronyism and corruption, and also achieve new objectives of technological upgrading and socio-environmental sustainability.William Hale is an Emeritus Professor at SOAS, having retired as Professor of Politics with Special Reference to Turkey in 2006. His main interests are the modern politics and international relations of Turkey.Mustafa Kutlay is a senior lecturer in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. His current research focuses on the comparative politics and political economy of developing countries (with particular reference to Turkey, Turkish politics and foreign policy), institutions and development in the global South, and political risk analysis.Mina Toksoz is an International Economist having worked at the Economist Intelligence Unit variously as Editorial Director of the Middle East, Europe, and the Country Risk Service.Arda Bilgen is a Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre, where he works on the PeaceRep project ‘Surface Water Changes in the Euphrates-Tigris Basin since 1984 and their Governance Implications for Iraq’, led by Dr Michael Mason. His work mainly focuses on water politics, transboundary water resources management, and hydraulic infrastructure development.
This episode explores the link between technology, warfare and nationalism. Turkey and Israel are two countries in the region who have developed their technological capabilities for both domestic and international conflict. We speak to two researchers who have been tracing the use of military technologies and the effect they have had on a sense of nationalism amongst their populations. Digdem Solaytin Colella speaks to the regime-boosting effects of drone production in Turkey whilst Sophia Goodfriend provides a more granular analysis of how military technology has transformed a new generation of Israeli soldiers’ views of Palestinians and Israeli occupation. Digdem is Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Aberdeen. Her research concentrates on the politics of corruption, mechanisms of state capture and regime survival, autocratic bureaucracies & illiberal governance, and Southeast European and Turkish politics. Sophia is a PhD candidate at Duke University’s Department of Cultural Anthropology and Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellow. Her academic work examines the ethics and impact of new surveillance technologies in Israel and Palestine.
What does the era of ‘big data’ mean for development technologies in MENA? How can data be used for good, to ensure projects working with vulnerable communities such as informal workers and women are seen and supported? What kind of repercussions does poor data collection have on emerging technologies? How can data-driven research and technology improve prospects for the next generation in the region seeking work, and what does it mean for the future of labour in the region?These are some of the questions we posed to Nagla Rizk, Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo in episode 8.Nagla is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the American University in Cairo’s School of Business. Nagla’s area of research, teaching and advocacy is the economics of knowledge, technology and development, with focus on governance of responsible data and Artificial Intelligence, fair work in the platform economy, innovation, gender and inclusion in Egypt, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Writer and art critic, Rahel Aima, who grew up and currently lives in Dubai, talks to us about living in the Gulf, a region rapidly developing itself as the place to be for smart cities and high-tech living. Rahel explores a concept she has been thinking about for some time, the Khaleeji Ideology, which meets at the intersection of technology, economy, the environment and nation building, as a way of understanding developments in the contemporary Gulf. This episode also features comment from Michael Mason, Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Professor of Environmental Geography at LSE, who explores the rise of “progressive” urban development projects in the Gulf, and whether technology can be the solution to pressing environmental challenges of our time. Rahel Aima is a writer, critic, and editor from Dubai. She writes about art, technology and the Gulf. Her work has been published in Artforum, Artnews, ArtReview, The Atlantic, Bookforum, frieze, Mousse and Vogue Arabia, amongst others. Read Rahel’s ‘The Khaleeji Ideology’ here: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/horizons/498319/the-khaleeji-ideology/.
This event, co-organised with LSE IDEAS, was the launch of the special issue ‘Arab Constitutional Responses to the Revolutions and Transformations in the Region’ published in the Journal of Constitutional Law in the Middle East and North Africa. The special issue is the result of a two year collaboration between the Carnegie Corporation, the Arab Association of Constitutional Law, and LSE.In the issue, 22 Arab scholars and experts have worked together to investigate the constitutional responses to the Arab Spring in ten different Arab countries including Bahrain, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and many more. The case studies examined in this special issue explore both the opportunities that were raised by the prospect of a constitutional change in the wake of the Arab Spring, as well as the many challenges they faced.Meet the SpeakersRim Turkmani is a Senior Policy Fellow at the LSE, based at the LSE Middle East Centre and LSE IDEAS. She is the Principal Investigator of the 'Legitimacy and Civicness in the Arab World' research project. Her research focuses on legitimate governance in the Middle East with an emphasis on constitutional legitimacy and local conflict and peace drivers.Nathan J. Brown is a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Among his works are The Rule of Law in the Arab World and Constitutions in a Non Constitutional World. Tamara El Khoury is the Executive Director of the Arab Association of Constitutional Law, Editor of the Journal of Constitutional Law in the Middle East and North Africa, and a constitutional expert at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law. She has been involved in constitutional and institutional reform processes in Libya, Jordan, Mali, Somalia, and South Sudan, working extensively with both institutional actors and civil society organizations. Tamara teaches Constitutional Law at IE University in Madrid.Azza Kamel Maghur is a Libyan lawyer, human rights activist, and constitutional law expert. Azza is known for defending political prisoners, advocating for human rights , including women’s rights, NGOs, and openly calling for a constitution in Libya. She spearheaded a legal committee to draft the law concerning NGOs and worked on further legislations, including the election law of 2012. Azza has published numerous legal articles in both Arabic and English.
Nearly ten years since the onset of the crisis in Yemen this discussion provided an in-depth assessment of the conflict over the past decade. Panellists examined the local origins of the war, the humanitarian catastrophe that has ensued, and the challenges for sustainable development given the prolonged violence. Regional dynamics fueling the crisis were also analysed, including factors related to the war in Gaza. With the March 2024 milestone approaching, speakers assessed stalled peace efforts and policy options for international stakeholders moving forward.Ahmed Al Khameri is the Team Leader for the FCDO-funded programme, The Yemen Support Fund at Chemonics UK. Most recently, he was the governance advisor under the DFID Yemen team leading DFID’s stabilization and governance efforts. Marwa Baabbad is Director of the Yemen Policy Centre. She is a researcher and development consultant with over ten years of experience working in the fields of community engagement, gender, peace and security, and youth political inclusion. Andreas Krieg is Associate Professor at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London and a Fellow at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies. Andreas is the Director of MENA analytica – a political risk firm – that works on Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Greg Shapland is an independent researcher, writer and consultant on politics, security, resources and environment (including water) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Greg is also a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. From 1979 until 2015, he served in the MENA Research Group in the FCO.
How can art complicate claims of progress, innovation and the use of rapidly developing emerging technologies in MENA? In this episode, Cima Chehab speaks to visual artist Nadim Choufi about how he incorporates technology into his artwork both as subject matter and as medium.In the conversation, they discuss Nadim’s own artistic practice, his use of “lecture performances” and the question of whether life is truly enhanced by progress and technology, which is one of the main questions that underpins his work. Nadim also explores emerging art in the Middle East and how technology has transformed a new generation of artists – from digital illustrations to meme accounts.Nadim is a visual artist living in Beirut. He primarily focuses on the material histories and futures of innovation and desire, their social and political driving forces, and the visual and literary practices that surround them. He is a 2024 resident at the Jan van Eyck Academy. Currently he is the curator of the film programme of the 2024 festival edition of transmediale and a researcher at Haven For Artists. Previously he was co-Programs Director at Beirut Art Center.https://nadimchoufi.com/
Majd Al-Shihabi of 'Palestine Open Maps' and Sana Yazigi of the 'Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution' talk to us about how they have centered their archiving processes around maps, and what digital archiving can do for Palestinian and Syrian community-building.This episode also features comment from Dr Sara Salem and Dr Mai Taha of LSE, who explore the importance of creative archiving through their project 'Archive Stories'.Note: this episode was recorded before October 7, 2023.Majd Al-Shihabi is a technologist turned urban planner, turned technologisturbanplanner. Majd is co-founder of Palestine Open Maps, a platform for searching, navigating, downloading and digitizing historical maps of Palestine. Majd was the inaugural Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellow which enabled him to start Palestine Open Maps.https://palopenmaps.org/enSana Yazigi is a graphic designer and cultural activist. She is the founder of Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution, a project that documents all types of creative expressions produced since the Syrian Revolution in 2011 until the present day. She is also the founder of The Cultural Diary, Syria's first bilingual monthly cultural agenda (2007-2012).https://creativememory.org/https://archive-stories.com/
This event was the launch Zoe Hurley's new book 'Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition'.Evaluating the cases of multiple influencers, from local to transnational content creators, Hurley reveals how residents, non-citizens and migrant workers survive as influencers in the city of ‘likes.’ Providing de-Westernising perspectives of Dubai’s social media influencing industry within the broader context of global platform capitalism, the book offers an important contribution to the field of social media through illustrating visible economies in a city circuited by social media influencing.Zoe Hurley is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Assistant Professor in the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Her research focuses on postdigital cultures, feminist-semiotics and social media in the Arabian Gulf. She has published articles in leading academic journals, including Feminist Media Studies, Visual Communication, New Media + Society, Social Media & Society, Information Communication & Society, Postdigital Science and Education. Her monograph, 'Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition', advances decolonial semiotic theorising.Sarah Hopkyns is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, UK. She has previously worked in higher education in the United Arab Emirates, Canada, and Japan. Her research interests include world Englishes, language and identity, language policy, translingual practice, linguistic ethnography, linguistic landscapes and English-medium instruction (EMI).Polly Withers is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre, where she leads the project “Neoliberal Visions: Gendering Consumer Culture and its Resistances in the Levant”. Polly’s interdisciplinary work questions and explores how gender, sexuality, race, and class intersect in popular culture and commercial media in the global south.
This event was co-organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.This panel explored the crisis in Sudan through the prism of ‘disconnection’, exploring the various disconnects and discordances that have formed between Sudanese popular groups, state institutions and international institutions. Stopping the violence and addressing Sudan’s trauma will ultimately require domestic and international actors to align formal policy-making processes with popular realities on the ground. Speakers explored this notion of disconnection and consider how the sudden displacement of the Sudanese elite from its capital city might re-orient Sudanese politics in future. The panel finally discussed how such disconnections might be repaired.Mai Hassan is Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her work examines topics that span across authoritarian regimes, bureaucracy and public administration, and contentious politics.Kholood Khair is a Sudanese political analyst and the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a "think-and-do" tank based in Khartoum. She is also a radio broadcaster, hosting and co-producing a weekly radio program, Spotlight 249, that is Sudan's first English-language political discussion and debate show aimed at Sudanese youth.Laura Mann is Associate Professor in International Development in the Department of International Development, LSE and a research affiliate of the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. Laura is a sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda).
Iraq’s engagement with fintech is new but rapidly developing, amidst a contemporary economic history that has struggled with foreign intervention and internal corruption, while Iranians have been engaging with a form of fintech - alternative digital currencies - for some time, to evade and work around sanctions and a crippled economy.In this episode we speak to Ali Al-Hilli and Shayan Eskandari, who are working at the intersection of technology and finance, to improve the livelihoods and prosperity in their home countries.Ali Al-Hilli is a tech entrepeneur from Iraq with over 14 years of experience in business development, telecommunications, and fintech. He is currently Marketing and Communications Director at Miswag, the largest and oldest homegrown e-commerce startup in Iraq.Shayan Eskandari is a PhD candidate at Concordia University. Originally from Iran, he has a background in blockchain engineering. Shayan is actively involved in creating and supporting open-source projects related to cryptocurrencies. He has been working on nonprofit educational content in Farsi on the topic of blockchain and cryptocurrencies for over a decade.Find out more about their work here:https://www.linkedin.com/in/alihilli?originalSubdomain=johttps://shayan.es/
This event was the launch Eylaf Bader Eddin's new book 'Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution' published by De Gruyter Press.For activists, researchers, and journalists, the Syrian Revolution was primarily a revolution in language; a break with the linguistic oppression and rigidity of old regimes. This break was accompanied by the emergence of new languages, which made it possible to inform, tell, and translate ongoing events and transformations. This language of the revolution was carried out into the world by competing voices from Syria, by local and foreign researchers, activists, and journalists.While the Arab revolutions have triggered extensive social and political changes, the far-reaching consequences of their cultural and discursive changes have yet to be adequately considered. Bader Eddin's book analyses the various translations of the language of the Syrian Revolution (2011–2012) from Arabic to English. By doing so, exploring the discursive and non-discursive dimensions of the revolution as another act of translation, tracing the language of the banners, slogans, graffiti, songs, and their representation in English.This event will launch Eylaf Bader Eddin's new book Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution published by De Gruyter Press.For activists, researchers, and journalists, the Syrian Revolution was primarily a revolution in language; a break with the linguistic oppression and rigidity of old regimes. This break was accompanied by the emergence of new languages, which made it possible to inform, tell, and translate ongoing events and transformations. This language of the revolution was carried out into the world by competing voices from Syria, by local and foreign researchers, activists, and journalists.While the Arab revolutions have triggered extensive social and political changes, the far-reaching consequences of their cultural and discursive changes have yet to be adequately considered. Bader Eddin's book analyses the various translations of the language of the Syrian Revolution (2011–2012) from Arabic to English. By doing so, exploring the discursive and non-discursive dimensions of the revolution as another act of translation, tracing the language of the banners, slogans, graffiti, songs, and their representation in English.Meet the speakersEylaf Bader Eddin is a Research Fellow on the project 'The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics' (SYRASP) and a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien. Bader Eddin is also a Researcher in the Department of Arabic Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies, Qatar. His current post-doc research explores Syrian prison musical performances. He has studied Arabic, English and comparative literature in Aix-en-Provence, Beirut, Damascus, Marburg and Paris. Bader Eddin's research has been published in Arabic, English and French, including the Arabic book, ‘When They Cried ‘Forever’: The Language of the Syrian Revolution in 2018’, for which he received the Sadiq Jalal al-Azm Award by Etijahat. Nesrin Alrefaai is a Visiting Fellow and Arabic Content Editor at the LSE Middle East Centre. She holds a Doctorate degree in Drama and Theatre Education from the University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests are language, arts, and politics in the Middle East with a special focus on Syria.
What kind of advancements have we seen in artificial intelligence in the Middle East and North Africa in the contemporary period, how has this technology been used for good and where has it maintained structures of inequality?In this talk by Nagla Rizk, Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo, the potential opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence were explored, with an emphasis on the future of work and questions of knowledge production in relation to development.This webinar was also the launch of the latest season of the LSE Middle East Centre's podcast series 'Instant Coffee'. This latest season will explore technology and its developments in the region, with the first episode being released on Tuesday 30 January.For further details about this event: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2024/artificial-intelligence-development-nagla-rizk
Smartphones, food-only debit cards, biometric data checks at border crossings, these are some of the ways refugees and migrants interact with technology in their daily lives both in the region and the diaspora.This episode unpacks the benefits, ambivalences and concerns surrounding these technologies. Our guests, Dr Reem Talhouk and Dr Yener Bayramoğlu discuss refugee-centered design technologies for humanitarian aid as well as smartphone usage amongst refugees and migrants and how it has given them control over their own lives and narratives as they cross borders. Reem Talhouk is an Assistant Professor in Design and Global Develpment at Northumbria University where she co-leads the Design Feminisms Research Group. Reem also leads the Global Development Futures Hub. Her work sits within design, and human and computer interaction. Reem works with communities considered to be ‘on the margins’ to design technologies and counter-narratives with a focus on humanitarianism, activism and social movements. Yener Bayramoglu is Assistant Professor in Digital Media at York University. His current research explores the role of digital media in everyday practices of belonging. Yener is particularly interested in the ambivalent meaning and function of digital media for social groups whose lives are marginalised and shaped by intersectional inequalities. Yener has previously explored how digital media technologies turn into self-empowering tools for migrants, refugees and LGBTIQ+ people.
The Abbasid and British Empires are the nexus through which our two guests, Dr Ahmed Ragab and Dr Katayoun Shafiee explore technology, knowledge production and power. This episode charts medieval paper production and Abbasid-era hospitals to the "discovery" of oil by foreign entrepreneurs in southern Iran, exploring the different ways technological knowledge production developed across empire.Ahmed Ragab is Associate Professor of the History of Medicine and the Chair of the Medicine, Science and Humanities Programme at Johns Hopkins University. Ahmed works primarily on the history of medieval and early modern medicine in the islamic world and questions of medicine in colonial and post colonial contexts.Katayoun Shafiee is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. Katayoun focuses on modern Middle Eastern history and politics, and she teaches on empire and energy.
What kinds of obstacles are people in MENA facing with regards to access to technological opportunity and concerns around digital rights abuses? How are they tied to global challenges? Dr Nakeema Stefflbauer, tech executive, investor and digital rights advocate shares her thinking.This episode also features comment from Kassem Mnejja and Marwa Fatafta of Access Now, a digital rights advocacy group. They discuss these issues in relation to Tunisia, Sudan and Palestine.Find out more about Nakeema here: https://www.nakeema.net/Find out more about Access Now here: https://www.accessnow.org/
This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was the launch of 'Voices That Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey' by Marlene Schäfers, published by the University of Chicago Press.In Turkey, recent decades have seen Kurdish voices gain increasing moral and political value as metaphors of representation and resistance. Women’s voices, in particular, are understood as a means to withstand patriarchal restrictions and political oppression. By tracing the transformations in how Kurdish women relate to and employ their voices as a result of these shifts, Schäfers illustrates how contemporary politics foster not only new hopes and desires but also create novel vulnerabilities as they valorize, elicit, and discipline voice in the name of empowerment and liberation.Marlene Schäfers is Assistant Professor in Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. Schäfers' research focuses on the impact of state violence on intimate and gendered lives, the politics of death and the afterlife, and the intersections of affect and politics. She specializes in the anthropology of the Kurdish regions and modern Turkey. Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. He is Co-Convenor of the Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, as well as Co-Editor of the Kurdish Studies Series, published by I.B. Tauris. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria.
This event launched 'Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region' edited by Hamza Hamouchene and Katie Sandwell, published by Pluto Press.The Arab region is a focus of world politics, with authoritarian regimes, significant fossil fuel reserves and histories of colonialism and imperialism. It is also the site of potentially immense green energy resources.The writers in this collection explore a region ripe for energy transition, but held back by resource-grabbing and (neo)colonial agendas. They show the importance of fighting for a just energy transition and climate justice - exposing policies and practices that protect global and local political elites, multinational corporations and military regimes.Covering a wide range of countries from Morocco, Western Sahara, Algeria and Tunisia to Egypt, Sudan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Palestine, this book challenges Eurocentrism and highlights instead a class-conscious approach to climate justice that is necessary for our survival.Meet the speakersHamza Hamouchene is Programme Coordinator for North Africa at the Transnational Institute (TNI). He is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), and Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA). He is the author/editor of two books: 'The Struggle for Energy Democracy in the Maghreb' (2017) and 'The Coming Revolution to North Africa: The Struggle for Climate Justice' (2015). Katie Sandwell is Programme Coordinator at the Transnational Institute (TNI). She coordinates and supports work at TNI on a range of issues related to climate, environmental and agrarian justice; public alternatives; energy democracy; land and territories; fair trade medicinal plants; agroecology and food sovereignty.Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. This research addresses both global environmental politics and regional environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East.
This event was the launch of 'Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22' by Abdelrahman Ayyash, Amr ElAfifi, and Noha Ezzat published by Century International.In this original Century International book, the authors argue that the Brotherhood is experiencing multiple crises—of identity, legitimacy, and membership—which accelerated after Egypt’s military coup in July 2013. Through myriad stories and voices from within a fragmenting movement, the authors present a nuanced portrait of a once-formidable grassroots organization.Abdelrahman Ayyash is a fellow at Century International and director of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood working group. He holds an MA in global affairs from Bahcesehir University in Istanbul, Turkey. He translated three books on civil-military relations and the Muslim Brotherhood.Amr ElAfifi is the Research Manager at the Freedom Initiative, a DC-based NGO focused on human rights in the Middle East. His current dissertation research at Syracuse University explores the political psychology of trauma amongst political prisoners.Jeroen Gunning is Visiting Professor at the LSE Middle East Centre and Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and Conflict Studies at King's College London. His research focuses on political contestation in the Middle East, with a specific focus on the interplay between social movements, religion, electoral politics, repression, violence and structural change.
This panel was an opportunity for students to hear about different pathways into Middle East related fields.Meet the speakers:Marwa Baabbad is Director of the Yemen Policy Centre. She is a researcher and development consultant with over ten years of experience working in the fields of community engagement, gender, peace and security, and youth political inclusion. Marwa was Director of the Oxford Research Group (ORG) Strategic Peacebuilding Programme between 2018-2020. There, she led the delivery of a Track-II project that fed into the United Nations-led Yemen peace process.Arda Bilgen is a Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre. His work mainly focuses on water politics, transboundary water resources management, and hydraulic infrastructure development. Arda holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Bonn, an MA in International Affairs/International Security Studies from the George Washington University, and a BA in International Relations from Bilkent University. Before joining LSE, he worked as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Warwick, an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Sussex, and as a Lecturer at Clark University. Jack Sproson is a Member of Guernica 37 Chambers. He specialises in Public/Private International Law, International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, and International Criminal Law. Jack has extensive expertise in humanitarian and legal issues pertaining to conflict- and climate-related insecurity and displacement in Africa and the Middle East, most recently as lead counsel for a major project advocating for the continuation of UN cross-border humanitarian access in Syria. Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. This research addresses both global environmental politics and regional environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East.
This event was the launch of the paper 'A New Diaspora of Saudi Exiles: Challenging Repression from Abroad' by Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed published under the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series.Since the rise of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman in 2017, a new wave of exodus began, that has pushed feminists, young students, secularists, Islamists and others to flee the country in search of safe havens in the US, Europe, Canada and Australia.Based on ethnographic research, this paper traces the diversity of the young cohort of exiles who are currently seeking to counter domestic repression from abroad. Although Saudi Arabia has generated waves of exiles throughout its modern history, Al-Rasheed argues this recent diaspora is different in its diversity, demographic profile and aspirations.Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Fellow of the British Academy. Since joining the Centre, she has been conducting research on mutations among Saudi Islamists after the 2011 Arab uprisings. This research focuses on the new reinterpretations of Islamic texts prevalent among a small minority of Saudi reformers and the activism in the pursuit of democratic governance and civil society. Her latest books are 'Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era' (London: Hurst/OUP, 2018) and 'The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia' (London: Hurst/OUP, 2020).Armine Ishkanian is Professor of Social Policy and the Executive Director of the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE. Armine’s research examines the relationship between civil society, democracy, development, and social transformation. She has examined how civil society organisations and social movements engage in policy processes and transformative politics in a number of countries including Armenia, Egypt, Greece, Russia, Turkey, and the UK.
This event was the launch of the paper 'Art and Activism in Iraqi Kurdistan: Feminist Fault Lines, Body Politics and the Struggle for Space' by Dr Isabel Käser and Houzan Mahmoud. This paper is the outcome of a project run under the LSE Middle East Centre's Academic Collaboration with Arab Universities Programme.Meet the speakers:Isabel Käser is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern. She gained her PhD at SOAS, University of London, and is the author of 'The Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement: Gender, Body Politics and Militant Femininities' (Cambridge University Press, 2021).Houzan Mahmoud is a Kurdish feminist writer, public lecturer, activist and the editor of 'Kurdish Women’s Stories' (Pluto Press, 2021). For over 25 years, she has been an advocate for women’s rights in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan. She holds an MA in Gender Studies from SOAS, and is the co-founder of the Culture Project, a platform dedicated to raising awareness about feminism, art and gender in both Kurdistan and the diaspora.Müjge Küçükkeleş is a teaching fellow at SOAS and a research associate at Global Partners Governance (GPG). She is currently working on her book manuscript entitled 'Governing Iraqi Kurdistan: Self-rule, Political Order and the International'. Her research interests include humanitarianism, development, neoliberalism, sovereignty and political imaginaries beyond the state.Polly Withers is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre, where she leads the project “Neoliberal Visions: Gendering Consumer Culture and its Resistances in the Levant”. Polly’s interdisciplinary work questions and explores how gender, sexuality, race, and class intersect in popular culture and commercial media in the global south.
This event was a discussion around Dr Nora Derbal's latest book 'Charity in Saudi Arabia: Civil Society under Authoritarianism' published by Cambridge University Press.
In this study of everyday charity practices in Jeddah, Nora Derbal employs a 'bottom-up' approach to challenge dominant narratives about state-society relations in Saudi Arabia. Exploring charity organizations in Jeddah, this book both offers an ethnography of associational life and counters Riyadh-centric studies which focus on oil, the royal family, and the religious establishment.
It closely follows those who work on the ground to provide charity to the local poor and needy, documenting their achievements, struggles and daily negotiations. The lens of charity offers rare insights into the religiosity of ordinary Saudis, showing that Islam offers Saudi activists a language, a moral frame, and a worldly guide to confronting inequality. With a view to the many forms of local community activism in Saudi Arabia, this book examines perspectives that are too often ignored or neglected, opening new theoretical debates about civil society and civic activism in the Gulf.
Nora Derbal is a postdoc at the Martin Buber Society of Fellows at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her research interests center on Islamic charity and civil society, knowledge production and Islam, and Gulf-Palestine relations.
Hanaa Almoaibed is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Research Fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. Her research explores the influence of social dynamics on attitudes toward work, education and career choices and youth transitions in the GCC, with a particular emphasis on vocational education in Saudi Arabia.
Steffen Hertog is Associate Professor in Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics. Steffen’s main interest lies in Gulf and Middle East political economy, with a specific focus on the political economy of public sectors, state-business relations and labour markets.
This event was the launch of Jamie Allinson's latest book The Age of Counter-Revolution: States and Revolutions in the Middle East published by Cambridge University Press.The 'Arab Spring' has come to symbolise defeated hopes for democracy and social justice in the Middle East. In this book, Allinson demonstrates how these defeats were far from inevitable. Rather than conceptualising the 'Arab Spring' as a series of failed revolutions, Allinson argues it is better understood as a series of successful counter-revolutions.Placing the fate of the Arab uprisings in a global context, Allinson reveals how counter-revolutions rely on popular support and cross borders to forge international alliances. By connecting the Arab uprisings to the decade of global protest that followed them, Allinson's work demonstrates how new forms of counter-revolution have rendered it near impossible to implement political change without first enacting fundamental social transformation.Jamie Allinson is senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Edinburgh. Jamie's research concerns social theory and the critique of political economy.Ala'a Shehabi is a lecturer in Middle East Politics at the Department of European and International Social and Political Studies at UCL. Shehabi is also a senior research fellow at The Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment.Charles Tripp has been Professor of Politics with reference to the Middle East at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London since 2007.Toby Dodge is a Professor in the Department of International Relations at LSE where he is Deputy Head of the Department (PhD and Research). He is also Kuwait Professor and Director of the Kuwait Programme at the LSE Middle East Centre.
In order to survive in a hostile environment in the Middle East, Israeli decision makers developed a regional foreign policy designed to find ways to approach states, leaders and minorities willing to cooperate with it against mutual regional challenges. Examples include the Periphery Alliance with Iran and Turkey until 1979, cooperation with the Kurds, the Maronites in Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, South Sudan and more. Contacts with these potential partners were mostly covert.The aim of this lecture, which is part of a Podeh's new comprehensive book on Israel’s secret relations with its neighbours during the years 1948-2022 is two-fold: first, to offer a theoretical framework explaining the way Israel conducted its covert diplomacy; and second, to focus on several less-known episodes of such clandestine activity, such as Israel’s ties with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf more broadly.Elie Podeh is the Bamberger and Fuld Professor in the History of the Muslim Peoples in the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He serves as the President of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Association of Israel (MEISAI) and is a board member of Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. His areas of study include Egypt, inter-Arab relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, education and culture in the Middle East, and Israeli foreign policy. He has published and edited twelve books and more than seventy academic articles in English, Hebrew and Arabic. His recent publications include Multiple Alterities: Views of Others in Middle Eastern Textbooks (edited with Samira Alayan, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); The Third Way: Protest and Revolution in the Middle East (Jerusalem: Carmel, 2017) [in Hebrew]; Chances for Peace: Missed Opportunities in the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Austin: University Press of Texas, 2015); and The Politics of National Celebrations in the Arab Middle East (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Professor Martin van Bruinessen delivered a keynote lecture on the history and development of Kurdish Studies as part of a series of activities surrounding the LSE Middle East Centre's inaugural Kurdish Studies Conference on 24-25 April, 2023.The first attempts at institutionalising Kurdish Studies in European academia emerged as a result of the First World War and the British and French mandates in Iraq and Syria when there was a demand for hands-on knowledge of the Kurds. Anthropological studies of Kurdish society then began around the mid-twentieth century, with the emergence of a strong Kurdish national movement from the 1960s onwards stimulating journalist as well as academic interest in Kurdish politics.The growth and mobilization of a Kurdish diaspora, noticeable since the 1990s, has also contributed significantly to the development of Kurdish Studies with political changes in their countries of origin also having a major impact. Professor van Bruinessen assessed the trajectory and most significant developments of Kurdish Studies from its inception to present day.Martin van Bruinessen is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Studies of Modern Muslim Societies at Utrecht University. He is an anthropologist with a strong interest in politics, history and philology, and much of his work straddles the boundaries between these disciplines. He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Kurdistan (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Syria) as well as Indonesia and Southeast Asia generally and has taught on subjects ranging from Ottoman history and sociology of religion to theories of nationalism. He carried out his first field research among the Kurds during two years in the mid-1970s when access was relatively easy and has frequently revisited the region during the following decades. Martin has published extensively on various aspects of Kurdish society, culture and history. His work was translated into Turkish, Persian, Arabic and Kurdish and is easily available in the countries concerned. Since his formal retirement in 2011, he held visiting professorships in Indonesia and Singapore as well as Turkey. His publications include Agha, Shaikh and State: The Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan (London, 1992); Evliya Çelebi in Diyarbekir (with H. Boeschoten, Leiden, 1988), Mullas, Sufis and heretics: the role of religion in Kurdish society (Istanbul, 2000), Kurdish ethno-nationalism versus nation-building states (Istanbul, 2000), the edited volumes Islam und Politik in der Türkei (with J. Blaschke, Berlin, 1985), Islam des Kurdes (with Joyce Blau, Paris, 1998) and more. Most of his numerous published articles can be accessed at his academia.edu page.Zeynep Kaya is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Her main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender in the Middle East. She has recently published a monograph entitled Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism with Cambridge University Press. Zeynep is co-editor of I.B. Tauris-Bloomsbury's Kurdish Studies Series and is co-convenor of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Conference.
Life in Abu Dhabi is centred around cars. Its urban development and open space infrastructure has impacted the walkability of the city, increasing residents' reliance on cars for mobility. This pattern of development is embedded in a social and spatial practice of not only urban life, but also urban governance and planning. This seminar explores some of the dimensions that have impacted and are emerging from a car infrastructure-led expansion in Abu Dhabi. How did historical decisions lead to car-centric development? How has the road network affected the city and its residents? What is the impact of car-centric development?This seminar is part of the Abu Dhabi (Dis)connected exhibition that was on display at the LSE in February-March 2023. Recorded on 10 March 2023.________________________________________________________________Alexandra Gomes is Research Fellow with LSE Cities where she is responsible for coordinating the Centre’s socio-spatial analysis across a range of projects. Her research focuses on urban studies, comparative analysis, urban inequalities, urban health, sustainable mobility and placemaking. Alex is Principal Investigator on the 'Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods' project.Apostolos Kyriazis is Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Abu Dhabi University. His research focus includes Architecture, Urban Design and Urban/Rural Sociology. Apostolos is co-Principal Investigator on the 'Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods' project.Clémence Montagne is Director of Care Design Lab based at the L'École de Design, Nantes Atlantique which leads on abductive research in urbanism and social design. Clémence is a consultant for the 'Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods' project.Peter Schwinger is a transport economist and planning expert and is a consultant for the 'Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods' project.Philipp Rode is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Associate Professorial Lecturer at the School of Public Policy. He is Co-Director of the LSE Executive MSc in Cities and Visiting Professor at University of St Gallen’s Institute for Mobility. Philipp has been leading interdisciplinary programmes in urban development and transport, sustainable urbanism and climate change, and city policy and governance at the LSE since 2003. Across his work, he is interested in multi-dimensional aspects of global urbanisation, sustainability and urban change. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEMiddleEast #AbuDhabiDisconnected
This event opened the exhibition 'Ruptured Domesticity: Mapping Spaces of Refuge in Iraq' by Dr Sana Murrani, hosted at LSE until 12 May 2023. Using photographs, illustrative maps and drawings, Murrani examines the domestic and intimate spaces of refuge created by Iraqis in preparation for, and in response to, wartime and violence. This work is funded by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq.Murrani was joined by Ammar Azzouz and Dena Qaddumi in a broad-ranging discussion on the exhibition and her forthcoming book 'Rupturing architecture: spatial practices of refuge in response to war and violence in Iraq' (Bloomsbury, 2024).Sana Murrani is an Associate Professor in Spatial Practice at the University of Plymouth. She studied architecture at Baghdad University School of Architecture at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Sana completed her PhD in the UK. Sana’s main research falls within the fields of architecture, human geography and urban studies in particular, the imaginative negotiations of spatial practices and social justice. She is the founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network and co-founder of the Justice and Imagination in Global Displacement research collective.Ammar Azzouz is a Research Associate at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and a Lecturer in Heritage Studies, at the School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex.Dena Qaddumi is a Fellow in City Design and Social Science in the Department of Sociology at LSE. Her research spans architectural and urban studies and draws on postcolonial urban theory, political geography, and cultural studies.
What is the relationship between archiving and collective visions for liberation? Where does the practice of archiving fit within contemporary subaltern struggles? This conversation, co-curated between historian Leyla Dakhli, Yasmine Kherfi (LSE Middle East Centre), and Mai Taha (LSE Human Rights), builds on the work of Dakhli, who joined us to reflect on archival projects from the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on those that emerged in the 2000s in Syria, Algeria and Lebanon. By exploring archival traces of imagined futures and the aesthetic forms they assume, Dakhli's work seeks to understand how archiving practices can be understood as gestures of a continued revolt.Leyla Dakhli is a full-time researcher in Modern History at the French Center for National Research (CNRS), and member of the Center of social history of Contemporary Worlds (CHS). Her work deals with the study of Arab intellectuals and social history of the South Mediterranean region, with a particular focus on the history of women and the question of exiled intellectuals and activists.Sara Salem is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, LSE. Her main research interests include political sociology, postcolonial studies, Marxist theory, feminist theory, and global histories of empire and imperialism.Mai Taha is an Assistant Professor in Human Rights at LSE. Previously she was a Lecturer in Law at Goldsmiths, University of London, and an Assistant Professor in International Human Rights Law and Justice at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Mai has written on international law and empire, human rights, labour movements, class and gender relations, and care work and social reproduction.
How does the political and cultural shape the linguistic? How does power seep into terminology? What vocabulary is left for a people facing accumulated traumas caused by authoritarian brutality and imperial interventions recently compounded by natural disasters?This panel focuses on Syria to explore these questions about conducting cultural studies in times of disaster. It brings together the editor of and contributors to the recent special issue in the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication “Keywords in Contemporary Syrian Media, Culture and Politics.” The panellists will address the place of keywords in their scholarly research and engagement.Emma Aubin-Boltanski is a social anthropologist and an Arabist. She is one of the principal investigators of the research programme SHAKK (From revolt to War in Syria: Conflict, displacements, uncertainties), funded by the ANR (2018-2022) where she coordinates the project of a lexicon of the revolution and the war in Syria: https://syria-lexicon.pubpub.org/.Eylaf Bader Eddin is a post-doctoral researcher at The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics (SYRASP) Project (851393) for his research “Musical Remains and Songs in Syrian Prisons and Exile” at the EUME Forum, Transregionale Studien in Berlin.Razan Ghazzawi is an exiled Syrian-Palestinian. Ghazzawi finished their PhD at the University of Sussex in Brighton and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at EUME, Berlin. Their thesis project is an ethnographical exploration of sexuality politics in the context of the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘refugee crisis’ in Syria and Lebanon by examining checkpoints and arrests as everyday forms of political violence against Syrian and Palestinian LGBTQ activists, artists, migrant workers, students and teachers based in Lebanon.Omar Al-Ghazzi is an Associate Professor in Media and Communications at LSE. His work focuses on the geopolitics of global communications, particularly in relation to news media and popular culture.
This panel, co-organised with Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), focused on the role that representations of femininities, masculinities, and sexualities in media and cultural productions play in maintaining or challenging stereotypes, and the gendered norms and regimes that these give rise to.Drawing on feminist approaches to media and cultural studies, speakers will discuss how different media forms, ranging from traditional print to film, advertising, and digital media have shaped gendered discourses and, relatedly, feminist thinking and praxes in the Middle East.Dalia Said Mostafa is Associate Professor on the Women, Society & Development Programme, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. On this panel she will discuss 'Women's Formidable Role and Influence in the Making of Arab Cinema'.Polly Withers is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. On this panel she will discuss 'Problematising feminist media studies from the Middle East: Gendering media in Palestine'.Amal Al-Malki is the Founding Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar Foundation. Before that, she was the Executive Director of the Translation and Interpreting Institute, which she founded in 2011. She also was an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar where she taught courses in writing composition, postcolonial literature, theories of translation, and Islamic feminism.Marc Owen Jones is an Associate Professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University, where he lectures and researches on political repression and informational control strategies. His recent work has focused on the way social media has been used to spread disinformation and fake news in the Middle East.Sophie Richter-Devroe is Associate Professor in the Women, Society and Development Program at the College of Humanities and Social Science, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Sophie's broad research interests are in the field of everyday politics and women's activism in the Middle East.https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2023/feminist-media-studies-middle-east
This event was the launch of Spyros A. Sofos' latest book 'Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism' published by Edinburgh University Press.By analysing Turkish political culture and institutional architecture through archival research and a critical rereading of the historiography of the Turkish state and society, Sofos proposes key conceptual tools to study popular and populist politics and applies them to the Turkish case.Drawing on a diverse body of scholarship including sociology, cultural studies, psychosocial studies, political science and political theory, Turkish Politics and 'The People' explores the transformations of the notion of ‘the people’ from the late Ottoman to current Turkish political discourses. Spyros A. Sofos is a political scientist based at the London School of Economics Middle East Centre and is founder and lead editor of openDemocracy’s #rethinkingpopulism. His other books include Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (1996, Routledge), Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (2008, Hurst and Oxford University Press), Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks (2013, Palgrave).Bahar Baser is Associate Professor at Durham University's School of Government and International Affairs. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University where she led the "Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Research Group".Dimitar Bechev is a Russia and East European Studies Affiliate at the School of Global Area Studies, University of Oxford. His research interests are the politics of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey as well as Russian foreign policy.
This panel, co-organised with Hamad Bin Khalifa University, was the launch of 'Tunisia's Economic Development: Why Better than Most of the Middle East but not East Asia' co-authored by Mustapha K. Nabil and Jeffrey B. Nugent. Recently published as part of the Routledge Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa Series edited by Hassan Hakimian, 'Tunisia's Economic Development' provides useful insights into the factors that have enabled Tunisia's initial economic success, and suggests opportunities for improving the management of economic development in the country, drawing wider lessons for the MENA region.Find out more here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2023/tunisia-economic-development.Mustapha K. Nabli has been Professor of Economics at the University of Tunis, Chairman of the Tunis Stock Exchange, Minister of Planning, Regional and Economic Development in the Government of Tunisia, Chief Economist and Director of the Social and Economic Development Department for the Middle East and North Africa Region at the World Bank, and Governor of the Central Bank of Tunisia.Jeffrey B. Nugent is Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California, USA. He has worked on and in various countries of both the MENA and East Asian regions including for the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.Leila Baghdadi is Professor of Economics at ESSECT, University of Tunis, where she holds the World Trade Organization Chair. She is an executive board member of the Central Bank of Tunisia since August 2019.Mohamed Ali Marouani is Associate Professor in Economics at the Sorbonne Institute of Development Studies and currently on leave as Resident Representative of the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) in Tunisia.Hassan Hakimian is Professor of Economics and Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Department (MESD) at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. During 2010-19, he was Director of the London Middle East Institute (LMEI) and Reader in the Economics Department at SOAS University of London.
This panel, co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies, explored the relationship between sports and society in the Maghreb. Panellists from across academia and the media discussed the historical development of sport in the region, as well as the relationship between gender and sport. With Morocco and Tunisia qualifying for the 2022 Men's World Cup, and Morocco qualifying for the 2023 Women's World Cup, panellists also charted the contemporary development of football in the region, and how the societies of the Maghreb understand their politics and identities through the sport.Mahfoud Amara is Associate Professor in Sport Social sciences and Management at Qatar University. Amara has published on sport, business, culture, politics and society in the Arab region. In 2012, he published a book with Palgrave Macmillan titled Sport Politics and Society in the Arab World. Maher Mezahi is an independent football journalist based between Marseille and Algiers. He examines the relationship between sport and politics, and his research interests include North African politics and the history of colonial sport in Africa. He covers North African football extensively, and his work has been published by the BBC, The Guardian, ESPN Africa and Al Jazeera English. Aziza Nait Sibaha is a Senior TV anchor and Executive Editor at France24. She has worked as a journalist in Morocco and France for the last 25 years. Nait Sibaha is also the Founder of Taja Sport, a media platform dedicated to women’s sports in the MENA region. She has also directed the documentary Atlas Lionesses: Hear them Roar! on Morocco's women’s national football team.
This event was the launch of 'The Untold Story of the Golan Heights: Occupation, Colonization and Jawlani Resistance' edited by Muna Dajani, Munir Fakher Eldin and Michael Mason.
This landmark volume is the first academic study in English of Arab politics and culture in the occupied Golan Heights. It focuses on an indigenous community, known as the Jawlanis, and their experience of everyday colonisation and resistance to settler colonisation. Chapters cover how governance is carried out in the Golan, from Israel's use of the education system and collective memory, to its development of large-scale wind turbines which are now a symbol of Israeli encroachment.
Muna Dajani holds a PhD from the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her research focuses on documenting water struggles in agricultural communities under settler colonialism.
Munir Fakher Eldin is Associate Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Birzeit University, Palestine (BZU). Munir has published in Arabic and English on British colonial land policies in Palestine as well as on current issues in Palestine and the occupied Golan Heights.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security.
Omar Tesdell is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Birzeit University, Palestine (BZU) and studies landscape and agroecological transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Omar Al-Ghazzi is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. He works on the geopolitics of global communications, particularly in relation to news media and popular culture.
This panel, co-organised with the Department of Gender Studies and the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at LSE, combined reflections from Ethiopia and Iran to query the legacies of revolutionary politics in our present, with particular focus on the current protests in Iran.
Arash Davari is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His writings have appeared in Political Theory, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and Radical Philosophy, among other venues. His first book manuscript reappraises debates in political theory about self-determination, revolution, and the extraordinary through reconstruction of the discursive conditions that made the 1979 revolution in Iran possible.
Elleni Centime Zeleke is Assistant Professor of African Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Zeleke is the author of Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964–2016 (Brill/Haymarket). Her current project examines the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia in relation to the history of Black political thought.
Nazanin Shahrokni is Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalisation at the Department for Gender Studies, LSE. Her research interests fall at the intersection of gender politics, feminist geography, and ethnographies of the state in Iran, the Middle East, and beyond. Shahrokni is author of Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press, 2019).
This event was the launch of Tilde Rosmer's latest book 'The Islamic Movement in Israel' published by University of Texas Press.
Since its establishment in the late 1970s, Israel’s Islamic Movement has grown from a small religious revivalist organization focused on strengthening the faith of Muslim Palestinian citizens of Israel to a countrywide sociopolitical movement with representation in the Israeli legislature. But how did it get here? How does it differ from other Islamic movements in the region? And why does its membership continue to grow?
Tilde Rosmer examines these issues in The Islamic Movement in Israel as she tells the story of the movement, its identity, and its activities. Using interviews with movement leaders and activists, their documents, and media reports from Israel and beyond, she traces the movement’s history from its early days to its 1996 split over the issue of its relationship to the state. She then explores how the two factions have functioned since, revealing that while leaders of the two branches have pursued different approaches to the state, until the outlawing of the Northern Branch in 2015, both remained connected and dedicated to providing needed social, education, and health services in Israel’s Palestinian towns and villages. The first book in English on this group, The Islamic Movement in Israel is a timely study about how an Islamist movement operates within the unique circumstances of the Jewish state.
Tilde Rosmer is Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. Rosmer’s research on collective identity formation and religious-political movements with a particular focus on Israel-Palestine is published in peer-reviewed journals such as the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies; Journal of Palestine Studies; Die Welt des Islams; Journal of Islamic Studies and Cultural Dynamics. Currently her research in the emerging field of Environmental Humanities focuses on awareness and knowledge of sustainability among Emirati youth.
Jeroen Gunning is a Visiting Professor at the LSE Middle East Center and the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. His research focuses on political contestation in the Middle East, with a specific focus on the interplay between social movements, religion, electoral politics, repression, violence and structural change.
Students at all levels and institutions were invited to this careers panel where practitioners in various Middle East-related fields will talk through their career paths.
Reza Afshar is the Executive Director of Independent Diplomat, a non-profit non-governmental organisation founded in 2004 by British former diplomat Carne Ross to give advice and assistance in diplomatic strategy and technique to governments and political groups. Previously, Reza was head of the team responsible for Syria policy at the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). During his time at the FCO, Reza also served as head of the Middle East, Asia and Europe Team at the UK Mission to the United Nations (2009 to 2012). He was awarded an OBE in 2012 for his work as lead negotiator on Libya in the UN Security Council. During his 13 years of service, Reza also worked on Iraq (2003-2004), Zimbabwe (leading the UK Foreign Office’s crisis team in 2008), and negotiated new arms control protocols relating to cluster munitions and landmines.
Hind Hassan is an award winning international correspondent for VICE News covering conflicts, humanitarian crisis and the biggest developing stories from around the world. Since joining VICE News, Hassan has reported on wars and uprisings across the globe including the post-ISIS legacy in Syria, Lebanon’s blast demonstrations and the battle over Nagorni-karabakh where her team became the first journalists to independently confirm the use of cluster munitions against civilians in Azerbaijan. Most recently Hassan travelled to Ukraine where she documented war crimes and the devastation caused by Russian bombs in the city of Kharkiv, just 30 kilometres from the Russian border. She was also part of a team that investigated the essential oil industry’s frankincense supply chain, uncovering allegations of abuse made against a multi-million dollar American wellness company. Hassan embedded with the Taliban in Afghanistan just months before the group’s takeover of Kabul and was on the ground in Jerusalem and Gaza ahead of the military offensive on the Strip. Prior to joining VICE News, Hassan worked as a reporter for Sky News.
Ahmed Tabaqchali is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a capital markets professional with over 25 years’ experience in US and MENA markets. He is the Chief Strategist of the Asia Frontier Capital Iraq Fund. Ahmed is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS), and non-resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council - Iraq Initiative. He is a board member of Capital Investments, the investment banking arm of Capital Bank-Jordan. Previously, he was former Executive Director of NBK Capital, the investment banking arm of the National Bank of Kuwait, Managing Director and Head of International Institutional Sales at WR Hambrecht + Co., Managing Director at KeyBanc in London and Director & Head of Capital Markets & Institutional Sales at Jefferies International in London. He started his career at Dean Witter International in London. At the LSE Middle East Centre, Ahmed is researching Iraq’s economy and political economy with a specific focus on the economic aspects of the relationship between the GoI (Government of Iraq) and the KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government).
Michael Mason is Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security.
In this event, Makan, a Palestinian-led education organisation that strengthens voices for Palestinian rights, launched their curated online course, 'Understanding Palestine'. The launch included a discussion with the head of Inclusive Education at the LSE Eden Centre for Educational Enhancement, Akile Ahmet.
This keynote lecture took place at the Gramsci in the Middle East & North Africa Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in cooperation with Ghent University. The conference explored, through empirically-grounded research, how Gramsci’s work can help us make sense of our contemporary moment in the region marked by a significant expansion in resistance and uprising.
Sunaina Maira is Professor of Asian American Studies, and is affiliated with the Middle East/South Asia Studies program and with the Cultural Studies Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. Her research and teaching focus on Asian, Arab, and Muslim American youth culture, migrant rights and refugee organizing, and transnational movements challenging militarization, imperialism, and settler colonialism
John Chalcraft is Professor of Middle East History and Politics in the Department of Government at the LSE. He graduated with a starred first in history (M.A. Hons) from Gonville and Caius college Cambridge in 1992. He then did post-graduate work at Harvard, Oxford and New York University, from where he received his doctorate with distinction in the modern history of the Middle East in January 2001. He held a Research Fellowship at Caius college (1999-2000) and was a Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Edinburgh University from 2000-05.
This conference was supported by the Departments of Government, Sociology, and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme based at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.
This keynote lecture took place at the Gramsci in the Middle East & North Africa Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in cooperation with Ghent University from 9-10 May, 2022. The conference explored, through empirically-grounded research, how Gramsci’s work can help us make sense of our contemporary moment in the region marked by a significant expansion in resistance and uprising.
Alia Mossallam is a cultural historian interested in songs that tell stories and stories that tell of popular struggles behind the better-known events that shape world history. She was previously a post-doctoral fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin where she was writing a book on the visual and musical archiving practices of the builders of the Aswan High Dam and the Nubian communities displaced by it. She is also a visiting scholar at Humboldt University’s Lautarchiv exploring the experiences of Egyptian, Tunisian and Algerian workers and subalterns on the fronts of World War I (and resulting revolts in their regions in 1918) through songs that capture these experiences.
Sara Salem is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the LSE. Her research interests include postcolonial feminism, Marxist theory, and global histories of anticolonialism. Her recently published book with Cambridge University Press is entitled Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony (2020). Her recent writing has focused on Angela Davis in Egypt; on Frantz Fanon and Egypt’s postcolonial state; and on the ghosts of anticolonialism and Nasserism in Egypt.
This conference was supported by the Departments of Government, Sociology, and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme based at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.
This keynote lecture took place at the Gramsci in the Middle East & North Africa Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in cooperation with Ghent University from 9-10 May, 2022. The conference explored, through empirically-grounded research, how Gramsci’s work can help us make sense of our contemporary moment in the region marked by a significant expansion in resistance and uprising.
Patrizia Manduchi is Director of the GramsciLab and Associate Professor of History of the Contemporary Arab World at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Cagliari. She has published numerous works on the topic of Islamic radicalism, such as: 'The fury of Allah' (Quaderni di Orientalia Karalitana); 'From pen to mouse: Dissemination tools of the concept of jihad' (curated by Franco Angeli); 'This world is not a place for rewards: Life and works of Sayyid Qutb, martyr of the Muslim Brothers' (Aracne) and 'Voices of dissent: Student movements, opposition politics and democratic transition in Asia and Africa' (Aracne).
Brecht De Smet is a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Middle East and North Africa Research Group at Ghent University, where in 2012 he completed his PhD. Brecht's research interests entail prefigurative and hegemonic class politics, marginalization, and political economy in Egypt, the MENA region, and beyond. He has published articles, opinion pieces, and two books on the politics of revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt (2016). He is now working on the 'Understanding political change from the Margins: Social and Environmental Justice in Morocco and Tunisia' project sponsored by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research.
This conference was supported by the Departments of Government, Sociology, and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme based at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.
This event was the launch of Jessica Watkins' latest book 'Creating Consent in an Illiberal Order: Policing Disputes in Jordan' published by Cambridge University Press.
Middle Eastern police forces have a reputation for carrying out repression and surveillance on behalf of authoritarian regimes, despite frequently under enforcing the law. But what is their role in co-creating and sustaining social order? In this book, Jessica Watkins focuses on the development of the Jordanian police institution to demonstrate that rather than being primarily concerned with law enforcement, the police are first and foremost concerned with order.
In Jordan, social order combines the influence of longstanding tribal practices with regime efforts to promote neoliberal economic policies alongside a sense of civic duty amongst citizens. Rather than focusing on the 'high policing' of offences deemed to threaten state security, Watkins explores the 'low policing' of interpersonal disputes including assault, theft, murder, traffic accidents, and domestic abuse to shed light on the varied strategies of power deployed by the police alongside other societal actors to procure hegemonic 'consent'.
Jessica Watkins is an analyst at the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, which assists in the investigation of serious crimes committed in Syria. She is a visiting research fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Research Associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). Between 2017 and 2021 Jessica was a postdoctoral research officer on LSE’s Conflict Research Programme focusing on regional and domestic drivers of conflict and peace in Iraq and Syria. Jessica has a BA from Cambridge University in Arabic and French, a Masters in International Relations from the War Studies Department, King’s College London, and a PhD on civil policing in Jordan, also from the War Studies Department.
Yazan Doughan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Yazan is an anthropologist whose work straddles the linguistic and socio-cultural branches of the discipline, with close engagements with social and legal theory, conceptual and social history, and moral philosophy. His work blends ethnography, genealogy, and history to shed light on the question of social justice in contemporary postcolonial contexts, with Jordan as a primary field site. Yazan’s current research and book project takes the Arab Spring protests in Jordan as an ethnographic entry point to think the postcolonial political present, and the paradoxical status of ‘the rule law’ in it – both as the mark of post-Cold War emancipatory projects for social justice, and the condition of possibility for various kinds of injustices.
Milli Lake is an Associate Professor of International Security at the London School of Economics' Department of International Relations. Her expertise lies in political violence, institutions, law, poverty, and gender. She co-directs the Women's Rights After War project, a project that falls under LSE’s Gender Justice and Security HUB, and is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund. Her 2018 book Strong NGOs and Weak States: Pursuing Gender Justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa was published by Cambridge University Press. Milli has worked as a consultant with organisations including USAID, The World Bank, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, Berkeley School of Law and the International Law and Policy Institute. She regularly provides expert testimony in asylum cases and has written extensively on the ethics and practicalities of field research in violence-affected settings.
This panel explored the interconnectedness of Turkey’s domestic and foreign politics over the past two decades. How do geopolitical histories and imaginaries affect Turkey’s foreign policy? What are the links between everyday culture and Turkey’s foreign policy? To what extent have global and regional developments impacted on and informed domestic politics? In what ways has foreign policy been used as a technique of governance?
Evren Balta is Professor of International Relations and chair of the International Relations Department at Özyeğin University. She is the author of 'The American Passport in Turkey: National Citizenship in the Age of Transnationalism' (with O Altan-Olcay, UPenn, 2020), 'Age of Uneasiness' (İletisim, 2019) and 'Global Security Complex' (İletisim, 2012). She is the editor of 'Neighbors with Suspicion: Dynamics of Turkish-Russian Relations' (with G. Ozcan and B. Besgul, İletisim, 2017); 'Introduction to Global Politics' (Iletisim, 2014) and 'Military, State and Politics in Turkey' (with I. Akca, Bilgi University Press, 2010). She served as a research fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences/Russia in Global Dialogue Program (Vienna, Austria 2017) and as a Fulbright visiting associate professor at New York University, Program in International Relations during the 2017-2018 academic year. Balta is a senior scholar at Istanbul Policy Center, a member of the Global Relations Forum and co-editor of International Relations Journal. She was appointed as the academic coordinator of TÜSİAD Global Politics Forum in 2021.
Lisel Hintz is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University and was visiting assistant professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. She studies the arenas in which struggles over various forms of identity – e.g., national, ethnic, religious, gender – take place. Her regional focus is on Turkey and its relations with the Middle East, Europe, and the US. Her 2018 book 'Identity Politics Inside Out: National Identity Contestation and Foreign Policy in Turkey' (Oxford University Press) examines how Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) used foreign policy gambits to weaken its domestic obstacles and open up space for disseminating its own Ottoman Islamist understanding of Turkish national identity and, ultimately, the ways in which contestation over national identity spills over to shape and be shaped by foreign policy. Her current book project, under contract with Cambridge University Press, investigates Turkey’s state-society struggles over identity in the pop culture sphere. Her work also appears in journals and news outlets contributing to discussions on Turkey’s increasing authoritarianism, opposition dynamics, foreign policy shifts, and identity-related topics including Kurdish, Alevi, and gender issues.
Spyros A. Sofos is a Researcher at the LSE Middle East Centre. Spyros has been a member of the Fragmentation of peacemaking and peacebuilding: Non-Western dynamics of peace and transition management project team, funded by the FCDO and the PeaceRep Consortium. His research explores the intersection of societal insecurity, identity, and collective action and, to date, it has focused on Turkish politics and society, nationalism, populism and Islamism in Europe and the Middle East, urban citizenship, and European Muslim identities and politics. His latest book Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism (Edinburgh University Press) – explores the emergence of populism in Turkey and its genealogy as a tradition of action and discourse. His other publications include 'Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe' (Routledge), 'Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey' (Oxford University Press), 'Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks' (Palgrave).
This event was the launch of three papers authored by Courtney Freer and Spyros Sofos of the LSE Middle East Centre as part of the Global Transitions Series, a research output from PeaceRep – the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform funded by the UK Aid from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO).
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Qatar and the UAE in Peacemaking and Peacebuilding by Courtney Freer
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Peacebuilding in Turbulent Times: Turkey in MENA and Africa by Spyros Sofos
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MENA Regional Organisations in Peacemaking and Peacebuilding: The League of Arab States, Gulf Cooperation Council and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation by Courtney Freer.
Courtney Freer is Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously, Courtney was Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. From 2015-2020, Courtney was a Research Officer for the Kuwait Programme at the LSE Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. She previously worked at the Brookings Doha Center and the US–Saudi Arabian Business Council.
Spyros Sofos is a Research Officer on the LSE Kuwait Programme project 'Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City.' Spyros's research explores the intersection of societal insecurity, identity and collective action and, to date, it has focused on Turkish politics and society, nationalism and populism in Europe and the Middle East, urban citizenship in the Middle East, European Muslim identities and politics, and the theory of populism. His latest book Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism published by Edinburgh University Press explores the emergence of populism in contemporary Turkey and its genealogy as a tradition of action and discourse. His other publications include Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe published by Routledge, Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey published by Oxford University Press, and Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks published by Palgrave.
Greg Shapland is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and an independent researcher, writer and consultant on politics, security, resources and environment (including water) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). His entire career has been focussed on the Middle East and North Africa, whether as a commercial representative, university lecturer or government official (in the Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office and FCO). From 1979 until 2015, he served in the MENA Research Group in the FCO. He was also Head of Research Analysts from July 2010 to July 2013. During his time with the FCO, Greg served in British Embassies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Tel Aviv and in the Consulate General in Jerusalem. Since leaving the FCO, Greg has worked on post-conflict stabilisation, Israeli-Palestinian relations, inter-state and intra-state water disputes and the impact of climate change in the MENA region. He is currently working on a book on the politics and geography of the MENA region.
The Arabic-language news environment is facing significant challenges. Arab journalists work under multiple pressures including the lack of political freedoms, the proliferation of digital technologies and social media, the assumed disinterest of younger audiences and financial constraints facing many outlets.
As part of the research project Arab News Futures (led by Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi, LSE and Dr Abeer Al-Najjar, AUS), in this webinar, we hear from London-based Arab journalists and editors, who discuss the state of Arab news as viewed from London. They address questions such as: what are the critical issues facing Arab journalists and news media? What are the future trends in news making and consuming? How are digital technologies changing the understandings of the audience? And finally: Is London still relevant as a hub of Arabic news?
About the speakers: Najlaa Aboumerhi is Senior Journalist, Presenter and Writer with with Alaraby TV since 2017 when she joined after 10 years of working for BBC Arabic TV. She has 18+ years experience working for different media platforms (Online, Radio and TV) and outlets in Beirut and London. She has presented news, reported, supervised, and produced political talk shows, documentaries and reported on special coverages including the Sudan Uprising, Algeria/Boutaflika resignation, Gaza War and Beirut Explosion. Recently, Najlaa has been in Ukraine covering the war from Kyiv, adding this experience to a list of events that she covered from the field, such as US Elections, Tunis, (July war in 2006, October 17, Lebanon.), Afghanistan.
Omar Al-Ghazzi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His work focuses on questions around the global power asymmetries in the reporting and representation of conflict. He researches digital journalism, the politics of time and memory, and the geopolitics of popular culture, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa.
Ibrahim Hamidi is a Syrian journalist and Senior Diplomatic Editor at Asharq al-Awsat newspaper in London. Hamidi was the Damascus bureau of the Arab daily newspaper, Al-Hayat, for 22 years and contributes to several other international media outlets and think tanks.
Mai Noman is a media consultant and strategist. She's currently the Digital Content Editor for BBC Arabic. She for responsible for leading digital video content aimed at reaching young and female audiences. Before joining BBC Arabic, Mai worked as a Senior Journalist with the BBC’s World Service Digital Development team tasked with overseeing the digital transformation of the BBC’s 40 different language services. She assisted journalists in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, creating digital strategies and creative visual content. Prior to that, Mai was a video journalist with experience in finding innovative ways of telling complex stories.
Isam Uraiqat is co-founder and editor of the award-winning political satire magazine Alhudood. With experience working in animation, film, writing, and software development, Isam has run Alhudood as a multi-disciplinary innovative organisation, challenging how media in the region and the public interact.
This event was the launch of Leïla Vignal's latest book 'War-Torn: The Unmaking of Syria, 2011–2021' published by Hurst.
In order to consider the future of Syria, it is crucial to assess not only what has been destroyed, but also how it was destroyed. It is equally vital to address the structural and possibly enduring results of large-scale destruction and displacement. These dynamics are not only at play in Syrian society, but are tearing at the economic fabric and very territorial integrity of the country. If war is a powerful process of human and material destruction, it is equally a powerful process of spatial, social and economic reconfiguration. Nor does it stop at national borders—the unravelling of Syria, and of the idea of Syria, has affected and will continue to affect the entire Middle East.
War-Torn explores these transformations and the processes that fuel them. The book throws light on neglected aspects of the Syrian war, and contributes towards understanding conflicts in the twenty-first century.
Leïla Vignal is Professor of Geography at the École normale supérieure, Paris, and the editor of The Transnational Middle East: People, Places, Borders. Specialised in cities, globalisation and transnational dynamics in the Middle East, since 2011 she has studied the transformations of Syria and of its society through the war.
Deen Sharp is an LSE Fellow in Human Geography at the Department of Geography and Environment, LSE. He is an urban geographer whose research focuses on the political economy of urbanization in the “Middle East”. He is the co-editor of Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings (Urban Research: 2016) and Open Gaza (University in Cairo Press: In Print). He is currently working on a edited volume on the spatial dynamics of the conflict in Syria with Nasser Rabbat, provisionally entitled, Reconstruction as Violence: The case of Syria.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security.
This webinar was the launch of Mariam Salehi's latest book Transitional Justice in Process: Plans and Politics in Tunisia published by Manchester University Press.
Transitional Justice in Process is the first book to comprehensively study the Tunisian transitional justice process. After the fall of the Ben Ali regime in 2011, Tunisia swiftly began dealing with its authoritarian past and initiated a comprehensive transitional justice process, with the Truth and Dignity Commission as its central institution. However, instead of bringing about peace and justice, transitional justice soon became an arena of contention.
Mariam Salehi is a researcher at the intersection of peace and conflict studies, international politics, and international political sociology. Salehi is broadly interested in (conflictive) internationalised processes of change, (transitional) justice and the production and circulation of knowledge and ideas. Salehi is currently a research group leader at Freie Universität Berlin and is involved in the SEPAD project at Lancaster University. Previously, Salehi was A.SK Postdoctoral Fellow in the Global Governance Unit at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center and a Research Associate at the Center for Conflict Studies, University of Marburg. Salehi's academic work informs policy advice for federal ministries, political foundations and development agencies. As a doctoral researcher, Salehi worked in the research network 'Re-Configurations: History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa' at the University of Marburg, which was funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. Salehi's doctoral dissertation on the Tunisian transitional justice process won the 2019 dissertation award of the German Middle East Studies Association.
Charles Tripp is a Professor Emeritus of Politics with reference to the Middle East and North Africa, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His research interests include the nature of autocracy, state and resistance in the Middle East, the politics of Islamic identity and the relationship between art and power. He is currently working on a study of the emergence of the public and the rethinking of republican ideals in Tunisia. Together with other colleagues he has been one of the founders of the Centre for Comparative Political Thought at SOAS.
Iavor Rangelov is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at LSE IDEAS and Co-Founder of the Civic Ecosystems Initiative incubated at LSE. His research interests include human rights, human security, transitional justice, and civic activism, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected states. He is the author of Nationalism and the Rule of Law: Lessons from the Balkans and Beyond.
This webinar, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was the launch of Marouf Cabi's latest book 'The Formation of Modern Kurdish Society in Iran: Modernity, Modernization and Social Change 1921-1979' published by Bloomsbury Publishing.
Although the Kurds have attracted widespread international attention, Iranian Kurdistan has been largely overlooked. This book examines the consequences of modernity and modernisation for Iran's Kurdish society in the 20th century. Marouf Cabi argues that while state-led modernisation integrated the Kurds in modern Iran, the homogenisation of identity and culture also resulted in their vigorous pursuit of their political and cultural rights.
Focusing on the dual process of state-led modernisation and homogenisation of identity and culture, Cabi examines the consequences of modernity and modernisation for the socioeconomic, cultural, and political structures as well as for gender relations. It is the consequences of this dynamic dual process that explains the modern structures of Iran's Kurdish society, on the one hand, and its intimate relationship with Iran as a historical, geographical, and political entity, on the other.
Using Persian, Kurdish and English sources, the book explores the transformation of Kurdish society between the Second World War and the 1979 Iranian Revolution, with a special focus on the era of the 'White Revolution' during the 1960s and 1970s.
Marouf Cabi is a historian focusing on Iran and its ethnic structures from World War II to present day. His most recent articles include “The Roots and the Consequences of the Iranian Revolution: A Kurdish Perspective” (2020) and “The Duality of Official and Local: Historical and Intellectual Foundations” (2021) both published in Middle East Studies. His PhD (2019) thesis explores the impact of the modernisation of Iran on twentieth-century Kurdish society. He has taught both undergraduate and postgraduate courses on Introduction to Middle Eastern History and Middle Eastern Cultural and Literary Contexts at the University of St Andrews. He also regularly presents his research in Kurdish and Iranian communities in Europe. For more on his works see https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7259-4504.
Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre and co-convenor of the Centre’s Kurdish Studies Series. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movement in Syria. Robert was Manager and Research Fellow, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House from 2001–2010. He held a Research Fellowship from The Leverhulme Trust from 2008 to 2010 and was an Honorary Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, from 2008 to 2010.
This webinar presented the results of two LSE Kuwait Programme research projects:
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Urban Governance and Spatial Patterns in Kuwait: Exploring the Links Between the Physical and the Socioeconomic - Dhari Alrasheed and Nuno F. da Cruz
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Can Smart Cities Solve the Housing Crisis? A Study on Korea-Kuwait Partnership for a New Smart City in Kuwait - Hyun Bang Shin and Do Young Oh
Nuno F. da Cruz is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at LSE Cities, London School of Economics and Political Science. His work on urban and metropolitan governance is multidisciplinary in nature and global in reach, engaging with a wide range of public policy issues. Nuno has previously worked in cooperation with various non-government and multilateral organisations such as UCLG, Metropolis, UN Habitat and Transparency International.
Dhari Alrasheed is an Assistant Professor of Economics in the College of Business Administration at Kuwait University. His research activity spans two fields. The first is urban economics, studying various issues related to housing, spatial inequality, transportation, and social capital. The second is applied econometrics, with interest in discrete choice modeling, Bayesian econometrics, and spatial econometrics. Dhari holds a PhD and MA in economics from the University of California, Irvine, as well as a MSc and BSc in mechanical engineering from Oregon State University.
Hyun Bang Shin is Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre (SEAC), and Professor of Geography and Urban Studies in the Department of Geography and Environment. Prof Shin’s research centres on the critical analysis of the political economy of urbanisation with particular attention to cities in Asian countries such as Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, South Korea and China.
Do Young Oh is Research Assistant Professor at the School of Graduate Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He was previously a Research Officer, based jointly at the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre and the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he finished his PhD in Regional and Urban Planning.
Courtney Freer is a Visiting Fellow with the LSE Middle East Centre, and Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Previously, Courtney was an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
This event, with research drawn from Dr. Golnar Nikpour's book manuscript 'The Incarcerated Modern: Prisons and Public Life in Iran', examined the making of the carceral state in modern Iran.
Until the turn of the 20th century, prisons were virtually nonexistent in Iran. Even by the 1920s, as the first modern prison network was being built in central Tehran, there were only a few hundred detainees being held by the centralising Pahlavi government. By the eve of the 1979 revolution, that number had ballooned to approximately 20,000 detainees. Now, in the Islamic Republic of Iran, there are at least a quarter of a million detainees being held in 268 official jails and prisons.
How and why did this extraordinary transformation and expansion occur? How did Iranians come to understand their increasingly policed and punished social worlds? What does Iran’s penal history tell us about the expansion of prisons across the world?
Golnar Nikpour is Assistant Professor of History at Dartmouth University. Nikpour is a scholar of modern Iranian political and intellectual history, with a particular interest in the history of law, incarceration, and rights. She holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University's department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, & African Studies. She teaches on an interdisciplinary set of topics including modern Middle Eastern and North African history, Iranian history, political theory, Islamic studies, critical prison studies, and women and gender studies. From 2015-2017, Nikpour was an A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and in 2017-2018, she served as Neubauer Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Since 2019, Nikpour has served on the editorial collective of the journal Radical History Review, and she also serves the editorial board of the Radical Histories of the Middle East book series on Oneworld Press. Nikpour is also co-founder and co-editor of B|ta’arof, a journal for Iranian arts and writing, where she has written extensively on the intellectual and cultural histories of Iran and its diaspora. She is currently finishing her first book project, a history of Iranian prisons and carcerality in a global context.
Nazanin Shahrokni is Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalisation and Director of MSc Programme in Gender and Gender Research at the London School of Economics. She is the author of the award-winning book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press 2020) which offers a gripping inquiry into gender segregation policies and women’s rights in contemporary Iran. Nazanin serves on the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association and is on the advisory board of Middle East Law and Governance, as well, the Global Dialogue.
This event was the launch of Yaniv Voller's latest book Second-Generation Liberation Wars: Rethinking Colonialism in Iraqi Kurdistan and Southern Sudan published by Cambridge University Press.
The formation of post-colonial states in Africa, and the Middle East gave birth to prolonged separatist wars. Exploring the evolution of these separatist wars, Yaniv Voller examines the strategies that both governments and insurgents employed, how these strategies were shaped by the previous struggle against European colonialism and the practices and roles that emerged in the subsequent period, which moulded the identities, aims and strategies of post-colonial governments and separatist rebels.
Based on a wealth of primary sources, Voller focuses on two post-colonial separatist wars: in Iraqi Kurdistan, between Kurdish separatists and the government in Baghdad, and Southern Sudan, between black African insurgents and the government in Khartoum. By providing an account of both conflicts, he offers a new understanding of colonialism, decolonisation and the international politics of the post-colonial world.
Yaniv Voller is Senior Lecturer in the Politics of the Middle East at the University of Kent. Prior to this, he was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh. Voller received his PhD from the LSE, where he also taught courses in the International Relations and the International History Departments. In 2018-2019, Yaniv was a Conflict Research Fellow at the DFID-funded Conflict Research Programme at the LSE and the Social Science Research Council. Voller's research broadly concerns the geopolitics of the Middle East, the foreign policies of Middle Eastern states, separatism/liberation, insurgency and the role of ideas, ideology and practices in shaping international politics. He is the author of The Kurdish Liberation Movement in Iraq: From Insurgency to Statehood (Routledge, 2014).
Ponsiano Bimeny is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at LSE. He completed his PhD in Development Studies at SOAS University of London with his thesis examining the contradicting visions of the South Sudanese state and its implications for the processes of state formation within the country and in Sub Saharan Africa more broadly. Bimeny's thesis particularly focused on citizenship and identity in the context of conflict, violence and population displacement in South Sudan, drawing on the 2005 political settlement and the most recent conflict between the government's Sudan People’s Liberation Army and the different paramilitary and social groups. Bimeny has more than six years of experience working as a development professional in Northern Uganda, including delivering the UNICEF-funded Government of Uganda’s “Justice for Children” programme. Bimeny has also recently undertaken research work focusing on the post conflict settings of the Acholi and Karamoja regions of northern Uganda for the Deconstructing Notions of Resilience project at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. He has provided regional insights about Africa’s Great Lakes Region to the Centre of African Studies at SOAS since 2016.
The Algerian Higher Education system has evolved significantly over the past six decades, responding to the changing economic and political contexts of the country.
After inheriting the French colonial education system in the sixties with minor adjustments, the seventies saw a democratisation of the space. During the eighties, the role of the single national party was affirmed with a marked Arabization of the social sciences and the establishment of several universities across the country. But from the eighties onwards, there was also a loss of autonomy and independence of the university, with increased centralisation of management by the Ministry of Higher Education, and academic leadership positions being filled by administrators. As a result, scientific research, creative innovation, and emergence of new ideas at all levels declined significantly. This loss of autonomy resulted in the migration of academics and graduates abroad. Today, the Algerian higher education system has over 1.7 million students and over 130 Higher Education Institutions, compared to 55,000 students in 1980 and 3000 in 1963, and less than 10 Higher Education Institutions in 1963.
This webinar will discuss current challenges and future opportunities across the higher education system in Algeria, with an emphasis on its historical background, evolution, and broader societal role since independence.
Mounir Khaled Berrah is a professor and author with interests in higher education, research development and innovation systems, international cooperation in science, technology and innovation, statistical information systems and digital transition. Berrah was Director of the Ecole Nationale Polytechnique in Algeria from 1997 - 2005. He was also Director General of the National Statistics Office in Algeria from 2009 - 2020.
Hayat Messekher is Professor of English at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Bouzaréah (Algiers) where she teaches pre-service teacher-trainees. She previously served as Head of the English Department. She also serves as a Consultant for British Council Algeria where she manages the portfolio of education and society programmes.
Mohamed Miliani is Professor of English at the University of Oran 2, Algeria. He specialises in education, Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), and English for Specific Purposes (ESP). He is research project lead in university ethics at the Centre for Research in Cultural and Social Anthropology (CRASC). He also serves as president of the Algerian Technical Committee for Education (UNESCO-Algeria).
Khaoula Taleb-Ibrahimi is Professor of Sciences of Languages and Director of the Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and Didactics of Languages (LISODIL) Research Laboratory at the University of Algiers II. Taleb-Ibrahimi defended and obtained her PhD on the sciences of languages at the University of Grenoble, France in 1991. She has taught linguistics, didactics, discourse analysis, language policy, textual linguistics and sociolinguistics.
Please note: this is the English language recording of this event. At times there may be pauses due to the use of an interpreter.
This event was the launch of 'Challenging Narratives of ‘Fate and Divine Will’: Access to Justice for Gender-Based Violence in Iraq' co-authored by Taif Alkhudary, Marwa Abdul Ridah, Anfal Abed and Amal Kabashi as part of the LSE Conflict Research Programme (CRP)–Iraq.
This study draws on data collected from 34 interviews to examine access to justice for gender-based violence (GBV) in the family and criminal law systems of federal Iraq. It finds that it remains near impossible for women to access effective protection, with the government of Iraq (GoI) falling short of every one of the six components identified by the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW Committee) as essential for women’s access to justice.
The paper highlights the urgent need for the GoI to work with civil society to enact the draft anti-domestic violence law. It also recommends that the GoI take broader, longer-term holistic measures, including tackling high-level and petty corruption and providing gender-sensitivity training to all law enforcement professionals, highlighting the detrimental impact of gender stereotyping on the impartiality and independence of justice systems and the rule of law.
Taif Alkhudary is an Iraq-focused Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously, she conducted strategic litigation on civil and political rights in Iraq and the Gulf.
Marwa Abdul Ridah is a lawyer and founder of Baghdad-based legal advocacy NGO ‘For Her’.
Anfal Abed is Projects Director of Public Aid Organisation (PAO), Iraq. Previously, she worked on gender-based violence in conflicted-affected areas in Iraq.
Amal Kabashi is a feminist activist and the coordinator of the Iraqi Women Network. She is leading the advocacy campaign to legislate an anti-domestic violence law in Iraq.
تشكّل هذه الفعّالية فرصة لإطلاق تقرير'تحدي سرديات ”القضاء والقدر“: اللجوء للقضاء في قضايا العنف القائم على النوع الاجتماعي في العراق‘ الذي شارك في كتابته طيف الخضيري، مروة عبد الرضا، أنفال عبد و أمل كباشي. و هذا التقرير هو جزء من "برنامج أبحاث الصراع - العراق" التابع لكلية لندن للاقتصاد و العلوم السياسية
تعتمد هذه الدراسة على بيانات جمعت من خلال 34 مقابلة لفحص مدى قدرة النساء على اللجوء للقضاء في قضايا العنف القائم على النوع الاجتماعي وفقاً لقانون الأحوال الشخصية والقانون الجنائي في العراق الاتحادي. وتوصلت الدراسة إلى أن إمكانية حصول النساء على حماية فعلية لا يزال شبه مستحيل، نظراً لتقصير الحكومة العراقية حيال كل مكون من المكونات الستة التي حددتها اللجنة المعنية بالقضاء على التمييز ضد المرأة .على أنها ضرورية لإمكانية لجوء المرأة للقضاء
وتسلط الدراسة الضوء على ضرورة أن تعمل الحكومة العراقية مع المجتمع المدني على سن قانون مناهضة العنف الأسري. كما توصي بأن تتخذ الحكومة العراقية تدابير شاملة وذات مدى أبعد، بما في ذلك معالجة الفساد على المستوى الرفيع والثانوي، وتوفير تدريب يراعي النوع الاجتماعي لموظفي تطبيق القانون كافة، وذلك لتسليط الضوء على التأثير المضر للصور النمطية الجندرية على حيادية واستقلالية الجهاز القضائي وسيادة .القانون
طيف الخضيري: باحثة متخصصة في العراق في مركز الشرق الأوسط في كلية لندن للاقتصاد و العلوم السياسية. عملت في السابق في مجال المرافعة الإستراتيجية حول .الحقوق المدنية والسياسية في العراق والخليج
مروة عبد الرضا: محامية ومؤسسة منظمة ”لأجلها“ غير الحكومية للمرافعة القانونية في .بغداد
أنفال عبد: مديرة مشاريع منظمة النجدة الشعبية في العراق. عملت سابقاً على قضايا .العنف القائم على النوع الاجتماعي في المناطق المتضررة من النزاع في العراق
أمل كباشي: ناشطة نسوية ومنسقة شبكة النساء العراقيات. تقود حملة مناصر وكسب .التأييد من أجل تشريع قانون العنف الأسري
This event was the launch of Isabel Käser's latest book 'The Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement: Gender, Body Politics and Militant Femininities' published by Cambridge University Press.
Amidst ongoing wars and insecurities, female fighters, politicians, and activists of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are building a new political system that centres gender equality. Since the Rojava Revolution, the international focus has been especially on female fighters, a gaze that has often been essentialising and objectifying, brushing over a much more complex history of violence and resistance.
Going beyond Orientalist tropes of the female freedom fighter and unpacking the movement's own discourse and practices around the 'free woman', Isabel Käser's new book looks at personal trajectories and everyday processes of becoming a militant in this movement. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, with women politicians, martyr mothers and female fighters, she looks at how norms around gender and sexuality have been rewritten and how new meanings and practices have been assigned to women in the quest for Kurdish self-determination. Her book complicates prevailing notions of gender and war and creates a more nuanced understanding of the everyday embodied epistemologies of violence, conflict, and resistance.
'The highly original ethnography and bold ethnography of Isabel Käser sheds new light on the evolution of the Kurdish conflict and allows us to understand the complexity of gender-based emancipatory projects emerging in a Near East under fire.' Hamit Bozarslan - EHESS, Paris
Isabel Käser is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. She is the Principal Investigator of the collaborative project between the LSE, the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr (UKH), and Culture Project entitled ‘The Kurdistan Region of Iraq Post-ISIS: Youth, Art and Gender’. Isabel gained her PhD at SOAS University of London and has previously worked in journalism and diplomacy, most recently leading the research project ‘Art in Peace Mediation’ for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs.
Zeynep Kaya is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Her main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender in the Middle East. She has recently published a monograph entitled Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism with Cambridge University Press. Zeynep is co-editor of I.B. Tauris-Bloomsbury's Kurdish Studies Series and is also a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
Kuwait’s nationality and citizenship rules have been contentious since the country’s independence in 1961. The rightful claim to full citizenship rights in the oil-rich Gulf state is highly restricted and divided along lines of kinship, religion, gender, ethnicity and nationality, leaving the majority of Kuwait’s population excluded from many social privileges. Shaping youth civic identities through education and media messaging has been an important part of the state’s construction of nationalist narratives of Kuwaiti citizenship. While young people’s voices are largely absent from official discourses, they have been creating their own spaces and means of participation. This webinar presented findings from the LSE Kuwait Programme project ‘Empowering Democratic Citizenship through Education: Exploring Rights-Based Approaches to Educational Policymaking in Kuwait’. The study explored the tensions between young people’s perspectives and Kuwaiti official discourses around citizenship identities, rights and participation. Findings are based on focus group discussions and interviews with more than 100 secondary school students and youth activists in Kuwait, as well as an analysis of Kuwaiti media outlets.
Dr Rania Al-Nakib is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait, where she teaches courses in the sociology of education as well as human rights. She also worked as a consultant to en.v (a Kuwaiti organization dedicated to fostering civic engagement in the Middle East) on their n-mu programme, developed in partnership with the Eurasia Foundation and the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX) to promote constructive youth engagement in Kuwait. Her research focuses on human rights education and education for democratic citizenship in Kuwait. She is particularly interested in the impact of the hidden curriculum on Kuwaiti students’ citizenship activities and Kuwaiti female students’ gendered experiences of public education. Her PhD from the Institute of Education, University of London was titled ‘Dialogic Universalism and Human Rights Education: A Case Study from Kuwait’. She has an MS in Theoretical Linguistics from Georgetown University and an MEd from Marymount University. Her most recent publication is a chapter in an edited volume, entitled Citizenship and Global Migration: Implications for Theory, Research, and Teaching, published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA).
Dr Sam Mejias is Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. He conducts multidisciplinary research on the cultural politics of human rights and equity across several connected strands of work in different countries (currently the UK, USA and Kuwait). Dr Mejias holds a PhD in Education from University College London and a Master’s degree in International Educational Development from Columbia University Teachers College.
Abdullah al-Khonaini completed his MA in Power, Participation, and Social Change from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. He co-founded 'Raqib50', an online parliament watch that holds Kuwaiti parliamentarians accountable by making their voting records accessible to the public. His research interests include a focus on civil society, dynamics of informal civic groups and participation, postcolonial identity and belonging in the Gulf. Abdullah is a researcher on the LSE Kuwait Programme project led by Rania and Sam.
Dr Rana Khazbak recently joined the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab as a post-doctoral researcher. She did her PhD in the Department of Social Policy at LSE, during which she explored the impact of urban regeneration on young people's wellbeing in London. Rana is a researcher on the LSE Kuwait Programme project led by Rania and Sam.
This event was co-organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the LSE.
On 25 October 2021, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan declared a state of emergency in Sudan, dissolving the government and detaining civilian leadership. Burhan is leader of the joint ruling council. The council's official goal is to hand over leadership to civilians ahead of elections in 2023
Since the beginning of the coup, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, an independent union of medics, have estimated that more than 200 people have been wounded in anti-coup protests and at least 23 been killed (as of 15 November 2021). Civilians have been taking to the streets daily, promising to keep up the pressure on the transitional military-civilian authority.
Speakers will discuss the historical and political context of the latest coup, the effects of the military crackdown on the ground and the international response.
Muzan Alneel is a Nonresident Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) focusing on people-centric approach to economy, industry, and environment in Sudan. She is a writer and public speaker with an interdisciplinary professional and academic background (engineering, socioeconomics, public policy). Muzan is the co-founder of The Innovation, Science and Technology Think-tank for People Centered Development (ISTiNAD) – Sudan.
Nafisa Eltahir is a correspondent covering political and economic news in Sudan as well as Egypt for Reuters News. Before her current posting she reported on the Gulf out of Dubai, and was a fellow at The Intercept.
Magdi el-Gizouli is a scholar of the Sudans and a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. He writes mostly on Sudans' affairs, often on his blog StillSUDAN.
Laura Mann is a sociologist and research affiliate of the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa, particularly Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda, where she has conducted collaborative research on ICTs and digitisation within global agriculture. Before joining the LSE as an assistant professor, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford and at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, and received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She is on the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy.
This webinar was co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies.
Historically Algeria has had its ups and downs with the Gulf states. During the Arab Spring, Algeria was at odds with the assertive and proactive approach from GCC states, most notably in Libya, where Algeria opposed interventions and involvement from Qatar and the UAE. In line with its commitment to non-interventionism, the country also rejected involvement in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen in 2015. More recently, Algiers remained neutral throughout the intra-GCC rift, an easier accomplishment due to the lack of economic engagement and personalised ties it has with the monarchies, when compared with its neighbours.
During this webinar, speakers explored this historical background, and took stock of the geo-political and economic relations between Algeria and the countries of the GCC.
Arslan Chikhaoui is Chairman of Nord Sud Ventures, a consultancy company established in Algeria in 1993. He is a member of the Defense and Security Forum Advisory Board, the World Economic Forum Expert Council and the UNSCR 1540 Civil Forum. Arslan is a visiting lecturer at both the Algerian Staff Academy and Algerian Civil Defense Academy. He is active in various Track II task forces such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Security in the Mediterranean Region, the Maghreb and Sahel, WMD Free Zone in MENA, and Security Sector Reform (SSR) in North Africa. He has served as Senior Advisor to the Algerian Institute for Strategy Studies (1991-1994) and as Senior Coordinator of the Development Aid and Cooperation Programs for Algeria (1982-1990). He contributed to the report Algérie, Perspective 2005 (Algeria: Forecast 2005) carried out in 1991/92, and has been involved in the development of the Algerian non-hydrocarbon export policy and the restructuring and privatization policies of Algerian SOCs.
Fatiha Dazi-Héni is a Middle East researcher specializing on the GCC monarchies at L’Institut de recherche stratégique de l'École militaire (IRSEM). Fatiha also lectures at Sciences Po Lille where she teaches history and socio-political developments in the Arabian Peninsula. Fatiha is author of L’Arabie saoudite en 100 questions (Tallandier, 2020). She is also a contributor to the Arab Reform Initative's e-book A Way Out of the Inferno? Rebuilding Security in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen (2017) and to Yahyia Zubir’s edited book The Politics of Algeria Domestic issues and International Relations (Routledge, 2019). She recently published, The New Saudi Leadership and its Impact on Regional Policy (The International Spectator, Italian Journal of International Affairs, Nov 2021).
Sebastian Sons is a researcher at the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO-Bonn). Previously, he served as an advisor for the Regional Programme “Cooperation with Arab Donors” (CAD) of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). As a political analyst, he is consulted by German and international political institutions as well as by international journalists to provide expertise on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Among many other articles and analyses on Saudi Arabia, he published the book Built on Sand: Saudi Arabia – A Problematic Ally (in German) in 2016. He also conducted a study with the title A new “Pivot to the Maghreb” or “more of the same”? The transformative shift of the Gulf engagement in North Africa in 2021. Sebastian holds a Ph.D. from the Humboldt University Berlin with a thesis on media discourses on labor migration from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia.
This event was the launch of the special issue 'Building Sustainable Peace in Iraq' published in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.
Peacebuilding and transitional justice are viewed as integral components of statebuilding in post-conflict spaces. This special issue critically evaluates statebuilding and peacebuilding in Iraq through macro and micro-level analyses of Iraq's political development following foreign-imposed regime change.
Ruba Ali Al-Hassani is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University's Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion and Project SEPAD. Her research employs interdisciplinary methodologies in the study of state-society relations in Iraq and beyond to centre and amplify voices on the ground in public discourse, analysis, and policy. Ruba's research interests also include the Sociology of Law, transitional justice, crime, social control, and social movements. She has taught Sociology at her alma maters York University and Trent University. Ruba holds an LL.M. in transitional justice, as she completes her Ph.D. at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. She sits on the Board of Directors at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture and co-founded the Canadian Association for Muslim Women in Law. Ruba wrote the article 'Storytelling: Restorative Approaches to Post-2003 Iraq Peacebuilding' featured in this special issue.
Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an Associate Professor of History at California State University San Marcos and Visiting Professor at the IE University School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, Spain. He is co-author of Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008), The Modern History of Iraq, with Phebe Marr (Routledge 2017), and A Concise History of the Middle East (Routledge, 2018). Ibrahim wrote the article 'Demobilization Minus Disarmament and Reintegration: Iraq’s Security Sector from the US Invasion to the Covid-19 Pandemic' featured in this special issue.
Shamiran Mako is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Shamiran co-authored the introduction to this special issue 'Evaluating the Pitfalls of External Statebuilding in Post-2003 Iraq (2003–2021)' with Alistair D. Edgar, as well as the article 'Subverting Peace: The Origins and Legacies of de-Ba’athification in Iraq'.
Toby Dodge is a Professor in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. His publications include Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism (Abingdon: Routledge) and Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York and London: Columbia University Press and Hurst & Co). He has published papers in Nations and Nationalism, Historical Sociology, The Review of International Studies, International Affairs, International Peacekeeping and Third World Quarterly. Toby wrote the article 'The Failure of Peacebuilding in Iraq: The Role of Consociationalism and Political Settlements' featured in this special issue.
Kuwait, a leading emitter of Greenhouse Gasses and exporter of hydrocarbons, in recent years has experienced the severe impact of climate change with record breaking temperatures, deadly floods and increasingly severe dust storms. The Government of Kuwait has recognized that the global transition away from fossil fuels and efforts to limit global warming will have profound implications for the country’s economy, environment and social life.
The event launched 'The Quiet Emergency: Experiences and Understandings of Climate Change in Kuwait', a new report from the LSE Kuwait Programme project 'Sustaining Kuwait in Unsustainable Times' that provides a grounded account of climate change in Kuwait. It examines how the inhabitants of Kuwait (both citizens and non-citizens) understand and experience climate change, drawing on a series of focus groups, a media review, an analysis of the December 2020 Kuwait parliamentary elections, and over 30 interviews with key stakeholders based in Kuwait. The researchers discussed the key findings from the report, including the extent to which climate change is impacting daily life, how politicians are addressing the question, the generational divide, and the unequal impact of climate change within Kuwait.
Deen Sharp is an LSE Fellow in Human Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE, whose research focuses on the political economy of urbanization in the Middle East. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He holds a PhD in Earth Environmental Sciences (Geography Track) at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, a MSc in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and BA in Human Geography from Queen Mary University.
Samia Alduaij is a Senior Environmental Specialist with experience working for the World Bank and with United Nations Development Programme. Her work has consisted mostly of operational projects and technical assistance programs related to environmental policy, management, governance, solid waste managment, marine issues, the sustainable development goals and climate change. Prior to the World Bank, she worked for Kuwait Petroleum International in Denmark and the Scientific Center in Kuwait. She is currently working for the Center for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences in the UK and the British Embassy in Kuwait on an environmental sustainability programme, with a focus on climate change awareness and outreach ahead of COP 26 in November 2021. She is a member of the Voluntary Advisory Committee under the Supreme Council for the Environment in Kuwait. She holds a Master's degree in Environment, Politics and Globalization from King’s College, London.
Abrar Alshammari is a PhD student at Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies department. Her research explores sociopolitical issues relating to citizenship and inequality in the Arabian Peninsula. She graduated with an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where she wrote her dissertation on the intersection of cultural production and politics in Kuwait. She is fluent in English and her native language is Arabic.
Kanwal Tareq Hameed is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, and member of the Gulf Studies department and the European Centre for Palestine Studies. She works on modern histories of the Gulf. Her interests include critical histories, gender studies, the role for academia beyond the university, and social justice.
Courtney Freer is a Visiting Fellow with the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously, Courtney was an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre.
This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was a launch for Cengiz Çandar's latest book 'Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds'.
The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey.
In this book, Çandar weaves an account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow.
This book combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East.
Cengiz Çandar is a distinguished visiting scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies. He is a scholar and journalist, and a leading expert in Turkey on the Middle East. As President Turgut Özal’s advisor in the 1990s, Çandar was the main architect of the Turkish-Kurdish rapprochement initiative.
Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre and co-founder of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series. He joined the Centre when it opened in 2010. Robert is responsible for running the Centre's operations, research activities, fundraising and development. He oversees the events and publications programmes, research projects and public outreach. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movement in Syria.
This event was the launch of the paper 'In-between Identities and Cultures: Ms Marvel and the Representation of Young Muslim Women' by Manmit Bhambra and Jennifer Jackson-Preece. You can read the paper here: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/110724/
Can superheroes tell us something important about changing public attitudes towards young Muslim women? To answer this question, the authors compare how young people in different locations in the Middle East and beyond react to the portrayal of the superhero Ms. Marvel as a young Muslim woman. Their findings suggest that a superhero like Ms. Marvel can create a global discourse on gender and Islam that transcends specific cultural contexts.
Manmit Bhambra is Research Officer in the Religion and Global Society Unit at LSE and is coordinating its inaugural project, Strengthening Religious Cooperation in Global London. The project is exploring the impact of COVID-19 on interfaith relations and the potential for interfaith collaboration in these circumstances. Her research interests are centred around identity politics and formation, ethnic, religious and national identities as well as the broader themes of race, inclusion and minority rights. She has recently worked on research projects with young people at LSE’s European Institute and Middle East Centre. She is also Lecturer in Global Politics at Imperial College London.
Jennifer Jackson-Preece is an Associate Professor in Nationalism, with a joint appointment in both the European Institute and the Department of International Relations, LSE. Jennifer's research interests include: normative responses to nationalism, ethnic conflict and religious intolerance; human and minority rights; multiculturalism; minorities and migration in Europe. Since the 1990s, she has had a sustained engagement with problems and practices of minorities and migrants.
Dima Issa is a Senior Lecturer of Mass Media and Communication at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. Her research has primarily focused on Arab diaspora and media consumption, looking at ways in which identity is constructed and reconstructed through space and time. In addition, her interests include gender and representation, popular culture and audience studies, new media and technologies and social networking. Before academia, Dima worked in the corporate sector in media relations, publications and website management as well as in broadcast journalism.
Polly Withers is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre, where she leads the project “Neoliberal Visions: Gendering Consumer Culture and its Resistances in the Levant”. Polly’s interdisciplinary work questions and explores how gender, sexuality, race, and class intersect in popular culture and commercial media in the global south. She is particularly interested in examining how different media and cultural modalities frame, produce, and/or challenge dominant subjectivities and social relations in the Middle East and beyond. In her current work she consider how gendered images in neoliberal and commercial media practices reflect and communicate shifts in gender and sexuality norms in post-Oslo Palestine, which will shortly be expanded to incorporate Jordan and Lebanon.
Why is the Middle East a crisis factory, and how can it be fixed? What does the future look like for its 500 million people? And what role should the West play?
Iyad El-Baghdadi and Ahmed Gatnash tell the story of the modern Middle East as a series of broken promises. They chart the entrenchment of tyranny, terrorism and foreign intervention, showing how these systems of oppression simultaneously feed off and battle each other.
Exploring demographic, economic and social trends, the authors paint a picture of the region’s prospects that is alarming yet hopeful. Finally, they present ambitious and thoughtful ideas that reject both aggressive military intervention and cynical deals with dictators.
This book, written by two children of the region, is about the failures of history, and the reasons for hope. The Middle East Crisis Factory offers a bold vision for those seeking peace and democracy in the Middle East.
Iyad El-Baghdadi is a Palestinian writer, activist and entrepreneur, and co-founder/president of the Kawaakibi Foundation. He was jailed and expelled from his lifelong home in the UAE for human rights activism, and today lives in Oslo, where he was granted asylum. He is a fellow at Norwegian liberal think tank Civita and board member at Munathara, the Arab debate NGO. He tweets @iyad_elbaghdadi.
Ahmed Gatnash is a British-Libyan activist and entrepreneur. He is co-founder and director of operations of the Kawaakibi Foundation, and hosts its Arab Tyrant Manual podcast. He tweets @gatnash.
Rim Turkmani is a Research Fellow at the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She directs the Syria conflict research programme at the Unit. Her policy-oriented research work focuses on identity politics, legitimate governance, transforming war economy it into peace economy and the relationship between local and external drivers of the conflict.
No new episode this week, but we're working on something that requires your help. Do you know any interesting facts, stories or folk tales about the names of dishes from the region? If so we want to hear from you! Drop us an email or contact us on Instagram to get involved.
Instagram: @instantcoffee.pod Email: n.almanasfi@lse.ac.uk; r.sleiman-haidar@lse.ac.uk
Over a year ago, on 4 August 2020, one of the world’s most powerful non-nuclear explosions devastated Beirut, killing 218 people. While Lebanon dominated global news headlines then, attention has since fizzled. Amidst political stagnation, disastrous inflation and shortages in basic commodities from fuel to medicine, Lebanon seems in free fall.
In this webinar, nearly two years on from the 17 October Revolution, we hear from speakers active in the fields of politics, labour union organising, urban space and law, who will address the aftermath of the Beirut explosion, the future of political activism, the upcoming elections and what may be emerging in Lebanon.
Ghida Frangieh is a lawyer and researcher based in Beirut. She has been a member of the Legal Agenda since 2011 and is currently the head of its Strategic Litigation Unit. The Legal Agenda is a law and society research and advocacy organization with offices in Beirut and Tunis. Ghida recently worked on producing a legal guide for the victims of the Beirut blast of 4 August 2020 to support their path to justice. She holds a Master’s degree in Applied Human Rights from France and has produced various publications related to social justice and human rights issues. She is also a founding member of Ruwad Al-Houkouk Association and the Lawyers Committee for the Defense of Protesters.
Ibrahim Halawi is a Teaching Fellow in International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London. His research interests focus on theories and histories of counterrevolution and revolution, with an emphasis on counterrevolution and revolution in the Middle East. He has published in peer-reviewed journals and established outlets on Lebanon, as well as revolution and sectarianism more broadly. Ibrahim is also the Secretary of Foreign Relations for Citizens in a State party, a progressive secular Lebanese party.
Abir Saksouk graduated as an architect in 2005, and later did her masters in Urban Development Planning. She is co-founder and co-director of Public Works Studio, a research-based organization that addresses spatial inequality in Lebanon. Her primary focus includes urbanism and law, property and shared space, and right to the city of marginalized communities. Abir is also a member of the Legal Agenda and co-founder of Dictaphone Group.
Omar Al-Ghazzi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. His work focuses on questions around the global power asymmetries in the reporting and representation of conflict. He researches digital journalism, the politics of time and memory, and the geopolitics of popular culture, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa.
يمكنكم الاستماع الى التسجيل الصوتي باللغة العربية للجلسة الثانية في يوم 29 سبتمبر/أيلول من مؤتمر مركز الشرق الأوسط العراق عشية الإنتحابات: بداية عهد جديد أم استمرار للوضع الراهن؟
إخلاء مسؤولية: هذه التسجيلات للترجمة العربية الفورية المباشرة لذلك من الممكن أن تحتوي على بعض الأخطاء أو على فجوات في الترجمة
يدير الجلسة: مايكل ماسون – مركز الشرق األوسط • مها ياسين – معهد كلينجنديل • KESK - باسمة عبدالرحمن • عزام علوش – طبيعة العراق •
This is the English recording of Panel 2 from the 29th September Conflict Research Programme-Iraq Conference 'Iraq on the Eve of Elections: A new era or return to the status quo?'.
Iraq is considered to be one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the Middle East. By 2059, temperatures in the country are set to rise by 2.53 degrees, while rainfall will decline by around nine percent. Already, water in Iraq’s rivers and lakes are at critical levels and mismanagement of water resources coupled with outdated farming methods have resulted in increasing rates of desertification. Among the biggest challenges that Iraq will face in the coming decades is how to adapt to its drastically altered climate and mitigate the effects of climate change. Failure to effectively deal with the impacts of the climate crisis will only exacerbate existing socio-economic instability, with high temperatures and the government’s inability to provide services such as electricity and water being historical triggers for civil upheavals in Iraq’s recent past. In this session panellists will discuss the environmental challenges facing Iraq and examine ways to tackle them going forward.
Chair: •Michael Mason – LSE Middle East Centre
Speakers: • Maha Yassin – Clingendael Institute • Basima Abdulrahman – KESK • Azzam Alwash –Nature Iraq
يمكنكم الاستماع الى التسجيل الصوتي باللغة العربية للجلسة الأولى في يوم 29 سبتمبر/أيلول من مؤتمر مركز الشرق الأوسط 'العراق عشية الإنتحابات: بداية عهد جديد أم استمرار للوضع الراهن؟
إخلاء مسؤولية: هذه التسجيلات للترجمة العربية الفورية المباشرة لذلك من الممكن أن تحتوي على بعض الأخطاء أو على فجوات في الترجمة
تدير الجلسة: هناء إدور –جمعية األمل العراقية • إيناس جبار –شبكة النساء العراقيات • عمر الجفّال –صحافي مستقل • LSE طيف الخضيري –مركز الشرق األوسط •
This is the English and Arabic recording of Panel 1 from the 29th September Conflict Research Programme-Iraq Conference 'Iraq on the Eve of Elections: A new era or return to the status quo?'. Unfortunately due to technical issues we are unable to upload the English interpretation of Omar Al Jaffal and Inas Jabbar's presentations and answers. We are very sorry for this inconvenience.
In October 2019 over a million Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad and the Southern Provinces calling for employment and basic services, such as clean water and electricity. Their demands later evolved to include calls for the overhaul of the post-invasion political system, a caretaker government made up of independent technocrats and early elections. The protests forced key concessions from the political elite, including the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abed Al Mahdi, the introduction of a new electoral law and elections to be held in October 2021. In addition, they saw the creation of a number of independent civil organisations and political parties meant to act as an organised opposition to the political class that has dominated Iraqi politics since 2003. However, in response to the increased use of violent coercion and targeted assassinations against activists, many have since began to campaign for a widespread boycott of the upcoming elections. In light of these developments, this panel will ask what’s next for the Iraqi protest movement.
Chair: • Hanaa Edwar – Iraqi Al Amal Association
Speakers: • Inas Jabbar – Iraqi Women Network • Omar Al Jaffal – Journalist • Taif Alkhudary – LSE Middle East Centre
يمكنكم الاستماع الى التسجيل الصوتي باللغة العربية للجلسة الرابعة في يوم 28 سبتمبر/أيلول من مؤتمر مركز الشرق الأوسط 'العراق عشية الإنتحابات: بداية عهد جديد أم استمرار للوضع الراهن؟
إخلاء مسؤولية: هذه التسجيلات للترجمة العربية الفورية المباشرة لذلك من الممكن أن تحتوي على بعض الأخطاء أو على فجوات في الترجمة
تدير الجلسة: زهراء علي –جامعة روتجرز • مروة عبد الرضا –باحثة مستقلة • زينب كايا –جامعة شفيلد • غولاي بور – باحثة مستقلة •
This is the English and Arabic recording of Panel 4 from the 28th September Conflict Research Programme-Iraq Conference 'Iraq on the Eve of Elections: A new era or return to the status quo?'. Unfortunately due to technical issues we are unable to upload the English interpretation of Marwa Abdul Ridha's presentation and answers. We are very sorry for this inconvenience.
Despite the decades long struggle of Iraqi feminists, women in the country continue to face structural violence and have their rights consistently denied. In March 2021 the Iraqi government passed the Yazidi Survivors Law, putting in place a reparations framework for women and girls from minority communities who were subjected to violence at the hands of Daesh. While this has largely been heralded as a positive development, the law contains key omissions including failing to account for the rights of children born out of sexual violence and their mothers. In addition, despite a surge in cases of domestic violence in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, political parties have continued to block the passing of an Anti- Domestic Violence Law in Federal Iraq. In Kurdistan, where a similar law was passed in 2011, the government has failed to allocate the resources necessary for its proper implementation. In this panel, speakers will discuss the current state of women’s legal rights in Iraq, including key considerations for the implementation of the Yazidi Survivors Law and the need to enact a domestic violence law in Federal Iraq.
Chair: • Zahra Ali – Rutgers University
Speakers: • Marwa Abdul Ridha – Independent Researcher • Zeynep Kaya – Sheffield University • Güley Bor – Independent Researcher
يمكنكم الاستماع الى التسجيل الصوتي باللغة العربية للجلسة الثالثة في يوم 28 سبتمبر/أيلول من مؤتمر مركز الشرق الأوسط 'العراق عشية الإنتحابات: بداية عهد جديد أم استمرار للوضع الراهن؟
إخلاء مسؤولية: هذه التسجيلات للترجمة العربية الفورية المباشرة لذلك من الممكن أن تحتوي على بعض الأخطاء أو على فجوات في الترجمة
LSE تدير الجلسة: جيسيكا واتكينز – مركز الشرق األوسط • بلقيس والي – هيومن رايتس ووتش • ريناد منصور – تشاتام هاوس • إينا رودولف –المركز الدولي لدراسة التطرف •
This is the English recording of Panel 3 from the 28th September Conflict Research Programme-Iraq Conference 'Iraq on the Eve of Elections: A new era or return to the status quo?'.
Since the beginning of mass protests in Iraq in October 2019, the country has seen a sharp increase in the use of violent coercion against government critics. A coordinated campaign of violence, including the use of live bullets, military grade tear gas canisters, targeted assassinations, snipers and enforced disappearances resulted in the extrajudicial killing of over 700 protesters and the injury of at least 25,000 others. While this eventually forced protesters to go home, the campaign led by militias from the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) has continued unabated targeting political activists and forcing many to flee Iraq. In Kurdistan, the government has also launched a crackdown on activists and journalists known to be outspoken government critics, with at least five sentenced to jail terms following flawed trials. This closing up of civic space comes against the backdrop of the increasing power and influence of the PMF with Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi unable to hold them to account despite several attempts to do so. In light of these events, this panel will discuss the role of the PMF in Iraq, the systemic use of violence against government critics and prospects for accountability.
Chair: • Jessica Watkins – LSE Middle East Centre
Speakers: • Belkis Wille – Human Rights Watch • Renad Mansour – Chatham House • Inna Rudolf – International Centre for the Study of Radicalization
This is the English recording of Panel 2 from the 28th September Conflict Research Programme-Iraq Conference 'Iraq on the Eve of Elections: A new era or return to the status quo?'.
Iraq has long been on the verge of economic collapse. This was expounded in April 2020, when the fall in oil prices in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic meant that the government struggled to pay public sector workers for several months. In response, Finance Minister Ali Allawi published a White Paper meant as a road map for the country’s economic recovery and later, in January of this year, devalued the dinar by 20% as a means of stimulating internal markets. Yet, 90% of all government revenues continue to come from oil sales leaving Iraq’s economy vulnerable to the volatility of global oil markets and state sanctioned corruption sees up to 30% of public funds lost every year. What is more, while the public payroll has more than tripled since 2003, the development of the private sector continues to be hampered by poor infrastructure and limited access to capital. As a consequence, youth unemployment in Iraq stands at 25.2% and the World Bank estimates that 5.5 million Iraqis are at risk of being pushed into poverty. This panel examines the success of reforms undertaken by Mustafa Al Kadhimi’s government and opportunities for further reforms, as well as the socio-political consequences of economic complacency.
Chair: •Chloe Cornish – Financial Times
Speakers: • Ahmed Tabaqchali – Institute of Regional and International Studies • Ali Al Mawlawi – Independent Consultant • Alia Moubayed – Jefferies International
يمكنكم الاستماع الى التسجيل الصوتي باللغة العربية للجلسة الأولى في يوم 28 سبتمبر/أيلول من مؤتمر مركز الشرق الأوسط "العراق عشية الإنتحابات:بداية عهد جديد أم استمرار للوضع الراهن؟
إخلاء مسؤولية: هذه التسجيلات للترجمة العربية الفورية المباشرة لذلك من الممكن أن تحتوي على بعض الأخطاء أو على فجوات في الترجمة
يدير الجلسة: توبي دودج - مركز الشرق األوسط مارسين الشمري - معهد الدراسات اإلقليمية والدولية سجاد جياد – باحث مستقل لهيب هيجل - مجموعة األزمات الدولية
This is the English recording of Panel 1 from the 28th September Conflict Research Programme-Iraq Conference 'Iraq on the Eve of Elections: A new era or return to the status quo?'.
In October Iraqis will go to the polls for the sixth time since regime change to vote in early elections, held as a key concession to the demands of the Tishreen protest movement. The elections will be the first to be based on the new Elections Law passed in December 2019. This divides Iraq into 83 electoral districts in a bid to make it easier for smaller parties and independent candidates to run in elections. Despite this, the elections have been marred in controversy, with political activists often becoming the targets of threats and assassinations. This has resulted in widespread calls to boycott elections in protest against the inequitable electoral environment. In this session, panellists will discuss the likely outcome of elections and what they could mean for reform of Iraq’s political system.
Chair: • Toby Dodge – LSE Middle East Centre
Speakers: • Marsin Al Shamary – Institute of Regional and International Studies • Sajad Jiyad – Independent Researcher • Lahib Higel – International Crisis Group
This webinar, co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies, was a launch for Dr. Natalya Vince's latest book 'The Algerian War, The Algerian Revolution'.
This book provides a new analysis of the contested history of one of the most violent wars of decolonisation of the twentieth century – the Algerian War/the Algerian Revolution between 1954 and 1962. It brings together an engaging account of its origins, course and legacies with an incisive examination of how interpretations of the conflict have shifted and why it continues to provoke intense debate.
Locating the war in a century-long timeframe stretching from 1914 to the present, it multiplies the perspectives from which events can be seen. The pronouncements of politicians are explored alongside the testimony of rural women who provided logistical support for guerrillas in the National Liberation Front. The broader context of decolonisation and the Cold War is considered alongside the experiences of colonised men serving in the French army. Unpacking the historiography of the end of a colonial empire, the rise of anti-colonial nationalism and their post-colonial aftermaths, it provides an accessible insight into how history is written.
Natalya Vince is a historian of modern and contemporary Algeria and France and reader in North African and French studies at the University of Portsmouth. She is interested in oral history, decolonisation, gender studies and state- and nation-building in Algeria and France, but also more broadly in Europe and Africa. Her works include Our Fighting Sisters: Nation, Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954-2012 (Manchester University Press, 2015), The Algerian War, The Algerian Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020) and the ongoing documentary project Generation Independence: a People’s History.
This webinar, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was a discussion around the new and revised edition of David McDowall's book 'A Modern History of the Kurds'.
In this latest edition, McDowall analyses the momentous transformations affecting Kurdish socio-politics in the last 20 years. This fourth edition includes new analysis of the Kurdish experience in Syria; the role of political Islam in Kurdish society and Kurds' involvement in Islamist Jihad; and issues surrounding women and gender that were previously overlooked, from the impact of the women's equality movement to how patriarchal practices within the Kurdish community still limit its progress. The foundation text for Kurdish Studies, this book highlights in detail the changing situation of the Kurds across the Middle East.
The division of the Kurdish people among the modern nation states of Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran and their struggle for national rights continues to influence the politics of the Middle East. David McDowall's ground-breaking history of the Kurds from the 19th century to the present day documents the underlying dynamics of the Kurdish question. Drawing extensively on primary sources - including documents from The National Archive and interviews with prominent Kurds - the book examines the interplay of old and new aspects of the struggle, the importance of local rivalries and leadership within Kurdish society, and the failure of modern states to respond to the challenge of Kurdish nationalism.
David McDowall turned to full time writing in 1984 and has written on Lebanon, Palestine, the Kurds and also on Britain and the British landscape since then. The first edition of A Modern History of the Kurds appeared in 1996. The new edition is the first major revision since. McDowall studied Islamic History with Arabic, followed by postgraduate studies in Modern Middle East History. His working life has been varied, with almost seven years in the army, followed by five years with the British Council in India and Iraq, and two years spent with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in Lebanon and Austria. He was also an NGO relief worker in Lebanon during Israel’s invasion in 1982.
Zeynep Kaya is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Kaya previously worked at SOAS and the LSE. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the LSE. Her main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender. She has recently published a monograph entitled Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism with Cambridge University Press. Zeynep is co-editor of I.B. Tauris-Bloomsbury’s book series on Kurdish studies and co-convenor of Kurdish Studies Series with the LSE Middle East Centre. She is also an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
Instant Coffee is back! And on season 2, we’re exploring our favourite topic, food. We are going beyond the plate to understand how the complexities of food, farming and cuisine in the region are shaping people’s writing, thinking and organising. We’ll be speaking with inspiring individuals who are grappling with culinary appropriation, access to food and food sovereignty, archiving the region’s recipes and more.
To listen to the rest of our interview with Fadi Kattan and to get access to all past and upcoming episodes of Instant Coffee, just search for ‘Instant Coffee’ on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Play or wherever you get your podcast.
We also have a brand new Instagram account where we post our latest episodes as well as beautiful illustrations created by Rawand Issa for each one of them. Find us on @instantcoffee.pod.
This webinar, co-organised with Boston University School of Law's International Human Rights Clinic, explored research outputs from their project on the challenges of statelessness in the region.
To find out more about the project click here: https://www.bu.edu/law/current-students/jd-student-resources/experiential-learning/clinics/international-human-rights-clinic/
The understanding and regulation of who is and who is not a member of each state, and why communities have been rendered stateless, has long been a regional challenge and touches on some of the most fundamental concepts regarding nationality in the Middle East and North Africa. The webinar will explore trends such as the link between statelessness and displacement, children's rights, civil documentation and discrimination, highlighting region-wide advocacy initiatives that can fill in knowledge gaps on this issue and address statelessness challenges.
Susan Akram directs the International Human Rights Clinic at Boston University's School of Law, in which she supervises students engaged in international advocacy in domestic, international, regional, and UN fora. Her research and publications focus on immigration, asylum, refugee, forced migration and human and civil rights issues, with an interest in the Middle East, the Arab, and Muslim world.
Zahra Albarazi is a human rights lawyer and activist working in the field of statelessness. Zahra is co-director of the Syrian Legal Development Programme. Her particular interests are statelessness in the Middle East and North Africa and the impacts of statelessness and discriminatory nationality laws on women.
Maysa Ayoub is the Associate Director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at the American University in Cairo. She has over 15 years of research and teaching experiences in the field of migration and refugee studies. She researched and published in the field on issues related to asylum policies, livelihoods of refugees, and public opinion and media attitude towards refugees and immigrants.
Lina Abou Habib is the Interim Director of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut. . Lina Abou-Habib was previously the Executive Director of Women’s Learning Partnership. She has worked extensively with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and with several international and regional organisations in designing and managing programmes in the Middle East and North Africa region on issues related to gender and citizenship, economy, trade and gender and leadership.
Bronwen Manby is a leading authority on nationality law and statelessness in Africa. She has written on a wide range of human rights issues in Africa, with particular interests in South Africa and Nigeria (especially the oil industry in the Niger Delta), and in continental developments in human rights law.
This event was a book launch for 'Civilization and the Making of the State in Lebanon and Syria' by Dr. Andrew Delatolla.
The book argues that the modern state, from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period, has consistently been used as a means to measure civilizational engagement and attainment. This volume historicizes this dynamic, examining how it impacted state-making in Lebanon and Syria. By putting social, political, and economic pressure on the Ottoman Empire to replicate the modern state in Europe, the book examines processes of racialization, nationalist development, continued imperial expansion, and resistance that became embedded in the state as it was assembled. By historicizing post-imperial and post-colonial state formation in Lebanon and Syria, it is possible to engage in a conceptual separation from the modern state, abandoning the ongoing reproduction of the state as a standard, or benchmark, of civilization and progress.
Andrew Delatolla is a Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Leeds, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. His research interests centre on issues of race, gender, and sexuality in relation to statehood and state formation. His research tends to focus on issues of violence and exclusion from an international historical political sociological lens, examining the international relations of the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and the Ottoman Empire).
Shourideh C. Molavi is a writer and scholar specializing in critical state theory, migration and border studies, and trained with a background in International Humanitarian Law. She has over 15 years of academic and fieldwork experience in the Middle East—focusing on Israel/Palestine—on the topics of border practices, citizenship and statelessness, and human and minority rights, with an emphasis on the relationship between the law, violence and power. Since 2014, she has worked as a Lead Researcher on Israel-Palestine and fieldworker with Forensic Architecture, an interdisciplinary research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Mai Taha is a Lecturer in Law at Goldsmiths, University of London. Grounded in anti-racist socialist-feminism, her research focuses on how the organization of race, class and gender is a fundamental way of forming social hierarchies through law. She has written on international law and empire, labour movements, gender relations, care work and social reproduction in the interwar and postcolonial Middle East. She is also interested in the areas of law and literature, and law and film, exploring alternative archives, artefacts and literary narratives. She is currently working on the legal politics of refusal in Mandate Palestine, focusing on labour and gender relations during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt.
The PowerPoint presentations from the event can be viewed here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2021/kuwaits-urbanisation
This Kuwait Programme event was a discussion about two research projects - 'Public Space in Kuwait: From User Behaviour to Policy-making' led by Alexandra Gomes and Asseel Al-Ragam, and 'Towards an Equitable Transport System in Kuwait' led by Adeel Muhammad.
This webinar will explore how Kuwait’s urbanisation trends and car-centric development have shaped planning, urban design, and individual behaviour with consequences for public health and the environment. The webinar included two presentations. The first from Alexandra Gomes and Asseel Al-Ragam on ‘Public space in Kuwait’ looked at some of the challenges and opportunities facing Kuwait’s residential neighbourhoods and everyday use of public space. The second from Reem Alfahad on ‘Social justice, transport and accessibility’ explored transport spatial inequalities at the city scale.
Alexandra Gomes is a Research Officer at LSE Cities, where she is responsible for coordinating the Centre’s socio-spatial analysis across a range of projects. Focusing on urban studies, comparative analysis, urban inequalities, public space and urban walkability. She also teaches at UCL’s The Bartlett School of Planning, where she is finishing her PhD.
Asseel Al-Ragam is Associate Professor of Architecture, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, Research, and Graduate Studies and Director of the Architecture Graduate Program at Kuwait University’s College of Architecture. She is an award-winning author with published research on Kuwait’s built environment. She was a research fellow and lecturer at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture, Paris. She works as an architecture and planning consultant and is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee at Kuwait’s Private University Council.
Sharifa Alshalfan is an architect, urban researcher and educator. She is part of a team of experts developing housing and urban policy recommendations at the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences. She also works as a consultant on urban development at the World Bank and teaches periodically at Kuwait University at the College of Architecture. Her work has been published by CITY, LSE Kuwait Programme, LSE Cities and the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs.
Adeel Muhammad is a visiting post doctoral researcher at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds. Previously, Adeel worked as a Research Officer at LSE Cities, on projects related to mapping and analysing the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban expansion and transport mobility across Asia and Africa.
Reem Alfahad holds an MSc in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Public Policy Studies from Duke University. She is most interested in the cultural and social dynamics of inclusion, particularly as they relate to urban spaces. Most recently, through the LSE Kuwait Programme, she has focused on mobility access in Kuwait and the different sociocultural dimensions that include or exclude different groups from being able to move freely. Previously, she worked with Kantar Public in London, UK, and the Cultural Secretariat of Medellin, Colombia, among others. Outside of academic research, she is working on an audio documentary series focusing on globalized gentrification.
Dr Courtney Freer is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE.
This webinar was the launch of Omar Sirri's paper 'Destructive Creations: Social-Spatial Transformations in Contemporary Baghdad' published as part of the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series.
This working paper examines social-spatial transformations in contemporary Baghdad by zooming in on two of the city’s most frequented consumer districts, Karada and Mansour. By way of ethnographic fieldwork, Sirri foregrounds the entanglements between violence, property and consumption. Baghdad’s transformations over nearly two decades are not simply a product of urban violence; nor are they only a result of the privatisation of formerly public property; nor are they merely a consequence of changes in everyday consumer patterns. Rather, the city’s transformations stem from the co-constitution of all three forces. In Baghdad, violence, property and consumption are inextricably linked. Their enmeshment has in turn spawned social-spatial transformations benefitting the political-economic interests of an elite few at the expense of the urban commons.
Omar Sirri is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation, Scarecrows of the State: Security Checkpoints in Contemporary Baghdad, is an ethnography of urban checkpoint practices in Iraq’s capital city. He is currently an Affiliated Scholar at the Issam Fares Institute for International Affairs and Public Policy at the American University of Beirut.
Toby Dodge is a Professor in the Department of International Relations, where he is Deputy Head of the Department (PhD and Research). He is also Kuwait Professor and Director of the Kuwait Programme, Middle East Centre. Toby currently serves as Iraq Research Director for the DFID-funded Conflict Research Programme (CRP). From 2013–18, Toby was Director of the Middle East Centre. Toby's research concentrates on the evolution of the post-colonial state in the international system. The main focus of this work on the developing world is the state in the Middle East, specifically Iraq.
This event was a book launch for 'Israeli Foreign Policy Since the End of the Cold War' by Dr. Amnon Aran.
This is the first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the Middle East and selected world powers including China, India, the European Union and the United States since the end of the Cold War. It provides an integrated account of these foreign policy spheres and serves as an essential historical context for the domestic political scene during these pivotal decades. The book demonstrates how foreign policy is shaped by domestic factors, which are represented as three concentric circles of decision-makers, the security network and Israeli national identity. Told from this perspective, Amnon Aran highlights the contributions of the central individuals, societal actors, domestic institutions, and political parties that have informed and shaped Israeli foreign policy decisions, implementation, and outcomes. Aran demonstrates that Israel has pursued three foreign policy stances since the end of the Cold War - entrenchment, engagement and unilateralism - and explains why.
This event was co-organised with the Kurdish Studies Programme at the University of Central Florida. It was the book launch of 'Kurds and Yezidis in the Middle East: Shifting Identities, Borders, and the Experience of Minority Communities'.
The diversity of Kurdish communities across the Middle East is now recognized as central to understanding both the challenges and opportunities for their representation and politics. Yet little scholarship has focused on the complexities within these different groups and the range of their experiences. This book diversifies the literature on Kurdish Studies by offering close analyses of subjects which have not been adequately researched, and in particular, by highlighting the Kurds' relationship to the Yazidis. Case studies include: the political ideas of Ehmede Xani, “the father of Kurdish nationalism”; Kurdish refugees in camps in Iraq; the perception of the Kurds by Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire and the Turks in modern Western Turkey; and the important connections and shared heritage of the Kurds and the Yazidis, especially in the aftermath of the 2014 ISIS attacks.
The book comprises the leading voices in Kurdish Studies and combines in-depth empirical work with theoretical and conceptual discussions to take the debates in the field in new directions. The study is divided into three thematic sections to capture new insights into the heterogeneous aspects of Kurdish history and identity. In doing so, contributors explain why we need to pay close attention to the shifting identities and the diversity of the Kurds, and what implications this has for Middle East Studies and Minority Studies more generally.
Majid Hassan Ali completed his doctoral research with a focus on religious minorities in Iraq, at the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Bamberg, Germany. He is an associate member of the Department of Yezidi Studies at the Giorgi Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. His research interest includes the difficulties and challenges the ethnic and religious minorities are facing in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East.
Ohannes Kılıçdağı researches the history of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. He was Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies at California State University in Autumn 2020. In Spring 2020 he was appointed as Nikit and Eleanora Ordjanian Visiting Professor in the department for Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University.
Güneş Murat Tezcür is the Jalal Talabani Chair and Professor at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida (UCF). He also directs UCF's Kurdish Political Studies Program. Most recently, he has edited Kurds and Yezidis in the Middle East: Shifting Identities, Borders, and the Experience of Minority Communities, and The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics. He is currently writing a book on liminal minorities in the Middle East.
Arzu Yilmaz is a visiting scholar at the University of Hamburg. She moved to Berlin in 2018 as Istanbul Policy Centre (IPC)- Mercator Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). She spent seven years in the Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRI) as a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Duhok and as the Chair of the Department of International Relations at the American University of Kurdistan.
Zeynep Kaya is a Lecturer in International Development in the Department of Social and Policy Studies, University of Bath, and a Visiting Fellow with the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously she was a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Her research looks at the relationship between gender, violence and development in conflict and post-conflict contexts.
This event was the launch of the publication 'Redefining deprivation in a conflict area: learning from the Palestinian experience using mixed methods' produced as part of the Academic Collaboration with Arab Universities Programme, led by Principal Investigators Tiziana Leone, Rita Giacaman and Weeam Hammoudeh.
Conflicts threaten public health, human security, and wellbeing. While their visible impacts garner considerable attention (such as physical disability, injury, and death), they affect populations in other important ways. This paper reviews findings from a two-year collaboration project to understand how people make sense of, and cope with, various forms of deprivation and trauma resulting from experiences of conflict and military occupation in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). Using mixed methods, the paper explores mental health and wellbeing outcomes associated with deprivation in a conflict setting.
Weeam Hammoudeh is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University and formerly ACSS (Arab Council for the Social Sciences) Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Researcher at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Birzeit University. She is interested in understanding how political and social transformations impact health, psychosocial wellbeing, and population processes, particularly in conflict areas; as well as how health systems and social institutions develop and shift in relation to political, economic, and structural factors, particularly in developing countries and post-colonial settings.
Tracy Kuo Lin is an Assistant Professor of Health Economics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research examines health policy and health system resource allocation and their impact on public health and healthcare processes. She received her PhD from the University of California, Davis and held a fellowship at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work has been published in journals such as Cancer, Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy, Globalization and Health, and Implementation Science Communication. She is a researcher on the project 'Re-Conceptualising Health in Wars and Conflicts: A New Focus on Deprivation and Suffering'.
Suzan Mitwalli is an academic researcher at the Institute of Community and Public Health - Birzeit University, and assistant coordinator of the Masters in Public Health program. Her main research interest is mental health, and she has worked for many years on intervention research with the Community Based Rehabilitation organization (CBR). She has also been involved in several research projects at the Institute relating to women’s health, population health, child health, and occupational health using quantitative and qualitative research methods.
Tiziana Leone is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics. Tiziana’s research agenda is focused around maternal and reproductive health, including a lifecourse approach to women’s health. She is currently analysing secondary data on the linkages that menarche, menopause and mid-life age have on fertility outcomes and health in later life. She has collaborated in expert roles with international organisations (eg: WHO, UNFPA and UNICEF) in tracking the progress of the MDGs and SDGs in LMICs in maternal and child health.
This Kuwait Programme event was a discussion about Dr Zeynep Kaya’s recent research on women's political participation in Kuwait. Dr Lubna Al-Kazi acted as a discussant, and Dr Courtney Freer chaired the event.
Since the introduction of women’s suffrage in 2005, the number of women elected to parliament in Kuwait has been very small. Despite this, their presence in high political office has changed the discourse around women’s political and public roles, while also generating a misogynistic backlash against women. The paper Dr Kaya will present at this event provides an overview of the discussions about women’s electoral participation in Kuwait building on 27 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 with politicians, public officers, academics and activists and the academic literature on women’s political participation. The paper captures the state of the discussions on women’s electoral participation and provides an account of what issues are emphasised and omitted in these discussions in 2019. The interviews provided important insights on the dynamics that influence women’s electoral participation in Kuwait and the strategies they used to get elected.
Dr Zeynep Kaya is a Lecturer in International Development in the Department of Social and Policy Studies, University of Bath, and a Visiting Fellow with the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously she was a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. She is interested in understanding how communities and political groups perceive, interact with and challenge international processes and dominant norms. Her research looks at the relationship between gender, violence and development in conflict and post-conflict contexts. Zeynep has a PhD in International Relations from the LSE, where she conducted research on the transformation of Kurdish nationalism and territorial identity in an international context. Her book Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020.
Dr Lubna Ahmed Al-Kazi is Director of the Women’s Research and Studies Center at Kuwait University. Lubna has been a professor in the Sociology Department at Kuwait University since 1984, after graduating from the University of Texas in 1983 with a PhD in Demography and Sociology. She was a consultant with the Population Division at the United Nations for one year from 1986-87, and in 2009 a consultant for the United Nation Development Programme, when she prepared the section on Gender and Development for the Kuwait National five-year plan 2010 – 2015. Lubna is on the editorial board of Arabic Journal Al-Thaqafa Al-Alamiah and the Journal of Arabian Studies. She is a member of the ‘Women’s Cultural and Social Society’ and ‘the Sociologists Association’ in Kuwait. She is also a member of Advisory Board of Vital Voices, an women‘s organization established by Hillary Clinton when she was the First Lady in the United States. Her areas of interest and research are gender, population change and family.
Dr Courtney Freer is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
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This webinar was co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies.
Sino-Algerian relations date back to the Afro-Asian Bandung conference in 1955. China’s status as first non-Arab country to recognise Algeria’s pre-independence provisional government in 1958, coupled with Algiers’ support in helping China restore its security council seat at the UN in 1971, represent key moments that consolidated the historic bilateral relationship.
Despite this early political and diplomatic alliance, economic relations did not take off until the early 2000s, propelled by Algeria’s accumulation of hydrocarbon revenues. Chinese companies obtained major billion dollar contracts in construction and infrastructure works. Despite many challenges, Algeria found in China a reliable partner supporting its development. The two countries continue to cooperate not only bilaterally, their preferred framework for economic and commercial exchange, but also through multilateral fora such as FOCAC and CASCF.
In 2014, China elevated the relationship to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, the highest level of diplomatic-cum-economic relations which Beijing extends to key partners. Algeria is also a signatory to Beijing’s flagship Belt and Road initiative. For Beijing, the North African state has a geostrategic location with proximity to Europe and to the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. The scope and strength of relations in the post-pandemic era will likely continue to strengthen.
This webinar explored the historical background and the evolution of the political and economic relations between the two countries, highlighting opportunities and challenges going forward.
Francesco Saverio Leopardi is Research Fellow at the Marco Polo Centre for Global Europe-Asia Connections, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and teaches Global Asian Studies at Ca’ Foscari International College. His research interests currently focus on the Sino-Algerian economic relations and the history of economic transformation in Algeria. He also has a long-time interest in the history of the Palestinian national movement and in 2020 he published with Palgrave Macmillan his first monograph The Palestinian Left and its Decline. Loyal Opposition.
Chuchu Zhang is Associate Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, China. She received her PhD in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research focuses on Middle Eastern Politics, China-Middle Eastern relations and China’s foreign policy. She is author of Islamist Party Mobilization: Tunisia’s Ennahda and Algeria’s HMS Compared, 1989-2014 (Palgrave, 2020). She has published in a number of peer reviewed journals including Middle East Policy, Environment and Planning: Economy and Space, Globalizations, Pacific Focus, and Chinese Political Science Review, Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies.
Yahia H. Zoubir is Professor of International Relations and International Management, and Director of Research in Geopolitics at KEDGE Business School, France. He taught at multiple universities in the United States and was a visiting faculty member at various universities in China, Europe, the United States, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Middle East and North Africa. His recent book is Algerian Politics: Domestic Issues & International Relations (Routledge, 2020). He has published in academic journals, such as Journal of Contemporary China, Foreign Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Mediterranean Politics, International Affairs, Africa Spectrum, Journal of North African Studies, Democratization, Middle East Journal, Arab Studies Quarterly, Africa Today, Middle East Policy, etc. He has also contributed many book chapters and written various articles in encyclopedias. In 2020, he was Visiting Fellow at Brookings Doha Center.
This webinar launched the book 'Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope' edited by Deen Sharp and the late Michael Sorkin.
The Gaza Strip is one of the most beleaguered environments on earth. Crammed into a space of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), 1.8 million people live under an Israeli siege, enforcing conditions that continue to plummet to ever more unimaginable depths of degradation and despair. Gaza, however, is more than an endless encyclopedia of depressing statistics. It is also a place of fortitude, resistance, and imagination; a context in which inhabitants go to remarkable lengths to create the ordinary conditions of the everyday and to reject their exceptional status. Inspired by Gaza’s inhabitants, this book builds on the positive capabilities of Gazans. It brings together designers, environmentalists, planners, activists, and scholars from Palestine and Israel, the US, the UK, India, and elsewhere to create hopeful interventions that imagine a better place for Gazans and Palestinians. Open Gaza engages with the Gaza Strip within and beyond the logics of siege and warfare, it considers how life can be improved inside the limitations imposed by the Israeli blockade and outside the idiocy of violence and warfare.
GCC countries share their national wealth with citizens through public employment and subsidies, policies that are inefficient, inequitable, economically distortive and fiscally unsustainable. This talk discusses how unconditional cash grants for adult nationals could replace government jobs and subsidies, drawing on Dr Steffen Hertog’s recent research on Kuwait. Dr Hertog's PowerPoint presentation can be viewed at https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2021/reforming-the-Gulf-rentier-state.
This webinar was the launch of Alexander Hamilton's latest report 'Is Demography Destiny? The Economic Implications of Iraq's Demography' published under the LSE Conflict Research Programme–Iraq.
In this report, Hamilton examines the fiscal and economic implications of Iraq’s current demographic trajectory and finds that, given Iraq’s almost total dependence on oil for government revenues, slight changes in the demographic transition rate could result in significant cumulative per capita expenditure changes – equivalent to $2.9bn. This paper combines the data on Iraq’s demography with projections on economic growth and oil revenues to examine how variations in demographic transition might affect public finances and hence the viability of the current social contract and offers recommendations for policy-makers.
In a recent cabinet meeting in Tehran, President Rouhani stated "Trump is dead but the nuclear deal is still alive". From the Iranian perspective, the ball is now in the United States' court to mend relations after former President Trump's policy of maximum pressure, including the withdrawal from the nuclear deal and the reimposition of sanctions on Iran.
This webinar discussed what the short-term prospects are for US-Iran relations under the Biden administration.
Hassan Ahmadian is an Assistant Professor of Middle East and North Africa studies at the University of Tehran and an Associate of the Project on Shi'ism and Global Affairs at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. He is also a Middle East security and politics fellow at the Center for Strategic Research, Tehran. Dr. Ahmadian received his PhD in Area Studies from the University of Tehran and undertook a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Iran Project, Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Fluent in Arabic, Persian, and English, his research and teaching is mainly focused on Iran’s foreign policy and international relations, political change, civil-military relations, and Islamist movements in the Middle East.
Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Senior Research Fellow at the International Security Studies department at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI, London). She is also a Non-Resident Associate Fellow in the Research Division at the NATO Defence College (NDC, Rome). Her research is concerned with security and geopolitics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Iraq’s foreign and domestic politics, drivers of radicalisation, and drones proliferation.
Ali Vaez is Iran Project Director and Senior Adviser to the President at International Crisis Group. He led Crisis Group’s efforts in helping to bridge the gaps between Iran and the P5+1 that led to the landmark 2015 nuclear deal. Previously, he served as a Senior Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and was the Iran Project Director at the Federation of American Scientists. He is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and a Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
This webinar will be the launch of Yezid Sayigh's latest report 'Praetorian Spearhead: The Role of the Military in the Evolution of Egypt’s State Capitalism 3.0' published under the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series.
In this report, Sayigh explores how military involvement in the Egyptian economy is giving rise to a new version of state capitalism. Driven by Arab socialism in the 1960s and reshaped by privatisation in the 1990s, under President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi the state has sought to bend the private sector to its capital investment strategy while continuing to profess commitment to free market economics. His administration seeks private sector investment, but exclusively on its own terms. This is demonstrated through the expansion and diversion of military economic activity in five sectors: real estate development, creation of industrial and transport hubs, rentier or extractive activities related to natural resources, relations with the private sector, and the effort to increase the state’s financial efficiency while seeking private investment to help capitalise the public sector. This approach may generate macro-level economic growth and improve the efficiency of public finances, but it also reinforces the grip of the state rather than consolidating free markets. Reflecting this, private sector investment in the economy is lower today than it was in the socialist phase of the 1960s.
Yezid Sayigh is Senior Fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he leads the programme on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS). His work focuses on the comparative political and economic roles of Arab armed forces and non-state actors, the impact of war on states and societies, the politics of post-conflict reconstruction and security sector transformation in Arab transitions, as well as authoritarian resurgence. He is the author most recently of ‘Owners of the Republic: An Anatomy of Egypt’s Military Economy’ (2019).
PLEASE NOTE: We apologise for any Arabic interference you may hear during the recording which was due to technical difficulties.
This webinar will be the launch of Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed's latest book The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia.
In this book, Madawi Al-Rasheed lays bare the world of repression behind Saudi crown prince Muhammed bin Salman's reforms. She dissects the Saudi regime’s propaganda and progressive new image, while also dismissing Orientalist views that despotism is the only pathway to stable governance in the Middle East. Charting old and new challenges to the fragile Saudi nation from the kingdom’s very inception, this blistering book exposes the dangerous contradictions at the heart of the Son King’s Saudi Arabia.
If you would like to purchase this book please visit Hurst Publisher's website and use the code SONKING25 at checkout for 25% off.
Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics Middle East Centre and a Fellow of the British Academy. Since joining the MEC, Madawi has been conducting research on mutations among Saudi Islamists after the 2011 Arab uprisings. This research focuses on the new reinterpretations of Islamic texts prevalent among a small minority of Saudi reformers and the activism in the pursuit of democratic governance and civil society. The result of this research project, sponsored by the Open Society Foundation Fellowship Programme, appeared in a monograph entitled Muted Modernists (2015, Hurst & OUP). Her latest edited book, Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era was also published by Hurst in 2018.
This webinar was organised as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's 10th anniversary programme of online events.
For a decade, the LSE Middle East Centre has been committed to rigorous research of the societies, economies, politics and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. This event, as part of the Centre’s 10th anniversary campaign, will look at some of the main challenges facing the region and its people over the next few years, and how the discipline of Middle East Studies should be adapting to address the areas of ecological and demographic change, healthcare in the region, and decolonising the study of the ‘Middle East’.
As researchers become more and more preoccupied with understanding the implications of living in the so-called Anthropocene, there is still limited work on the impact of climatic stresses in MENA countries, including their relationship with demographic shifts, rapid urbanisation, natural resources depletion and growing pollution.
Protracted conflicts in the region have undoubtedly led to decimated healthcare systems, and in the absence of a collective regional response to the COVID-19 pandemic, national measures have amplified inequalities between and within countries in terms of access to adequate healthcare.
Academia is facing long and overdue calls to recognise and address unexamined legacies of colonial domination, notably around race, gender and sexuality. Students are at the forefront of these demands, which stretch beyond the teaching curriculum to research and university governance. It was an Orientalist gaze that created the ‘Middle East’, and other geographical imaginaries (e.g. ‘Western Asia’) may now be more appropriate. Decolonising Middle East Studies could take up an entire webinar in itself, so we are focusing on one particular element of decolonisation - writing about race in the Middle East.
Across many developing countries, the delivery of basic social services is not universal, and often skewed along politicised identity cleavages. The Middle East and North Africa region is no exception. Under what conditions are some services provided in a more ‘equitable’ fashion, with less apparent favouritism towards particular groups? Drawing on the cases of health care provision in Lebanon and Turkey, this webinar explored this question.
Health provision is an area where public delivery is often discretionary, running along partisan, ethnic, or religious identity lines. Featuring work by Melani Cammett, the first part of the webinar explored new empirical evidence on how societal divisions affect the quality of service delivery in Lebanon. In the second part of the webinar, drawing on the case of Turkey under AKP rule, Asli Cansunar discussed how a government, because of its political goals, designed an effective and universal policy which widened health coverage and electorally paid out the incumbent AK Parti.
This webinar was organised with the Society for Algerian Studies.
In 1990, a year after the creation of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), the then-King of Morocco, Hassan II, best summed up pan-Maghreb ambitions stating that: “our aim is to turn the Arab Maghreb into one country with one passport... one identity and a single currency”. Thirty years on, very little has been achieved at the leadership-level in integrating these countries, therefore defying the economic forces of gravity. The last meeting of the UMA that brought together all five members was in 1994, with the borders between Algeria and Morocco closed ever since. Tensions over the Western Sahara issue also continue to obstruct relations between the two regional heavyweights.
The webinar explored the historical background, political rationale behind, and economic consequences of the stalled Maghreb Union project. Panellists covered various perspectives as well as highlighted opportunities facing the least (economically) integrated region in the world.
Held on 8 December 2020, this Kuwait Programme, LSE Middle East Centre event was a discussion about the 2020 parliamentary elections in Kuwait.
After Kuwaitis go to the polls on 5 December amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and increasing anxieties about the country’s fiscal positions, top experts in Kuwaiti elections come together to discuss the results and what they mean for Kuwait under the new amir, Sheikh Nawaf. With the return of much of the cross-ideological opposition after a four-year boycott (2012-2016), the continued political activism of Kuwait’s tribes, and a variety of secular and Islamist blocs contesting the elections, they are an important bellwether of Kuwaiti politics and the likely direction of policymaking. Further, the appointment of a new cabinet after the election will also signal the priorities of the new executive moving forward.
Abdullah al-Khonaini completed his MA in Power, Participation, and Social Change from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. He co-founded 'Raqib50', an online parliament watch that holds Kuwaiti parliamentarians accountable by making their voting records accessible to the public. His research interests include a focus on civil society, dynamics of informal civic groups and participation, postcolonial identity and belonging in the Gulf.
Alanoud Al-Sharekh is the Director of Ibtkar Strategic Consultancy, leading political, leadership and diversity training programs in Kuwait and the GCC region. She is chairperson of the Chaillot award winning Abolish 153 campaign to end honour killing legislations, and a cofounder of Mudhawis List, a platform to support women running for political office. She is currently an Associate Fellow at the Chatham House MENA Program and Research Fellow at Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. In 2019 she was named one of the 100 most inspiring and influential women in the world by the BBC.
Michael Herb is Professor and Chair of Political Science at Georgia State University. His work focuses on Gulf politics, monarchism and the resource curse. He is the author of The Wages of Oil: Parliaments and Economic Development in Kuwait and the UAE (Cornell University Press, 2014) and All in the Family: Absolutism, Revolution, and Democracy in the Middle Eastern Monarchies (SUNY 1999), in addition to numerous articles. He maintains the Kuwait Politics Database, a comprehensive source of information on Kuwaiti elections. He has twice won Fulbright awards to study in Kuwait.
Daniel L. Tavana is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Council on Middle East Studies at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale University. His research interests include a focus on elections, identity, and comparative political behaviour, as well as the dynamics of political opposition in authoritarian regimes. Previously, Daniel was a Research Associate at the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) in Washington, DC. He completed his BA at the University of Pennsylvania, an MPhil in International Relations at the University of Cambridge, and an MPP at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
Courtney Freer is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
This event was the launch of Marwa Daoudy's latest book 'The Origins of the Syrian Conflict: Climate Change and Human Security'.
Does climate change cause conflict? Did it cause the Syrian uprising? Some policymakers and academics have made this claim, but is it true? This study presents a new conceptual framework to evaluate this claim. Contributing to scholarship in the fields of critical security, environmental security, human security, and Arab politics, Marwa Daoudy prioritizes non-Western and marginalized perspectives to make sense of Syria's place in this international debate. Designing an innovative multidisciplinary framework and applying it to the Syrian case, Daoudy uses extensive field research and her own personal background as a Syrian scholar to present primary interviews with Syrian government officials and citizens, as well as the research of domestic Syrian experts, to provide a unique insight into Syria's environmental, economic and social vulnerabilities leading up to the 2011 uprising.
Marwa Daoudy is Associate Professor and Seif Ghobash Chair in Arab Studies and International Relations at Georgetown University. Prior to this, Daoudy was a lecturer at Oxford University in the department of Politics and International Relations and a fellow of Oxford’s Middle East Center at St Antony’s College. Her research program in the last decade has generally focused on the intersection of security, politics, law and economics to examine the problems of water and the question of conflict, with a focus on the Middle East. Her main scholarly contributions have focused on three more specific research interests. The first is the relationship between transboundary water resources, power, conflict and cooperation. The second is a critical examination of the climate change-conflict nexus that is applied to developing countries in conflict. The third is the intersection of International Relations theory and Middle East politics in explaining inter-state dynamics in the region after the Arab Spring.
This event, as part of the Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was a discussion around Zeynep Kaya's latest book Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism.
Since the early twentieth-century, Kurds have challenged the borders and national identities of the states they inhabit. Nowhere is this more evident than in their promotion of the 'Map of Greater Kurdistan', an ideal of a unified Kurdish homeland in an ethnically and geographically complex region. This powerful image is embedded in the consciousness of the Kurdish people, both within the region and, perhaps even more strongly, in the diaspora.
Addressing the lack of rigorous research and analysis of Kurdish politics from an international perspective, Kaya focuses on self-determination, territorial identity and international norms to suggest how these imaginations of homelands have been socially, politically and historically constructed (much like the state territories the Kurds inhabit), as opposed to their perception of being natural, perennial or intrinsic. Adopting a non-political approach to notions of nationhood and territoriality, Mapping Kurdistan is a systematic examination of the international processes that have enabled a wide range of actors to imagine and create the cartographic image of greater Kurdistan that is in use today.
Zeynep Kaya is Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS. Kaya is also an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. She is interested in understanding how communities and political groups perceive, interact with and challenge international processes and dominant norms. Her research looks at the relationship between gender, violence and development in conflict and post-conflict contexts.
This event was a discussion around Marc Owen Jones' latest book Political Repression in Bahrain.
Exploring Bahrain's modern history through the lens of repression, this concise and accessible account spans the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, looking at all forms of political repression from legal, statecraft, police brutality and informational controls. Considering several episodes of contention in Bahrain, from tribal resistance to the British reforms of the 1920s, the rise of the Higher Executive Committee in the 1950s, the leftist agitation of the 1970s, the 1990s Intifada and the 2011 Uprising, Marc Owen Jones offers never before seen insights into the British role in Bahrain, as well as the activities of the Al Khalifa Ruling Family. From the plundering of Bahrain's resources, to new information about the torture and murder of Bahrain civilians, this study reveals new facts about Bahrain's troubled political history. Using freedom of information requests, historical documents, interviews, and data from social media, this is a rich and original interdisciplinary history of Bahrain over one hundred years.
Marc Owen Jones is Assistant Professor in Middle East Studies and Digital Humanities at Hamad bin Khalifa University, Doha. Prior to this, he was a Lecturer in Gulf History at Exeter University, where he remains an Honorary Research Fellow. Before that, Jones won a Teach at Tuebingen award, and wrote and delivered an MA module in Gulf Politics at Tuebingen University’s Institute for Political Science. He recently completed his PhD (funded by the AHRC/ESRC) in 2016 at Durham University, where he wrote an interdisciplinary thesis on the history of political repression in Bahrain. The thesis won the 2016 dissertation prize from the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies. Driven by issues of social justice and a specific area interest in the Gulf, his research spans a number of topics, from historical revisions, postcolonialism, de-democratization and revolutionary cultural production, to policing, digital authoritarianism and human rights. At the moment, Jones is working a number of topics, including propaganda and Twitter bots, mapping sectarian hate speech, and archival work related to Bahrain and land appropriation.
This event was a discussion around Gerasimos Tsourapas' latest book The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt: Strategies for Regime Survival in Autocracies.
In this ground-breaking work, Tsourapas examines how migration and political power are inextricably linked, and enhances our understanding of how authoritarian regimes rely on labour emigration across the Middle East and the Global South. Tsourapas identifies how autocracies develop strategies to tie cross-border mobility to their own survival, highlighting domestic political struggles and the shifting regional and international landscape. In Egypt, the ruling elite has long shaped labour emigration policy in accordance with internal and external tactics aimed at regime survival. Tsourapas draws on a wealth of previously-unavailable archival sources in Arabic and English, as well as extensive original interviews with Egyptian elites and policy-makers in order to produce a novel account of authoritarian politics in the Arab world. The book offers a new insight into the evolution and political rationale behind regime strategies towards migration, from Gamal Abdel Nasser's 1952 Revolution to the 2011 Arab Uprisings.
Gerasimos Tsourapas is Senior Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Birmingham. He works on the politics of migrants, refugees, and diasporas in the Middle East and the broader Global South. He has also written on the international dimension of authoritarianism. His first book, The Politics of Migration in Modern Egypt - Strategies for Regime Survival in Autocracies (Cambridge University Press, 2019), was awarded the 2020 ENMISA Distinguished Book Award by the International Studies Association. Tsourapas has published in International Studies Quarterly, International Migration Review, International Political Science Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and other leading journals. He has held research fellowships at Harvard University (2019–20) and the American University in Cairo (2013–14).
Ibrahim Awad is Professor of Practice in Global Affairs and Director, Center for Migration and Refugee Studies, School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, at the American University in Cairo. He has worked for the League of Arab States, the United Nations and the International Labour Organization, holding positions of Secretary of the Commission, UN-ESCWA, Director, ILO Sub-regional Office for North Africa and Director, ILO International Migration Programme. He currently is Chair of the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development (KNOMAD), hosted by the World Bank, Chair of the Steering Committee of the Euro-Mediterranean Research Network on International Migration (EuroMedMig) and Senior Fellow at the Migration Policy Centre (MPC) of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva.
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Co-organised with Jadaliyya and the Arab Studies Institute, this roundtable focuses on environmental justice, analysing the ways in which approaches to environmental studies—across disciplines ranging from international law to geography and urban planning—have traditionally overlooked and under-emphasised the critical roles of communities directly impacted by environmental injustice.
Focusing on environmental justice struggles in locations including Palestine, the Golan Heights, Lebanon, and Iraq, this conversation will explore transnational linkages between efforts and struggles in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere. Speakers will discuss the power of community-driven activism, organising, and resistance to forms of environmental injustice such as water access denial, land dispossession, and forced exposure to toxins. The discussion will address how inclusive cities are a core component of a comprehensive approach to environmental justice, particularly in the wake of the August 2020 Beirut explosion.
Speakers will discuss how recognising and understanding the experiences of communities contending with protracted environmental injustice at the local level are critical to fully understanding the implications of international environmental injustice and the climate crisis. How have narrow definitions of environmental justice shaped policies? And how are communities resisting this repression?
This event was a discussion around Wolfram Lacher's latest book Libya's Fragmentation: Structure and Process in Violent Conflict.
After the overthrow of the Qadhafi regime in 2011, Libya witnessed a dramatic breakdown of centralized power. Countless local factions carved up the country into a patchwork of spheres of influence. Only the leader of one armed coalition, Khalifa Haftar, managed to overcome competitors and centralize authority over eastern Libya. But his attempt to seize power in the capital Tripoli failed due to tenacious resistance from dozens of armed groups in western Libya, and was ultimately defeated by Turkish intervention.
Rarely does internal division and political fragmentation occur as radically as in Libya, where it has been the primary obstacle to the re-establishment of central authority. The book analyzes the forces that have shaped the country's trajectory since 2011. Based on hundreds of interviews with key actors in the conflict, it shows how war transformed pre-existing social structures. The book places the social ties of actors at the centre of analysis and explores the links between violent conflict and social cohesion.
Wolfram Lacher is a Senior Associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) in Berlin. His research focuses on conflict dynamics in Libya and the Sahel region, and he has done frequent field research in Libya since 2007. Lacher has been published in a range of journals and media outlets, including Survival, Mediterranean Politics, Foreign Affairs and The Washington Post.
Sherine El Taraboulsi - McCarthy is an Interim Senior Research Fellow at the Overseas Development Institute in London. Her research focuses on humanitarian politics, conflict and security in Africa and the Middle East. She has published widely in academic and policy journals and outlets, and has been featured in a number of media outlets such as al Jazeera, the BBC, RT, Thomson Reuters, the Guardian and others. Sherine holds a doctorate from the Department of International Development and St. Cross College, University of Oxford.
Jessica Watkins has been a Research Officer at the Middle East Centre since 2017. She works on the DfID sponsored Conflict Research Programme and her research focuses on regional and domestic drivers of conflict and peace in Iraq and Syria. Jessica has a BA from Cambridge University in Arabic and French, a Masters in International Relations from the War Studies Department, King’s College London, and a PhD on civil policing in Jordan, also from the War Studies Department.
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Following the signing of the US-brokered "Abraham Accord" between the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Israel in September 2020, this webinar will explore the background and implications of this agreement for the Middle East and Arab-Israeli relations. It will address the reasons for exposing long-clandestine Israeli-Gulf links, the possible impact of this development on Israeli-Palestinian relations, and the likelihood of additional peace agreements between Israel and Arab countries.
Ebtesam Al-Ketbi is Founder and President of the Emirates Policy Center, the UAE's leading foreign policy and security think tank. She is a professor of political science at the United Arab Emirates University and a member of the Consultative Commission of the Gulf Cooperation Council. She has served in several capacities, including: as the secretary general of the Gulf Development Forum; as a board member of the Association of Political Sciences; as a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Unity Studies Center; as a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Organization for Transparency; as a consultative board member of the Arab Thought Foundation; as a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Council for Social Sciences; and as a member of the core team behind the 2006 Arab Human Development Report, among others. She is also a member of the board of directors of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
Clive Jones is Professor of Regional Security in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University. He moved to the School of Government and International Affairs in February 2013 where he now holds a Chair in Regional Security (Middle East). In 2011, he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Historical Society and between 2013-16 was the Chair of the European Association of Israel Studies (EAIS). In 2018, he was awarded a Visiting Research Chair at NTNU, Trondheim, Norway. Jones' research interests lie in three related areas: International Relations (particularly with regard to foreign and defence policy decision-making), Middle East studies (with a clear emphasis upon Israel and Gulf Security) and security studies (with emphasis upon low intensity conflict and the political and operational use of intelligence as it relates to the Middle East).
Elie Podeh is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and the Bamberger and Fuld Professor in the History of the Muslim Peoples in the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He serves as the President of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Association of Israel (MEISAI) and is a board member of Mitvim – The Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. His areas of study include Egypt, inter-Arab relations, the Arab-Israeli conflict, education and culture in the Middle East, and Israeli foreign policy. From 2004–9 he served as the Head of the Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies at the Hebrew University and from 2000–8 was the editor of Hamizrah Hehadash, the Hebrew journal of MEISAI. He has published and edited twelve books and more than seventy academic articles in English, Hebrew and Arabic. At present, he is writing a book on Israel’s secret diplomatic relations in the Middle East since 1948.
This event will be a discussion around the Omani Union (1952-1965), an overlooked political group that represents a seminal stage in the emergence of the leftist current in Oman. While the Dhofar Revolution has received increasing scholarly attention, comparatively little is known of the Jabal Akhdar (or Green Mountain) Uprising of the 1950s and early 60s, which sought independence for inner Oman under the rule of the Imam of the Ibadi sect.
Despite the Imamate’s religious and tribal nature, the Omani Union’s educated and cosmopolitan cadres became closely aligned with it, imbuing its discourse with Arab nationalist, leftist, and Third Worldist ideas. They portrayed the “Omani Revolution” as parallel to those of Palestine and Algeria, forming part of the Pan-Arab awakening led by Nasserist Egypt, and a broader Afro-Asian struggle for independence. Moreover, they sought to transform the Imamate movement into a progressive patriotic front uniting all Omanis in armed struggle against the forces of reaction and colonialism.
Although ultimately unsuccessful in its aims, the Omani Union pioneered and popularized ideas subsequently espoused by the better-known Omani leftist movements of the late 1960s and 1970s. Prominent among these ideas were Third Worldist socialism, a common Gulf identity and solidarity (with Oman as the region’s revolutionary center), and a “Greater” or “Natural” Omani homeland extending from Dhofar to the Trucial States.
Talal Al-Rashoud is a Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Centre, and an Assistant Professor of Modern Arab history at Kuwait University. He obtained his PhD in history from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and holds master’s degrees in history and government from King’s College London and Georgetown University respectively. Al-Rashoud specialises in the history of modern ideological movements in the Gulf region and their transnational connections. His current research deals with the relationship between Arab nationalism and education in Kuwait (1911-1961), and Arab nationalist activism among Omani exiles in the 1950s and 1960s.
Courtney Freer is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
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This event is the launch of Dr Jessica Watkins' latest paper Iran in Iraq: The Limits of 'Smart Power' Amidst Public Protest.
Post 2003, Iran has shown greater aptitude than Western states for penetrating Iraqi politics and society, producing ‘smart power’ by manipulating the combination of identity politics, patronage networks, and coercion which have become prevalent in both. But Iranian interference has been a major source of grievance for Iraqis since the outbreak of the October 2019 popular protests, undermining the Islamic Republic’s non-coercive influence.
This paper situates Iran’s influence-gaining strategies in Iraq within its broader regional foreign policy objectives. Focusing on heritage, religious authority, charitable activities and media broadcasting, the paper draws on Arabic and Farsi language social and traditional media sources to argue that while the Islamic Republic has invested in potential sources of ‘soft power’ to broadly appeal to Iraqis, it has prioritised core support groups whose activities are increasingly unpalatable to the public. The paper reflects on how international actors should respond to current expressions of anti-Iran sentiment in Iraq.
Jessica Watkins is a Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre. She works on the DfID sponsored Conflict Research Programme and her research focuses on regional and domestic drivers of conflict and peace in Iraq and Syria. Jessica has a BA from Cambridge University in Arabic and French, a Masters in International Relations from the War Studies Department, King’s College London, and a PhD on civil policing in Jordan, also from the War Studies Department.
Aniseh Bassiri Tabrizi is Senior Research Fellow at the International Security Studies department at RUSI. Her research is concerned with security and geopolitics in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran and Iraq’s foreign and domestic politics, drivers of radicalisation, and drones proliferation. She has nearly a decade of experience in international relations and security in the Middle East working in academia, think tanks and consultancies, including King’s College London, the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), Oxford Research Group, and various international consultancy firms.
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As the threat of further foreign military intervention looms over Libya, this webinar will explore the complicated relationships and tensions that exist amongst European states as well as actors such as Egypt, Turkey and Russia. The panel will also discuss the most important next steps to be taken by domestic and international actors to ensure a meaningful political settlement for Libyans.
Jalel Harchaoui is a Research Fellow in the Conflict Research Unit at the Clingendael Institute. His work focuses on Libya, covering aspects such as the country’s security landscape and political economy. Jalel holds a master’s degree in Geopolitics from Paris 8 University. His doctoral research has focused on the international dimension of the Libyan conflict. A frequent commentator on Libya in the international press, he has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, Lawfare, Politique Étrangère, Middle East Eye, and Small Arms Survey.
Elham Saudi is the co-founder and Director of Lawyers for Justice in Libya (LFJL). She is a solicitor with expertise in human rights and international humanitarian law. She has advised a number of Libyan, European and international bodies in relation to the Libyan conflict. She is Visiting Professor at the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice and a former Associate Fellow in the International Law Programme at Chatham House.
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This is an online launch for Simon Mabon's latest book Houses Built on Sand: Violence, Sectarianism and Revolution in the Middle East.
The events of the Arab Uprisings posed an existential challenge to sovereign power across the Middle East. Whilst popular movements resulted in the toppling of authoritarian rule in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, other regimes were able to withstand these pressures. This book questions why some regimes fell whilst others were able to survive. Drawing on the work of political theorists such as Agamben and Arendt, Mabon explores the ways in which sovereign power is contested, resulting in the fragmentation of political projects across the region.
Combining an innovative theoretical approach with interviews with people across the region and beyond, Mabon paints a picture of Middle Eastern politics dominated by elites seeking to maintain power and wealth, seemingly at whatever cost. This, for Mabon, is a consequence of the emergence and development of particular visions of political projects that harness or marginalise identities, communities, ideologies and faiths as mechanisms designed to ensure their survival. This book is essential reading for those interested in understanding why the uprisings took place, their geopolitical consequences, and why they are likely to happen again.
The book is available to download for free here: https://www.manchesteropenhive.com/view/9781526126474/9781526126474.xml
Simon Mabon is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Lancaster University where he is also the Director of the Richardson Institute and the Director of the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-Sectarianization project (SEPAD). He is the author of a range of books and articles on the Middle East and international politics, including Houses Built on Sand: Violence, Sectarianism and Revolution in the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2019), Saudi Arabia and Iran: Power and Rivalry in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2013), The Origins of ISIS: The Collapse of Order and Revolution in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2017), and The Struggle For Supremacy: Saudi Arabia and Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In 2016-7 he served as academic advisor to the House of Lords International Relations Committee.
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This is an online launch for Ben Hubbard's book 'MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman'.
MBS is the untold story of how a mysterious young prince emerged from Saudi Arabia’s sprawling royal family to overhaul the economy and society of the richest country in the Middle East—and gather as much power as possible into his own hands.
Based on years of reporting and hundreds of interviews, MBS reveals the machinations behind the kingdom’s catastrophic military intervention in Yemen, the bizarre detention of princes and businessmen in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, and the shifting Saudi relationships with Israel and the United States. And finally, it sheds new light on the greatest scandal of the young autocrat’s rise: the brutal killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents in Istanbul, a crime that shook Saudi Arabia’s relationship with Washington and left the world wondering whether MBS could get away with murder.
The book is available to purchase here: https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780008340551/mbs-the-rise-to-power-of-mohammed-bin-salman/
Ben Hubbard is the Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times. An Arabic speaker with more than a decade in the Middle East, he has covered coups, civil wars, protests, jihadist groups, rotten fish as cuisine, religion and pop culture from more than a dozen countries, including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Yemen.
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This webinar will assess the current state of affairs in MENA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Speakers will look at the effects of the virus in the context of a region already in need of reformed healthcare institutions that not only improve quality, but enable access for all. Speakers will also assess the economic impact of the virus, highlight country examples such as Yemen and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as well as specific concerns around the impact on migrant workers in the region.
This session is part of a larger day-long event organised by the LSE Institute of Global Affairs and the School of Public Policy for the London launch of the Maryam Forum. This day-long event is an opportunity to bring the whole school together at a time of uncertainty and need for reflection and policy action.
To register your interest for other sessions during the day please click here.
Rothna Begum is a senior women's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW). She has focused on discrimination and violence against women and girls in the Middle East and North Africa region including leading the research and advocacy on the abuse and exploitation of migrant domestic workers in the Middle East, and domestic violence against women and girls. She also led the advocacy for Human Rights Watch on a new global International Labour Organization (ILO) treaty relating to violence and harassment at work, which was adopted in June 2019. Rothna is also, in her individual capacity, a member of the ILO Regional Office for Arab States’ Migration Advisory Group.
Ahmed Galal is currently chair of the board of trustees of the Middle East and North Africa Health Policy Forum (MENA HPF). Ahmed was Egypt's finance minister (2013-14), the managing director of the Economic Research Forum (ERF) and the director of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies (ECES). Before that, he worked for 18 years for the World Bank, where he conducted research and provided policy advice to governments in several regions.
Weeam Hammoudeh is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University and formerly ACSS (Arab Council for the Social Sciences) Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Researcher at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Birzeit University. She is interested in understanding how political and social transformations impact health, psychosocial wellbeing, and population processes, particularly in conflict areas; as well as how health systems and social institutions develop and shift in relation to political, economic, and structural factors, particularly in developing countries and post-colonial settings.
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This webinar will be the launch of Pejman Abdolmohammadi and Giampiero Cama's latest book Contemporary Domestic and Foreign Policies of Iran. Although Professor Abdolmohammadi will be leading the talk, Professor Cama will also be in attendance to answer any questions during the session.
This book is a comprehensive analysis of the domestic and foreign politics of Iran, focusing on its complex nature from political, social and cultural perspectives. It has adopted a multidisciplinary approach, combining comparative politics and intellectual and modern history with international relations. It analyses the institutional structure of the Islamic Republic, the main political and social actors and alliances, as well as Iranian opposition forces both inside and outside the country. The book tries to simplify the seemingly intractable complexity of the Islamic Republic by demystifying it and using political science methods to prove that it is a peculiar hybrid regime.
Pejman Abdolmohammadi is a Senior Assistant Professor in Middle Eastern Studies at the School of International Studies, University of Trento, Italy. He was a Resident Research Fellow at London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE, UK) from 2015 to 2018.
Ghoncheh Tazmini is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Formerly an Associate Member at the Centre for Iranian Studies at SOAS, where she was Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow, Ghoncheh conducts research on Iran-related themes as a British Academy grant-holder. She is currently researching Iranian-Russian alignment in the Middle East.
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Urbanisation is one of the central forces shaping social life in the Arab region. As cities grow, disappear, and organise new realities, critical debate on urban policies, histories and everyday life becomes crucial.
Arab Urbanism is a new online platform that gives space for urbanists to document, debate and disseminate knowledge on the past, present and future of cities in the region.
This panel will discuss the launch of the bi-lingual magazine that aims to bridge academia and urban practice, and highlight critical knowledge from and on the region. Speakers will share their thoughts on the aim behind the platform, the editorial processes, the Arab Urbanism collective, and the state of urban research on and in the Arab World.
Nadi Abusaada is a Ph.D. candidate in architecture at the University of Cambridge. He is a Cambridge Trust scholar and member of the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research. His research focuses on urban governance and architectural shifts in Levantine cities in the 19th and early 20th centuries. He holds an M.Phil. in architecture and urban studies from the University of Cambridge and an H.B.A. in architecture from the University of Toronto.
Lana Judeh is an architect who teaches at Birzeit University. She previously worked on Riwaq's rehabilitation projects of historic centres in Palestinian villages, and on producing a manual for the rehabilitation of the old city of Ramallah. She holds an MA in architecture, cultural Identity and globalisation from the University of Westminster, UK, and a BSc in architectural engineering from Birzeit University.
Noura Wahby is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research at Cambridge’s Centre of Development Studies focused on the political economy of urban development and urban waterscapes in Cairo, Egypt. She previously worked at the Cambridge Centre of Smart Infrastructure looking at citizen engagement, digital technologies, and local infrastructure in the UK. She has also worked in the Middle East in a diversity of international development projects, and her research interests include the urban commons, informality, water, and political geography.
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PLEASE NOTE: Unfortunately we had some technical difficulties towards the end of the webinar which meant that the recording had to be cut off early.
Since 2003, despite an abundance of resources and a more pluralistic political settlement, Iraq’s economic reform process has failed to take off.
Alexander Hamilton's new paper explores the link between the evolution and consolidation of Iraq’s post-2003 political settlement and how this has impacted the incentives decision-makers face when implementing economic policy. Paradoxically, the fact that the settlement has accommodated more groups than its repressive predecessor has not resulted in more inclusive or long-term oriented economic decision-making. This is because the inclusion of more (elite) groups reflects the fact that more actors can now generate violence if they are not placated with state-generated rents. Transitioning away from policy-makers’ consequent short-termism will require patient economic reforms, slowly creating new pressures on political actors to support the delivery of public goods and a policy environment more conducive to private sector growth.
Alexander Hamilton is an economic adviser for the UK Department for International Development (DFID) based in Baghdad and leading on DFID’s economic reform programme in Iraq. He completed his PhD in Political Economy at the University of Oxford and has previously worked for the World Bank. His area of expertise is the economics of fragile states. Specifically, he focuses on the application of political economy tools to better understand and support economic reforms in resource rich fragile state contexts.
With three inconclusive elections and a political stalemate eventually leading to the formation of a unity government, all under the spectre of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption charges, this event will analyse Israel's unprecedented political crisis. Speakers will discuss what to make of the deal between Netanyahu and Benny Gantz of the Blue and White Party, and what this means for Palestinians both inside Israel and in the Occupied Territories, particularly in the context of current annexation plans.
Yara Hawari is the Senior Palestine Policy Fellow of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, where she taught various undergraduate courses and continues to be an honorary research fellow. In addition to her academic work which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is also a frequent political commentator writing for various media outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy and Al Jazeera English.
Daniel Levy is President of the U.S./Middle East Project. From 2012 to 2016 he was Director for the Middle East and North Africa at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to that, he was a Senior Fellow and Director of the New America Foundation’s Middle East Taskforce in Washington D.C. and a Senior Fellow at The Century Foundation. Levy was a Senior Advisor in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office and to Justice Minister Yossi Beilin during the Government of Ehud Barak (1999-2001). He was a member of the official Israeli delegation to the Israel/Palestine peace talks at Taba under Ehud Barak and at Oslo B under Yitzhak Rabin (1994-95).
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This webinar was a discussion around Fanar Haddad's latest book Understanding 'Sectarianism': Sunni-Shi'a Relations in the Modern Arab World.
This book seeks to move the study of modern sectarian dynamics beyond analytically paralysing dichotomies by shifting the focus away from the meaningless '-ism' towards the root: sectarian identity. How are Sunni and Shi'a identities imagined, experienced and negotiated and how do they relate to and interact with other identities?
Looking at the modern history of the Arab world, Haddad seeks to understand sectarian identity not as a monochrome frame of identification but as a multi-layered concept that operates on several dimensions: religious, subnational, national and transnational. Far from a uniquely Middle Eastern, Arab, or Islamic phenomenon, a better understanding of sectarian identity reveals that the many facets of sectarian relations that are misleadingly labelled ‘sectarianism’ are echoed in intergroup relations worldwide.
Fanar Haddad is a Senior Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute, Washington D.C. He has lectured in modern Middle Eastern politics at the University of Exeter, at Queen Mary, University of London and at the National University of Singapore. Prior to obtaining his PhD, Haddad was a Research Analyst at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office where he worked on radicalization and on North Africa. He has since published widely on issues relating to historic and contemporary Iraq. His main research interests are identity, historical memory, nationalism, communal conflict and minority politics. He is the author of Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (2011).
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The United Nations Security Council endorsed the UN Secretary-General's call last month for warring parties in Yemen to immediately cease fighting and focus on reaching a peace agreement whilst countering the outbreak of the coronavirus. The coalition, led by Saudi Arabia, responded with a two week ceasefire which was renewed for another month. While the cross border hostilities de-escalated, the conflict fronts inside Yemen continued to boil.
This event will reflect on the challenges and possibilities for a comprehensive and inclusive peace agreement in Yemen. The speakers will discuss lessons learned from previous peace talks and ceasefire initiatives. They will also shed light on the national and regional dynamics affecting the peace process in Yemen.
This event is co-organised with the Peace Track Initiative, an organisation that works on localising and feminising the peace process by supporting inclusive peace processes. Their role in holding Track II consultations with women’s groups and the role of women peacemakers will also be explored.
Fatima Al-Asrar is a Non-Resident Scholar at the Middle East Institute. Before joining the Institute, Al-Asrar was a Senior Analyst at the Arabia Foundation in Washington DC, MENA Director for Cure Violence, Research Associate at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, a Mason Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, and an International Policy Fellow at the Open Society Foundation. From 2006-12, she worked as an advisor for the Embassy of Yemen in Washington, DC. Earlier in her career, Al-Asrar served as a program officer for the Department for International Development (DFID) in Yemen.
Rasha Jarhum is Co-Founder and Director of the Peace Track Initiative hosted at the Human Rights Research and Education Centre, at the University of Ottawa. Jarhum was invited by the UN Special Envoy to Yemen as one of seven women to support the peace talks held in Kuwait in 2016, and has briefed the UN Security Council on Yemen and Women’s Rights to push for peace. She is an affiliated scholar with the American University of Beirut. She has more than 15 years of experience working to advocate for women's, children's and refugee rights.
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Join us online for this public webinar where we will be joined by Amel Boubekeur, Visiting Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. After the first presidential election since the removal of Abdelaziz Bouteflika in December 2019, this event will discuss the origins of the Hirak, it's liabilities and assets, and to what extent Algeria can be looked at as a case study for transition in the region.
Amel Boubekeur researches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences) and is a visiting fellow at the European Council for Foreign Relations. Her research focuses on the Maghreb countries' politics, democratization in the Arab world, Euro-Arab/US–Arab relations, and Islam in Europe. She has been a research associate at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and the Centre Jacques Berque, a non-resident fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP-Berlin), a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, a resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and the head of the Islam and Europe Programme at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels.
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Image: ©Yasmina Allouche
This is the first of our webinar series where we were joined by Jim Muir, veteran Middle East correspondent based in Beirut, where he began his career in the region in 1975. In this video linkup, he discussed the impact of the coronavirus on Lebanon, its uprising, and its future.
Even before the coronavirus struck, Lebanon was in the grip of an existential crisis. On March 7th, it defaulted on its Eurobond debt servicing, for the first time ever. The "revolution" which erupted on 17 October 2019 accelerated a dire economic and financial crisis and challenged 30 years of incompetent sectarian governance. Hundreds of businesses have had to close, sending more jobless people onto the streets. The coronavirus may have given the new government a political breathing space, but it will aggravate further a crisis which has already destroyed the credibility of the country's banking system, always seen as its sacred spinal column.
Jim Muir is a British journalist and BBC Middle East Correspondent. After taking a first in Arabic at Cambridge University in 1969, Jim worked in book publishing in London in the early 70s and moved to Beirut in January 1975. He covered all phases of the Lebanese Civil War 1975–1990 for the BBC and many other radio and print outlets. He then moved to Bosnia in the early 1990s before arriving in Cairo as BBC Middle East correspondent in 1995. Jim then reopened the BBC Tehran bureau and was correspondent there from 1999 to 2004. In 2005, he returned to Beirut and spent much time covering Iraq for the BBC, followed by the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt in 2011. Jim also provided a large proportion of the BBC's coverage of the Syrian uprising and civil war from the spring of 2011.
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Civilian state-owned enterprises in Egypt are in trouble, but military companies are being used to expand the state's stake in the economy. In this talk, Yezid Sayigh will explore the ramifications of this military economy, and how it makes it easier to shift costs and hide losses to the public purse, while continuing to secure the core constituencies of the administration of President Abdel-Fattah Sisi and his governing coalition in the civilian bureaucracy and, especially, the military.
Yezid Sayigh is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he leads the program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS). His work focuses on the comparative political and economic roles of Arab armed forces and nonstate actors, the impact of war on states and societies, and the politics of postconflict reconstruction and security sector transformation in Arab transitions, and authoritarian resurgence. Previously, Sayigh held teaching and research positions at King’s College London, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford, as well as visiting positions or fellowships at Harvard University, Brandeis University, the American University of Beirut, and the School of Oriental and African Studies. From 1998–2003, he also headed the Middle East program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Sayigh was also an adviser and negotiator in the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks with Israel and headed the Palestinian delegation to the multilateral peace talks on Arms Control and Regional Security from 1991–1994. From 1999, he provided policy and technical consultancy on the permanent-status peace talks and on Palestinian reform.
Davide Luca is a Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Centre and a Research Associate at Cambridge University. His research combines Geography, Political Economy, and Public Economics to focus on the politics of policy delivery and development at the local level. Before joining Cambridge University, Davide was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School of Government, worked for the European Commission, and consulted for the European Parliament. He holds a PhD in Economic Geography from the London School of Economics (LSE). Davide's thesis was awarded the 2016 G. Leonardi PhD Dissertation Prize and the 2014 G. Atalık Prize.
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This event launches Crony Capitalism in the Middle East: Business and Politics, from Liberalization to the Arab Spring edited by Ishac Diwan, Adeel Malik, and Izak Atiyas.
The popular uprisings in 2011 that overthrew Arab dictators were also a rebuke to crony capitalism, diverted against both rulers and their allied businessmen who monopolize all economic opportunities. While the Middle East has witnessed a growing nexus between business and politics in the wake of liberalization, little is discussed about the nature of business cronies, the sectors in which they operate, the mechanisms used to favour them, and the possible impact of such crony relations on the region's development. Combining inputs from leading scholars in the field, Crony Capitalism in the Middle East presents a wealth of empirical evidence on the form and function of this aspect of the region.
Crony Capitalism in the Middle East is unique in both its empirical focus and comparative scale. Analysis in individual chapters is empirically grounded and based on fine-grained data on the business activities of politically connected actors furnishing, for the first time, information on the presence, numerical strength, and activities of politically connected entrepreneurs. It also substantially enhances our understanding of the mechanisms used to privilege connected businesses, and their possible impact on undermining the growth of firms in the region.
Ishac Diwan is Professor of Economics at Paris Sciences et Lettres (a consortium of Parisian universities) where he holds the chair of the Economy of the Arab World. He has held recent teaching positions at Columbia University, School for International Public Affairs, and at the Harvard Kennedy School. He directs the Political Economy program of the Economic Research Forum, where he runs two projects on the study of crony capitalism, and the analysis of opinion surveys. Diwan is a frequent consultant with governments and international organizations, working recently on policy issues in Sudan, Algeria, Lebanon, and Egypt.
Adeel Malik is Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and an Associate Professor at the Department of International Development, University of Oxford. Malik is an empirical economist with a strong multi-disciplinary orientation. He is trying to develop a broader research lens to study Middle Eastern political economy. Malik’s research on Middle Eastern political economy has featured in the CNN, Financial Times, the New York Times, Project Syndicate, and Foreign Affairs.
Courtney Freer is a Research Fellow at the Kuwait Programme, LSE Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. She previously worked at the Brookings Doha Center and the US–Saudi Arabian Business Council.
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Decolonisation is a commonly used term in today's cultural sphere. We regularly hear of the decolonisation of syllabi, of academic institutions, of literature, and of the arts. Yet, there is an ironic dissonance between prevalent agendas of decolonisation in western countries and the actual realities of contemporary colonialism.
Can there be meaningful decolonisation without genuine anti-colonialism? Can cultural and academic decolonisation be detached from internationalist solidarity? These are some of the questions that will be posed by Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti in this talk, with specific reference to Palestinian history and politics.
Abdel Razzaq Takriti is Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History and Director of the Center for Arab Studies at the University of Houston. His research focuses on the history of revolutions, anti-colonialism, global intellectual currents, and state formation in the modern Arab world. He is the author of Monsoon Revolution: Republicans, Sultans, and Empires in Oman, 1965-1976 and the co-author (with Karma Nabulsi) of The Palestinian Revolution website learnpalestine.politics.ox.ac.uk, which recently won the 2019 Middle East Studies Association of North America's Undergraduate Education Award.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security.
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This event will explore the fallout of the recent murders of Qasim Soleimani, Commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the senior commander of al-Hashd al-Shaabi and the founder of Kata'ib Hezbollah.
The assassination, on 2 January 2020, of Qasim Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis has thrown Iraqi and wider regional politics into turmoil. Soleimani was one of the most senior figures controlling Iranian foreign policy. Al-Muhandis, as the senior military commander in al-Hashd al-Shaabi, wielded as much if not more influence in Iraq than any other government figure.
The speakers will discuss the likely regional and Iraqi fallout from their murders, how Soleimani’s death will influence Iranian power projection across the region, what retaliatory moves Iran is likely to undertake, the ramifications for Iraqi politics and security and how the ongoing protest movement will be affected.
Toby Dodge is Kuwait Professor and Director of the Kuwait Programme at the LSE Middle East Centre. He is also Professor in the Department of International Relations. Toby currently serves as Iraq Research Director for the DFID-funded Conflict Research Programme (CRP). From 2013–18, Toby was Director of the Middle East Centre. He has been visiting, researching and writing about Iraq for over twenty years and his main areas of research include the comparative politics and historical sociology of the Middle East, the politics of intervention, the evolution of the Iraqi state, state-society dynamics and political identities in Iraq.
Dina Esfandiary is a Director at Herminius and a Fellow in the Middle East department of The Century Foundation (TCF). Previously, she was an International Security Program Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and an Adjunct Fellow in the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ (CSIS) Middle East Program. Prior to this, she worked at the Centre for Science and Security Studies (CSSS) in the War Studies Department at King’s College London from February 2015, and in the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament programme of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London from October 2009. Dina is the co-author of Triple-Axis: Iran’s Relations with Russia and China, and Living on the Edge: Iran and the Practice of Nuclear Hedging. She is completing her PhD in the War Studies department at King’s College London.
Patrick Porter is Professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham. He is also Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, London. His research interests are great power politics, US/UK foreign and defence policy, and the interaction of power and ideas in the making of them. His book Blunder: Britain's War in Iraq (Oxford University Press, 2018) was shortlisted for the British Army Military Book of the Year Prize, 2019. He has appeared as an expert witness before the parliamentary Defence Select Committee, the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy.
Ghoncheh Tazmini is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Formerly an Associate Member at the Centre for Iranian Studies at SOAS, where she was Iran Heritage Foundation Fellow, Ghoncheh conducts research on Iran-related themes as a British Academy grant-holder. She is currently researching Iranian-Russian alignment in the Middle East.
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This event is a launch for Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist Sam Dagher's latest book Assad or We Burn the Country: How One Family's Lust for Power Destroyed Syria.
In spring 2011, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad turned to his friend and army commander, Manaf Tlass, for advice about how to respond to Arab Spring-inspired protests. Tlass pushed for conciliation but Assad decided to crush the uprising -- an act which would catapult the country into an eight-year long war, killing almost half a million and fueling terrorism and a global refugee crisis.
Assad or We Burn the Country examines Syria's tragedy through the generational saga of the Assad and Tlass families, once deeply intertwined and now estranged in Bashar's bloody quest to preserve his father's inheritance. By drawing on his own reporting experience in Damascus and exclusive interviews with Tlass, Dagher takes readers within palace walls to reveal the family behind the destruction of a country and the chaos of an entire region. Dagher shows how one of the world's most vicious police states came to be and explains how a regional conflict extended globally, engulfing the Middle East and pitting the United States and Russia against one another.
Sam Dagher has reported in the Middle East for more than twelve years. He was the only Western reporter based in Damascus from 2012 to 2014, until being detained by the Assad regime and expelled for reporting deemed unfavorable to the regime. He has worked for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and Agence France Presse, and has covered the conflict in Iraq, the Arab Spring uprisings, and Libya. The Wall Street Journal nominated Dagher’s work from Syria for the Pulitzer Prize and other journalism awards.
Ian Black is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper. In recent years he has reported and commented extensively on the Arab uprisings and their aftermath in Syria, Libya and Egypt, along with frequent visits to Iran, the Gulf and across the MENA region. His latest book, a new history of the Palestine–Israel conflict, was published in 2017 to mark the centenary of the Balfour Declaration and the 50th anniversary of the 1967 war. He has an MA in history and social and political science from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in government from LSE.
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This event is the launch of the report titled ‘Public Payroll Expansion in Iraq: Causes and Consequences’ published under the LSE Conflict Research Programme by Principal Investigator Ali Al-Mawlawi. The public payroll in Iraq has grown unchecked since 2003, commensurate with the country’s vastly expanding oil wealth. With few alternative sources of government income, the state budget’s growth poses worrying questions about whether this ongoing trend can be sustained without risking economic ruin. The report offers policy recommendations for a realistic path to address unemployment and job creation.
At the same time, the current protest movement in Iraq, centred around demands for jobs and against corruption and nepotism, also raises concerns about Iraq’s economic trajectory, including in relation to public sector employment growth. This report will be discussed in relation to developments on the ground in Iraq.
Ali Al-Mawlawi is head of research at Al-Bayan Centre for Planning and Studies, a public policy think tank based in Baghdad, where he specialists in institutional reform and foreign affairs. He has written extensively on public sector spending and combatting corruption in Iraq. He holds a Master of International Studies and Diplomacy from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
Alia Moubayed is an economist and former director of geo-economics and strategy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Previously, she worked as Chief Economist for the MENA region at Barclays Bank in London. She has also worked at the World Bank as a senior economist responsible for research and policy dialogue covering several countries in Europe and Central Asia, and held policy responsibilities in various economic institutions of the Government of Lebanon.
Toby Dodge is Kuwait Professor and Director of the Kuwait Programme at the LSE Middle East Centre. He is also Professor in the Department of International Relations. Toby currently serves as Iraq Research Director for the DFID-funded Conflict Research Programme (CRP). From 2013–18, Toby was Director of the Middle East Centre. He has been visiting, researching and writing about Iraq for over twenty years and his main areas of research include the comparative politics and historical sociology of the Middle East, the politics of intervention, the evolution of the Iraqi state, state-society dynamics and political identities in Iraq.
Taif Alkhudary is a Research Assistant on the LSE Middle East Centre research project, 'Managing Religious Diversity in the Middle East: The Muhasasa Ta'ifia in Iraq, 2003–2018'. She has previously held roles at several Geneva-based NGOs, where she worked on women’s and girls’ rights and on bringing cases of enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary detention and extrajudicial killings in the Gulf and Iraq before the United Nations.
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This event launches the paper “Yazidis and ISIS: The Causes and Consequences of Sexual Violence in Conflict” published under the LSE Conflict Research Programme by Principal Investigator Dr. Zeynep Kaya.
It has been five years since ISIS brought the Yazidi community in Iraq to the brink of destruction. Some women and children held by ISIS have been re-captured by criminal gangs to be trafficked or sold to their families. Those that managed to escape the brutal attacks have ended up in displacement camps scattered around Iraqi Kurdistan, with a small number relocating to Western countries as refugees.
This report shows that preventing sexual violence in conflict is not possible without tackling the underlying structural factors that foster this form of violence. Militant radical groups such as ISIS use specific gender norms in connection with perceived religious/sectarian identities in order to morally justify and organise violence. ISIS’s attacks on the Yazidis showed again that gender (and gendered violence) is a key component of the politics of violence and cannot be reduced simply to an outcome of conflict. Therefore, gender is key not only to the prevention of conflict but also to how this is addressed in post-conflict periods.
Zeynep Kaya is a Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. She is part of the UK DFID-Funded Conflict Research Programme and is leading projects on gendered drivers of conflict in Iraq, the impact of genocide on the Yazidi community, responses to internal displacement in Iraqi Kurdistan, WPS and displacement in the Middle East, and women’s political participation in Kuwait. She is also a Lecturer at the Pembroke-King’s Programme, University of Cambridge.
Nazanin Shahrokni is an Associate Professor at the LSE Department of Gender Studies. Prior to joining LSE, she held positions in various international settings such as Syracuse University, Lund University, the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and the American University of Beirut. Nazanin is currently on the Executive Board of the International Sociological Association, and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Middle Eastern Women's Studies. Her research interests fall at the intersection of gender politics, feminist geography, and ethnographies of the state in Iran, the Middle East, and beyond, bringing a critical lens and an ethnographic approach to the study of gendered public spaces and spheres, the reconstruction of gender difference in city spaces, and the complex gendered underpinnings of urban governance and political institutions.
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Image: ©AFP/Safin Hamed
This event launches the book Methodological Approaches in Kurdish Studies: Theoretical and Practical Insights from the Field. It is a volume that presents thirteen contributions that reflect upon the practical, ethical, theoretical and methodological challenges that researchers face when conducting fieldwork in settings that are characterized with deteriorating security situations, increasing state control and conflicting inter-ethnic relations. More precisely, they shed light to the intricacies of conducting fieldwork on highly politicized and sensitive topics in the region of Kurdistan in Iraq, Syria and Turkey as well as among Kurdish diaspora members in Europe.
Bahar Baser is associate professor at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University.
Yasin Duman is a Ph.D. candidate at the Center for Trust, Peace, and Social Relations (CTPSR), Coventry University. His research focuses on the role of intergroup relations in the integration of Syrian refugees in Turkey.
Begüm Zorlu is a PhD candidate and a teaching assistant in the department of International Politics at City, University of London. Her research focuses on political parties and contentious politics in Latin America and the Middle East.
Francis O’Connor is a post-doctoral researcher at the Peace Research Institute in Frankfurt. His research focuses on social movements and civil wars.
Marc Sinan Winrow is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Zeynep Kaya is a Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. She is part of the UK DFID-Funded Conflict Research Programme and is leading projects on gendered drivers of conflict in Iraq, the impact of genocide on the Yazidi community, responses to internal displacement in Iraqi Kurdistan,
This event is part of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre. Convened by Zeynep Kaya and Robert Lowe, the series will encourage dissemination and discussion of new research on Kurdish politics and society and provide a network for scholars and students with shared research interests. Public lectures and research seminars will be held regularly during term-time. If you wish to join the mailing list for the series, please contact Robert Lowe: r.lowe@lse.ac.uk
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Please note that this event involved a translator, as a result there may be some background noise in parts of the recording where translation is taking place.
This event will analyse current developments on the ground in Northern Syria with Ilham Ehmed, co-president of the Executive Council of the de-facto autonomous region of North and East Syria.
Following the recent Turkish incursion and US withdrawal, the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) have stated that they are ready to negotiate with Damascus. This event will take a look at a general overview of what led up to this decision, what the future holds for the Kurdish project in North and East Syria and how these negotiations will impact the future of Syria in all it's regions.
Ilham Ehmed is a Syrian-Kurdish politician. Until July 2018, she was a co-chair of the SDC, the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. She is a senior member of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and a member of the executive committee of the Movement for a Democratic Society (TEV-DEM) coalition. Ahmed is an active member of the Syrian Women’s Initiative for Peace and Democracy (SWIPD), a network of civil society organizations from inside and outside of Syria.
Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre.
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This event is a book launch for Eric Rouleau's autobiographical work titled Truths and Lies in the Middle East: Memoirs of a Veteran Journalist, 1952-2012. Eric Rouleau was one of the most celebrated journalists of his generation, a status he owed to his extraordinary career, which began when Hubert Beuve-Méry, director of Le Monde, charged him with covering the Near and Middle East.
Alain Gresh, French journalist and former editor of Le Monde Diplomatique, who also wrote the foreword for this book will be speaking at this event about Rouleau's life and work. The event will be chaired by Jim Muir, Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and BBC Middle East Correspondent.
Writing between Cairo and Jerusalem, Rouleau was a chief witness to the wars of 1967 and 1973, narrating their events from behind the scenes. He was to meet all the major players, including Nasser, Levi Ashkol, Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, Ariel Sharon, and Anwar Sadat, painting striking portraits of each. More than a memoir, his book presents a history, lived from the inside, of the Israel–Palestine conflict. In 1963, Rouleau was invited by Gamal Abd al-Nasser to interview him in Cairo, a move which was not lost on the young Rouleau—going through him, a young Egyptian Jew who had been exiled from Egypt in late 1951, shortly before the Free Officers coup, was a means to renew diplomatic ties with de Gaulle’s France. This exclusive interview, which immediately made headlines around the world, propelled Rouleau into the center of the region’s conflicts for two decades.
Alain Gresh is Publication Director of the online newspaper Orient XXI. He was previously Deputy Director of Le Monde Diplomatique from 2008-2013. A specialist on the Middle East, he is author of several books including PLO: The Struggle Within, de quoi la palestine est elle le nom? and Un chant d’amour. Israël-Palestine, une histoire française. In 1983, Gresh completed a PhD on the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.
Jim Muir is a British journalist and BBC Middle East Correspondent. After taking a first in Arabic at Cambridge University in 1969, Jim worked in book publishing in London in the early 70s and moved to Beirut in January 1975. He covered all phases of the Lebanese Civil War 1975–1990 for the BBC and many other radio and print outlets. He then moved to Bosnia in the early 1990s before arriving in Cairo as BBC Middle East correspondent in 1995. Jim then reopened the BBC Tehran bureau and was correspondent there from 1999 to 2004. In 2005, he returned to Beirut and spent much time covering Iraq for the BBC, followed by the overthrow of Mubarak in Egypt in 2011. Jim also provided a large proportion of the BBC's coverage of the Syrian uprising and civil war from the spring of 2011.
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With continuous protests ongoing across Lebanon for the last two weeks, this event will analyse this largest demonstration of public disobedience for the past decade. The situation will be contextualised against the backdrop of failing state services, a system that has gradually drifted apart from society, and also a society that has reached its consumerist limits.
This event is part of a series being organised by the LSE Institute for Global Affairs responding to the Lebanese protests. For further information, please contact Dr. Bilal Malaeb.
Jamil Mouawad is a lecturer in political studies and public administration at the American University of Beirut. His research interests in state-society relations span the subfields of comparative politics and political economy. He specializes in the politics of the Middle East, with a focus on governance and limited statehood. He was a Max Weber Fellow at the European Univesrity Institute, finalizing his book based on his PhD thesis. The book presents a critique to the concept of ‘weak’ states. The central argument of his book is that ‘weakness’ does not capture the nature of the Lebanese state and that the patterns of ‘presence’ and ‘absence’ are by no means incidental but central to the way politics works.
He was awarded a PhD in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in June 2015. Later, he joined the Institut Français du Proche-Orient (IFPO) in Beirut, as a postdoctoral fellow, through a grant from the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS). He also acted as a researcher coordinator of the Critical Security Studies in the Arab world and the Ethics in Social sciences project, both on-going projects launched by ACSS.
Hicham Safieddine is Lecturer in the History of the Modern Middle East at King's College, London. He is author of Banking on the State: The financial Foundations of Lebanon (Stanford University Press). He holds a PhD in Middle East Studies from the University of Toronto, an MA in Political Science from York University, Canada, and an MA in Economics from The University of Rochester, New York.
Sophie Chamas is a senior teaching fellow at the Centre for Gender Studies at SOAS. She is finishing up her PhD in Modern Middle East Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was also an Ertegun Scholar. Her work focuses on the study of social movements, counter-culture, and political theory and discourse rooted in, focused on or related to the Middle East. Broadly speaking, she is interested in thinking through the life, death and afterlife of the radical political imaginary in the Middle East and beyond. Sophie is also an essayist and writer of creative non-fiction. Her writing has appeared in Kohl: a journal for body and gender research, The State, Raseef 22, Mashallah News, Jadaliyya and The Towner, amongst other publications.
Bilal Malaeb is a postdoctoral research officer at the Institute of Global Affairs (IGA) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He works primarily on the Responsible Deal project, an inter-regional collaboration of seven universities, coordinated by the LSE. His research focus is on the integration of Syrian refugees in frontier countries in the Middle East. Bilal’s expertise is in Microeconometrics and Development Economics, and his research interests are in migration, poverty, and labour market issues. Prior to joining the LSE, he worked as a research officer at the University of Oxford and a research fellow at the University of Southampton.
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This event launched the paper “Response to and Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence in Iraq: The Case of Shi’a Turkmen Survivors in Tel Afar” published under the LSE Conflict Research Programme by Principal Investigator Güley Bor.
During the most recent Islamic State conflict, thousands of Yazidi, and hundreds of Shi’a Turkmen and Christian women were kidnapped and subjected to various forms of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). The situation of Shi’a Turkmen survivors of CRSV in Tel Afar in the Nineveh Governorate demonstrates how the Government of Iraq’s inaction, together with its discriminatory laws and practices, continue to fail women, and survivors in particular. Recent efforts to establish a reparations program are commendable, yet challenges remain. Iraq is in urgent need of wider reform in addressing sexual violence and ensuring its non-repetition.
Given the emergency nature of CRSV, this paper explores the need for all survivors in Iraq to be provided with timely, comprehensive and survivor-centric medical, psychosocial, legal and economic responses. The paper itself includes recommendations for a complex reparation program designed and implemented through effective survivor consultation that should be established to address the psychological, physical and social harms arising from CRSV.
Güley Bor is an international lawyer, researcher and consultant with a focus on transitional justice, human rights and gender in Iraq and Turkey. Previously, she managed the Yazidi Genocide Documentation Project of Yazda in Duhok, Kurdistan Region of Iraq as a Harvard Law School Satter Human Rights Fellow. She also authored Yazda’s second mass graves report entitled Working Against the Clock: Documenting Mass Graves of Yazidis Killed by the Islamic State.
Dr Ali Akram al-Bayati is a neurologist and the founder and president of Turkmen Rescue Foundation, an NGO dedicated to defending human rights of minorities in Iraq, particularly the Turkmen. He is also a member of the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights, Iraq's national human rights institution.
Dr Jessica Watkins is a Research Officer at the Middle East Centre, currently working on a DFID-funded project looking at regional drivers of conflict in Iraq and Syria. Her PhD at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, was on policing and dispute management in Jordan.
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This is a recording of the Q&A section of LSE MEC's event screening Benedetta Argentieri's documentary I am the Revolution which focuses on feminist revolutions taking place in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan.
These countries has been torn apart by decades of war, and are, according to international indexes, among the worst places on earth to live as a woman. By following three women, Selay Ghaffar, Rojda Felat, and Yanar Mohammed, and the movements around them, the documentary explores how they are leading the way for a new future for women in their countries.
Each country reflects the groundswell of feminist revolutions: political revolution in Afghanistan, armed in Syria, and grassroots activism in Iraq. Taking a journalistic approach, the film challenges the images of veiled, silent, and timid women in the Middle East and instead shows the strength of women rising up on the front lines, in remote villages, and in city streets, to claim their voice and their rights.
Benedetta Argentieri is an independent journalist and director who has been covering the Iraqi and Syrian war since 2014. She produced “Capulcu-Voices from Gezi,” a documentary about the revolt that occurred in Gezi Park in Istanbul, Turkey. In 2016 she co-directed “Our War,” a documentary about foreigners joining the Kurds in Syria to fight the Islamic State. The film was selected at the 73rd Venice Film Festival, in the out of competition section.
Elif Sarican is an activist in the Kurdish Women's Movement and former UK Coordinator of the Kurdistan Students Union. Elif is an anthropologist at the London School of Economics.
Dr Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
This event launches The Kurds of Northern Syria: Governance, Diversity and Conflicts, written by Harriet Allsopp and Wladimir van Wilgenburg and published by Bloomsbury in July 2019. Based on unprecedented access to Kurdish-governed areas of Syria, including exclusive interviews with administration officials and civilian surveys, The Kurds of Northern Syria sheds light on the socio-political landscape of northern Syria. The first English-language book to capture the momentous transformations that have occurred since 2011, the authors move beyond idealized images of Rojava and the PYD to provide a nuanced assessment of the Kurdish autonomous experience and the prospects for self-rule in Syria. The book draws on unparalleled field research, as well as analysis of the literature on the evolution of Kurdish politics and the Syrian war.
The event is the first in the LSE Middle East Centre Kurdish Studies Series programme for 2019–20.
Wladimir van Wilgenburg is an analyst of Kurdish politics and a journalist living in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan.
Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre. He joined the Centre when it opened in 2010. Robert is responsible for running the Centre's operations, research activities, fundraising and development.
This event is part of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre. Convened by Zeynep Kaya and Robert Lowe, the series will encourage dissemination and discussion of new research on Kurdish politics and society and provide a network for scholars and students with shared research interests. Public lectures and research seminars will be held regularly during term-time. If you wish to join the mailing list for the series, please contact Robert Lowe: r.lowe@lse.ac.uk
The Iraqi media landscape has been characterised by partisan ownership, in the main based on political and religious affiliations. Comparative ethnographic research has revealed highly irregular practices and the struggles of Iraqi journalists to adhere to the norms of professionalism, suggesting that these practices are contributing to and fuelling the on-going context of conflict and violence in Iraq. Within this challenging environment, there have been some attempts to develop media platforms that carve out spaces which can contribute to better journalism and, ultimately, better local and national governance. This report explores, in the context of this environment, the challenges that these media are facing. It examines a number of barriers to the development of independent media in Iraq, providing some recommendations to how these obstacles might be be tackled. Based on interviews with key media and political stakeholders that took place in Iraq in January and February 2019, it provides some insight into the complex interaction between political and social conditions, structure and agency in Iraq. Recorded on 11 June 2019.
Aida Al-Kaisy is a Media Reform Advisor and has worked extensively on media development projects across the MENA region including in Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. She is currently working on a number of projects, focusing on issues related to youth engagement in media, media in conflict, social cohesion and the media and the development of independent media platforms in MENA amongst other things. She is completing a PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where she also teaches on a part-time basis, on the performance of the media in conflict, using Iraq as a case study. Aida is also programme consultant for the Ethical Journalism Network and a keen promoter of ethical values in journalistic practice and media governance.
Jessica Watkins is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre, currently working on a DFID-funded project looking at regional drivers of conflict in Iraq and Syria. The project ties in with Jessica’s previous research at the Rand Corporation into Iraqi and regional security issues. Her PhD at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, was on policing and dispute management in Jordan.
Image: March 30, 2017 - Mosul, Nineveh Province, Iraq - After the animals had been loaded onto the truck DR. AMIR KHALIL gives a media statement before the team evacuates from the zoo. Mosul, Iraq. (Credit Image: © Gabriel Romero via ZUMA Wire). Source: Alamy
Women have been at the forefront of many of the political and military struggles in the Kurdish Middle East, most visibly so since the outbreak of the ‘Rojava Revolution’ in 2012. But women have in fact since the foundation of the PKK in 1978 played an integral role in the ideological and political development of the Liberation Movement as a whole; as guerrillas, activists, politicians, mothers and prisoners. Isabel Käser will trace the complex history of the Kurdish Women’s Liberation Movement, discuss how women’s autonomous organisational structures have emerged and how they operate today between the mountains and the cities of the four different parts of Kurdistan. Her talk analyses the emancipatory power this movement holds but also unpacks some of the tensions that emerge from the interplay between militarism, the party’s body politics and the movement’s revolutionary quest for a more democratic Middle East. Recorded on 4 June.
Isabel Käser holds a PhD from SOAS where she worked on the Kurdish Women's Movement. Her work contributes to debates around gender and war, feminism and nationalism, as well as conflict and body politics.
Zeynep Kaya is Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. She is part of the UK DFID-Funded Conflict Research Programme and is leading projects on gendered drivers of conflict in Iraq, the impact of genocide on the Yazidi community, responses to internal displacement in Iraqi Kurdistan, WPS and displacement in the Middle East, and women’s political participation in Kuwait. She is also a Lecturer at the Pembroke-King’s Programme, University of Cambridge. Image: 2016, Asos Mountains (Iraq). Two guerrillas during a tea break at the training camp. Image courtesy of Isabel Käser
Since free elections were introduced in Turkey, no other party has been able to retain its incumbency as much as the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Given incumbents’ tendency to lose support over time, what are the factors which explain the electoral durability of the party? In this event, Dr Luca will explore the rising consolidation of power by the AKP through the lens of distributive politics, aiming to assess how the ruling party has deployed the geographical distribution of public monies towards distinct political ends. Throughout the 2000s, Turkey was portrayed as a model of social and economic success for other countries in the Middle East and North Africa region. Yet, the incumbent government and its economic development model face increasing criticism for corrupt and discretionary practices and arbitrary decision-making. The talk will ultimately argue that the AKP has skilfully used public monies and abused state resources to cement its power and develop its populist, electoral authoritarian regime. Registered on 23 May.
Davide Luca is a Visiting Fellow at the Middle East Centre and a Research Associate at Cambridge University. His research combines Geography, Political Economy, and Public Economics to focus on the politics of policy delivery and development at the local level.
Çağatay Bircan is a Senior Research Economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London. His current research is on the effects of international trade, private equity, and banking on innovation and productivity.
Ece Kocabıçak is currently working as Fellow of Globalisation, Gender and Development in the Department of Gender Studies at London School of Economics and Political Science. Her teaching and research engage with the contemporary debates in international development, comparative political economy, political sociology, and social inequalities. Image: An AKP supporter. Source: Leonie Balci
There has been much discussion whether the 1953 should be understood in the context of the Cold War or that of economic conflicts between the industrial West and developing countires--in other words, as precursor of the rise of OPEC and oil nationalisation by emerging states in the 1960s and 1970s. In this talk, Professor Abrahamian will focus on how far the newly released State Department and CIA documents help answer this question. Recorded on 29 May 2019.
Ervand Abrahamian is Professor Emeritus of History at Baruch College and the Graduate Center in the City University of New York. He is also the author of: Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton University Press, 1982); The Iranian Mojahedin (Yale University Press, 1989); Khomeinism (University of California Press, 1993); Tortured confessions: Prisons and Public Reactions in Iran (University of California Press, 2004); A History of Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2008); and The Coup: 1953, The CIA and the Roots of Modern US-Iranian Relations (The New Press, 2013). Some of his books have been translated and published in Persian, Turkish, Arabic, Italian, and Polish.He is now writing a book on the 1979 revolution in Iran. In 2011, he was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Massoumeh Torfeh is a research associate at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the School of Oriental and African Studies specialising in the politics of Iran and Afghanistan. She is a regular media commentator analysing developments in both countries. She was formerly the director of communications and spokesperson for the United Nations in Afghanistan, and a BBC World Service senior producer. She has published several papers about Iran in academic journals and co-authored two books on Iran. Her main focus of research has, however, been the causes of the repeated failure of democracy in Iran. Her PhD in Political Science is from LSE and on that subject.
Image: Banner featuring Mohammad Mosaddeq during Iran's 1953 Coup. Source: Popularresistance.org
Since February 2019 and President Bouteflika’s announcement that he intended to stand for a fifth term, hundreds of thousands of protesters have descended upon Algeria’s streets to demand his resignation. In the face of pressure from the street and the army, Bouteflika, who suffered a debilitating stroke in 2013, finally stepped down after 20 years in power on 2 April. Hugh Roberts, expert in Algerian constitutional law and its political regime, will explore the implications of ‘L’Après-Bouteflika’: the prospects that now exist for Algeria's political and economic future. Recorded on 3 May 2019.
Dr Hugh Roberts, a specialist on North African and particularly Algerian history and politics, founded the Society for Algerian Studies in 1992. He was its Secretary from 1992 to 2001 and has been its Vice President since 2002. He is currently the Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History at Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, having taken up this post in January 2012.
Stuart Hall once wrote that we mustn’t use Gramsci like ‘an Old Testament prophet who, at the correct moment, will offer us the consoling and appropriate quotation.’ Instead, we must ‘think’ our problems in a Gramscian way. What would it mean to ‘think’ some of the problems facing Egypt and the broader Middle East in such a way, and what are some of the challenges and productive encounters this might produce? This talk looks at how Gramsci has ‘travelled’ to the Middle East, and what made this travel possible. In particular, Sara Salem traces some of the ways in which Gramsci’s concepts have been thought with in contexts such as Egypt, and argues that the productive debates that have emerged around this suggest a continuing usefulness of Gramsci for scholars of the region. More importantly, Salem also argues that the particularities of capitalism in the colony and postcolony pose important challenges to prominent interpretations of Gramsci’s work. She suggests that thinking about Gramsci through ‘traveling theory’ allows for both productive conversations as well as challenges to Eurocentric accounts of Marxist theory, and sheds light on some of the afterlives of empire in the Middle East. Recorded on 2 May 2019.
Sara Salem (@saramsalem) is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at LSE. Her main research interests include political sociology, postcolonial studies, Marxist theory, feminist theory, and global histories of empire and imperialism. Salem is an editor at the journal Historical Materialism.
John Chalcraft is Professor of Middle East History and Politics in the Department of Government at LSE and leads the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Netwrok.
Image: Antonio Gramsci by Gabriele Cancedda. Source: Gramscimania
This report assesses widespread claims that pan-Arab satellite news channels have been responsible for inciting sectarian violence during the Arab uprisings. Based on an empirical study of how three of the most popular channels – Al-Jazeera Arabic, Al-Arabiya and Al-Mayadeen - have framed seminal events involving violence between sects in Syria and Iraq, the report finds that while often geo-politically charged, some of these claims are valid. While abusive language or direct promotion of violence is rare in a mainstream context, incitement to sectarian violence has primarily been invoked through linguistic, stylistic and thematic tropes that forge legitimacy claims and narratives of victimhood. The paper draws on these findings to make recommendations for UK policymaker engagement with the Arab media. Recorded on 1 May 2019.
Jessica Watkins is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre, currently working on a DFID-funded project looking at regional drivers of conflict in Iraq and Syria. The project ties in with Jessica’s previous research at the Rand Corporation into Iraqi and regional security issues. Her PhD at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, was on policing and dispute management in Jordan.
Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Image: Microphones set out for a Tehran press conference with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, 16 September 2012. © Stringer/EPA/Shutterstock
BRISMES and LSE Middle East Centre are delighted to host this panel event on Middle East Careers where speakers will talk briefly about their current role and career path and give advice to students. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions. Followed by networking reception. Recorded on 7 March 2019.
Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi (@omar_alghazzi), Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communications, LSE
Sophie Rudland (@EditorSophie ), Editor Middle East and Islamic Studies, IB Tauris
Dr Priscilla Toffano, Visiting Fellow, LSE Middle East Centre (on sabbatical from the Middle East and Central Asia Department, International Monetary Fund)
Dr Angeline Turner, Research Analyst, Iraq, Middle East & North Africa Directorate, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Sinéad Murphy is responsible for the organisation of the BRISMES Annual Conference and deals with all aspects of administration. Sinéad is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature in King’s College, London. Her research is an AHRC LAHP-funded project on contemporary Arab speculative fiction in English.
Image: Brismes Careers Event 2017. Source: LSE Middle East Centre
One of the most prominent sticking points in Israeli–Palestinian negotiations is the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Yoav Kapshuk investigates how the concept of ‘transitional justice’, often used in post-conflict political bargaining, could be utilised in future peace talks to reach a settlement. In addition to analysing previous rounds of negotiations that sought to resolve the refugee issue, he also looks to the negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC (which successfully concluded with a peace agreement in 2016) and asks what lessons can be learned from the transitional justice measures used in this process. Recorded on 28 February 2019.
Yoav Kapshuk is Lecturer at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel, and a former Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. His research focuses on peace processes, transitional justice, conflict resolution and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Image: Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat at the White House 1993-09-13. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Apologies for the abrupt start of the podcast. The first two minutes of the recording were corrupted.
A panel of academics and activists will make critical interventions on sexualities and approaches to LGBT activism in and across the MENA. Specifically, by foregrounding voices from the region and its diaspora, this lecture pushes to challenge debates and discussions that sometimes look in on the region from the outside. Recorded on 26 February 2019.
Mehammed Mack is Associate Professor of French Studies at Smith College. He earned his doctorate in French and comparative literature from Columbia University, where he completed a dissertation titled "Immigration and Sexual Citizenship: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Contemporary France." His first book, Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture, was released from Fordham University Press in January 2017.
Cenk Özbay is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Sociology at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey. He holds a PhD from University of Southern California. His first book 'Queering Sexualities in Turkey. Gay Men, Male Prostitutes and the City' was released from I.B. Tauris in July 2017.
Roula Seghaier is a queer feminist writer, novelist, and translator. She is the managing editor of Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research based in Beirut and a co-founder of Intersectional Knowledge Publishers.
Silvia Quattrini has been a member of the organising team of Chouftouhonna, the International Art Festival of Tunis, since 2016. Silvia is also the Middle East and North Africa Programmes Coordinator for Minority Rights Group International and a professional translator.
Hakan Seckinelgin is Associate Professor (Reader) in the Department of Social Policy at LSE. His work focuses on both the epistemology and politics of international social policy by engaging with people’s lives in different contexts. He is the editor in Chief of Journal of Civil Society.
Image: Women's March, Beirut 2018. Source: Patrick Abi Salloum
The national armed forces of Arab states have been undergoing a radical transformation. New fluid coalitions of armed state and non-state actors engage in complex patterns of coexistence and contestation, set within a wider context of geopolitical rivalry between their external backers. Renowned Middle East scholar Yezid Sayigh examines the re-emergence of militaries as central political actors. Recorded on 13 February 2019.
Yezid Sayigh is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he leads the program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS). His work focuses on the comparative political and economic roles of Arab armed forces and nonstate actors, the impact of war on states and societies, and the politics of post-conflict reconstruction and security sector transformation in Arab transitions, and authoritarian resurgence.
Jessica Watkins is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre, currently working on a DFID-funded project looking at regional drivers of conflict in Iraq and Syria. The project ties in with Jessica’s previous research at the Rand Corporation into Iraqi and regional security issues. Her PhD at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, was on policing and dispute management in Jordan.
Image: Tunisian Army. Source: World Armies, Flickr.
On 19 July 2018, the Israeli parliament passed the controversial Basic Law, which defines the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. This talk analyses the different clauses of the law, reflects on their meaning with the help of the discussions that took place in the Knesset during the legislation period, and ties them with broader political and social processes taking place in Israeli society and politics. Recorded on 30 January 2019.
Amal Jamal is Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, where he heads the International Graduate Program in Political Science and Political. He is also Chair of the Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence. He is Co-Editor in Chief of the journal The Public Sphere published in Hebrew.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security.
Image: Israel. Purim in Bnei Brak Source: Hemo Kerem / Flickr.
In recent years Israel has forged closer links with Arab Gulf states with which it has no diplomatic relations, unlike Egypt and Jordan. The main factors in their converging interests are shared alarm about Iran’s rise as a regional power, opposition to Barack Obama’s Middle East policies and the marginalization of the divided Palestinians. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain all have business, security and intelligence ties with Israel, though since they are largely “below the horizon” it is hard to judge their extent. Qatar and Oman have links too – illustrated by Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to Muscat and Doha’s role mediating with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But these connections are more visible than ever before. Donald Trump’s wooing of the Saudis briefly promoted hopes for a role for Riyadh in the president’s long-trailed “deal of the century.” The US decision to abandon the international nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions was greeted by Israel and the Gulf states, raising the possibility of some kind of operational alliance between them, likely with US coordination, against Tehran. Netanyahu now talks openly of working to achieve normalization with the Saudis. The Gulf states, however, all remain committed to the 2002 Arab League peace initiative, which promises recognition of Israel in return for a solution of the Palestinian issue. That goal is unlikely to be either abandoned or achieved, but clandestine links look set to continue growing. Recorded on 22 January 2019.
Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security
Image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Sultan of Oman Qaboos bin Said. Source: Office of the Prime Minister / Flickr
Speaker: Jim Muir, BBC News and LSE Middle East Centre Visiting Senior Fellow Chair: Ian Black, LSE Middle East Centre Visiting Senior Fellow
Jim Muir has lived in and reported on the Middle East since he arrived in Beirut in January 1975, armed with a Cambridge degree in Arabic. Expecting Lebanon to be a stable base from which to cover a turbulent region, he spent the next 15 years reporting on the tortuous conflict which engulfed the country itself. He was in northern Iraq during the Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and covered the dramatic flight of the Kurds to the mountains. After a spell reporting the Bosnia conflict, he moved to Cairo as BBC Middle East correspondent in 1995, followed by five years in Tehran, where he chronicled the doomed hopes raised by the election of the reformist President Khatami. In 2004, he returned to Beirut, covered the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war, and spent much time in Iraq until the Arab Spring diverted attention to Egypt, Tunisia and especially Syria, on whose protracted crisis he provided a large amount of the BBC's coverage. His recent work includes an in-depth look at the factors behind the rise and fall of the ‘Islamic State’. In this talk he examines, the major themes of change that have transformed the region in his time. Recorded on 16 January 2019.
Jim Muir (@MuirJim) is a journalist serving as Middle East Correspondent for BBC News, based in Beirut and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. He has over 40 years' experience covering Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iran and Iraq.
Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Image: Jim Muir in Qana, South Lebanon, 2006. Image Courtesy of the Speaker.
Speaker: Mehmet Kurt, LSE and Yale University Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Deputy Director
Islam has returned to the Turkish and Kurdish public and political spheres, becoming an effective means to mobilise voters and recruit supporters during the AKP era.
In this talk, Mehmet Kurt highlights two distinctive approaches to the Kurdish issue adopted by Kurdish Hizbullah (Huda-Par) and the wider Kurdish movement. While the former relies on an explicitly Islamist political agenda to subsume Kurdish society into part of a pan-Islamist entity, the latter pursues a secular but increasingly pluralist agenda to expand its base among religious Kurds.
This in turn determines both groups’ connection to Kurdish political identity. While Hizbullah embraces a form of ‘Kurdishness’ that mainly makes reference to Islam, the wider Kurdish movement incorporates Islam into its pluralist notion of ‘the people of Turkey’. Recorded on 17 December 2018.
Dr Mehmet Kurt is a Marie Curie Global Fellow at the London School of Economics and Yale University. His research lies at the intersection of political science, sociology, and political ethnography with a specific focus on political Islam and civil society in Kurdish Turkey and among the Turkish diaspora in Europe.
Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre. He joined the Centre when it opened in 2010. Robert is responsible for running the Centre's operations, research activities, fundraising and development.
This event is part of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre. Convened by Zeynep Kaya and Robert Lowe, the series will encourage dissemination and discussion of new research on Kurdish politics and society and provide a network for scholars and students with shared research interests. Public lectures and research seminars will be held regularly during term-time. If you wish to join the mailing list for the series, please contact Robert Lowe: r.lowe@lse.ac.uk
Image: 2016, Diyarbakır. The Blessed Birth of Muhammed celebration (Kutlu Doğum) organized by the Hizbullah affiliated organizations each year in April in Diyarbakır. Image courtesy of Mehmet Kurt
Speaker: Farea Al-Muslimi, Chairman and co-founder of Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies. Chair: Michael Mason, LSE Middle East Centre Director.
For the last four years, Yemen has been suffering one of the bloodiest wars in the Middle East. In a manner surpassing even Syria, state institutions have collapsed, health and education systems are largely dysfunctional, millions continue to suffer from malnutrition, and over one million civil servants have not been paid their salaries for two years.
In the meantime, local alliances are dramatically shifting and evolving, while regional actors are increasingly involved to varying degrees. In particular, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE exercise control militarily, either directly or through proxies, while Qatar, Oman and Western countries remain indirectly involved.
How have the diplomatic efforts to solve the conflict in Yemen failed since 2011, and what lessons have been learned? What challenges face the current UN-lead peace process, and what are its prospects for success? What similarities and differences exist between the peace processes for Syria and Yemen? And most importantly, what can the UK do to de-escalate Yemen’s current brutal conflict?
Farea Al-Muslimi tackles the current situation in Yemen and the complexities international diplomatic efforts to end the war are facing. Recorded on 4 December 2018.
Farea Al-Muslimi (@almuslimi) is chairman and co-founder of Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies. He is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.
Speaker: Martin Chulov, The Guardian Chair: Ian Black, LSE Senior Visiting Fellow
With the battle for Syrian soil near an end, the most brutal conflict of modern times is becoming a fight for who gets to shape what emerges from the ruins. Backed by his allies, Bashar al-Assad has all but won and – abandoned by theirs – the myriad forces who stood against him have lost. The battlefield is now now potently geopolitical. Iran and Russia, who saved Damascus, want a strategic return on their blood and treasure, but both have very different visions for post-war Syria. Turkey too is demanding an outcome that suits it's interests. As is Israel. A waning USA, Saudi Arabia and Qatar also want a say in how the regime is aligned in a fast changing and volatile region.The stakes have rarely been higher in the modern Middle East. The next few years will test the modern borders of the region, and further strain an ethnic sectarian balance that has neared breaking point from Tartous to Qom. Recorded on 27 November
Martin Chulov (@martinchulov) who covers the Middle East for the Guardian, won the Orwell prize for journalism in 2015. He has reported from the region since 2005.
Ian Black (@ian_black)is Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Ian is a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Image: Return to Homs. Image Courtesy of Xinhua/Pan Chaoyue, Flickr.
Apologies for the abrupt ending of the podcast. The recording was cut short. You can watch the full lecture online on our facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/lsemiddleeastcentre/videos/363890584359536/
Speakers: Madawi Al-Rasheed, Ian Black and Steffen Hertog, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Michael Mason, LSE Middle East Centre
Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi embassy in Istanbul on 2 October 2018 to never leave. Having denied knowing his whereabouts, Saudi Arabia now admits that Khashoggi had been killed, but the leadership claims to have no knowledge of – or connection to – the murder. The death of the Saudi journalist has taken over international headlines; but what are the long-term implications of this event? This panel brings together LSE Middle East Centre experts to discuss internal, international and economic repercussions. Recorded on 22 November 2018.
Madawi Al-Rasheed (@MadawiDr)is Visiting Professor at the LSE Middle East Centre.
Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Steffen Hertog is Associate Professor in Comparative Politics in the LSE Department of Government and he is also PI on the Kuwait Programme project 'The Social Safety Net in Kuwait'.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre.
Image: Deputy Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Participates in the Counter-ISIL Ministerial Plenary Session - Flickr - U.S. Department of State.
Speakers: David McDowall and Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre.
David McDowall’s ground-breaking modern history of the Kurds was first published in 1996. It became a foundation text for the subsequent growth of scholarship on the Kurds and, revised and updated three times, remains an essential part of the literature. David is currently updating the book again and will share his thoughts on developments in the field and, in particular, on areas which have gained in importance and understanding over the last 25 years.
David McDowall studied Islamic History under Albert Hourani for his first degree and wrote his post-graduate dissertation on the Druze revolt in Syria, 1925-27. He is a generalist, having worked for the British Council and UNRWA, before becoming a full-time writer, writing on Britain, Palestine, Lebanon and the Kurds. After 20 years writing and self-publishing a series of British landscape books, he has reverted to updating his history of the Kurds.
The event marks the launch of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre. Convened by Zeynep Kaya and Robert Lowe, the series will encourage dissemination and discussion of new research on Kurdish politics and society and provide a network for scholars and students with shared research interests. Recorded on 23 October 2018.
Image: Book Cover 'Modern History of the Arabs' courtesy of the author.
Speakers: Salman Sheikh, The Sheikh Group and Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre
Salman Shaikh is a negotiations specialist with eight years of experience in running Track II diplomacy with a wide spectrum of Syrian communities and constituencies. With Syria divided into zones of influence dominated by external players, he will address the question of what options remain for a political process – and what is at stake. At a time when world and regional powers are once again attempting to negotiate a political breakthrough that would serve their interests, he will argue that a path to an inclusive political process must – and can – be found. In this regard, he will also draw on years of engagement with key regional and international capitals, including Washington, Moscow, Ankara, Riyadh and London. Recorded on 13 November 2018.
Salman Shaikh (@Salman_Shaikh1) is the Founder and CEO of The Shaikh Group (TSG).
Courtney Freer (@courtneyfreer) joined the Kuwait Programme, LSE Middle East Centre in 2015 as a Research Officer.
Image: Salman Shaikh's TED talk 'Navigating the Arab Spring' in 2012. Source: YouTube.
Speakers: Hendrik Kraetzschmar, University of Leeds, Paola Rivetti, Dublin City University, Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre, Craig Larkin, King’s College London. Chair: Katerina Dalacoura, LSE
What are the consequences of the Arab uprisings for Islamist actors and organisations across the region? Have regime change, revolution, counter-revolution and reform worked to strengthen the power and influence of Islamists, or have they weakened them? Presenting the recently published volume Islamists and the Politics of the Arab Uprisings: Governance, Pluralisation and Contention (EUP, 2018), panellists will critically discuss the impact of the uprisings looking at how Islamists' political and ideological stances have shifted as a result of a dramatically changing social and political environment. Cross-regional dynamics will be explored and assessed, alongside discussions of the national specificities of Islamist trajectories in those countries of the Middle East and North Africa impacted by the waves of popular mobilisation since 2010". Recorded on 3 October 2018.
Image: Islamists and the politics of the Arab Uprisings: Governance, Pluralisation and Contention Book Cover. Image Courtesy of Edinburgh University Press.
Speakers: Youssef Cherif, Deputy Director of Columbia Global Centers, Tunis, member in Carnegie's Civic Research Network.
Youssef Cherif analyses how the Maghreb region is another theatre of the cold war raging between the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) members. By means of fake news, political pressures and transfer of weapons, the three leading protagonists of the GCC are influencing the political, security and economic situation in North Africa which in turn deepens their crises and risks destabilizing the region. Recorded on 10 October 2018.
Youssef Cherif (@Faiyla) is a political analyst who specializes in North African affairs. He is Deputy Director of Columbia Global Centers, Tunis, member in Carnegie's Civic Research Network and is contributing to a number of think-tanks.
Courtney Freer (@courtneyfreer) is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Arab Gulf states, with a particular focus on Islamism and tribalism.
Image: Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed speaks with King Mohammed VI at Sea Palace barza. Source: Rashed Al Mansoori / Crown Prince Court - Abu Dhabi
Speakers: Courtney Freer, Toby Doge, LSE Middle East Centre; Stéphane Lacroix, Sciences Po, Paris; John Jenkins, Policy Exchange, London.
Scholars of Middle Eastern politics have long overlooked the role played by political Islam in domestic politics of the wealthy monarchical states of the Arabian Gulf, so-called 'rentier states'. While rentier state theory assumes that citizens of such states will form opposition blocs only when their stake in rent income is threatened, this book demonstrates that ideology, rather than rent, has motivated the formation of independent Islamist movements in the wealthiest states of the region, specifically, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The book therefore argues that Brotherhood movements have managed to use the links between the social (i.e. informal personal networks) and political (i.e. government institutions) to gain influence in policymaking in such states. Using contemporary history and original empirical research, Courtney Freer updates traditional rentier state theory and argues that political Islam serves as a prominent voice and tool to promote more strictly political, and often populist or reformist, views supported by many Gulf citizens. Recorded on 16 October.
Courtney Freer (@courtneyfreer) is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Arab Gulf states, with a particular focus on Islamism and tribalism.
Sir John Jenkins is a British ex-diplomat, Senior Fellow at Policy Exchange in London and a Board Member of the LSE Middle East Centre and also of the American University of Iraq at Suleimaniya.
Stéphane Lacroix is associate professor of political science at Sciences Po in Paris and a researcher at the Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI).
Toby Dodge (@ProfTobyDodge) is Kuwait Programme Director, Kuwait Professor and Professor in the International Relations Department.
Image: Qatar's Abdulwahab Grand Mosque. Image Courtesy of Omar Chatriwala, Flickr.
Speakers: Toby Dodge, Zeynep Kaya and Jessica Watkins, LSE Middle East Centre; Renad Mansour; Chatham House.
It has now been over a year since the liberation of Mosul by Iraqi government forces in July 2017. This victory marks a new stage in the violent conflict that has destabilised Iraq since at least regime change in 2003. In some ways, the breakthrough in July 2017 can be compared firstly to the initial aftermath of the invasion in April 2003 until the insurgency transformed itself into a civil war in 2005, and then secondly to the period following the US-led surge that started in February 2007 until the reconstitution of ISIS and the fall of Mosul in 2014.
However, as all these examples indicate, if the underlying drivers of instability are not properly identified and mediated through accurately targeted policy interventions, then a return to the levels of organised violence that have dominated Iraq for the majority of the last fifteen years is likely. This event marks the launch of the Conflict Research Programme (CRP) Iraq.
Funded by UK DFID, the Conflict Research Programme (CRP) is a three-year programme designed to address the drivers and dynamics of violent conflict in the Middle East and Africa and to inform the measures being used to tackle armed conflict and its impacts. Recorded on 30 October 2018
Toby Dodge (@ProfTobyDodge) Toby is Kuwait Programme Director, Kuwait Professor and Professor in the International Relations Department.
Zeynep Kaya (@zeynepn_kaya) is Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre.
Renad Mansour (@renadmansour) is Research Fellow in the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.
Jessica Watkins is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre, currently working on a DFID-funded project looking at regional drivers of conflict in Iraq and Syria.
Image: An Iraqi Bazaar. Photo: serkansenturk.
Speakers: Deniz Kandiyoti, SOAS; Renad Mansour, Chatham House; Charles Tripp, SOAS Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Director
This memorial honoured the late Faleh A. Jabar and his notable contribution to the study of Iraq and the wider Middle East. This event also marked the launch of his MEC paper From Identity Politics to Issue Politics: The Iraqi Protest Movement, which he presented at the Middle East Centre in July 2016.
Faleh A. Jabar was a political sociologist, the CEO of Iraq Studies Institute and a Visiting Fellow at the School of Politics and Sociology at the University of London’s Birkbeck College. His research interests and expertise spanned various fields, including the sociology of religion, sociology of nation-building and state formation, tribes and modern socio-economic formations, and cultural discourses in Iraq and the greater Middle East. Jabar authored many books, including The Shiite Movement in Iraq, Post-Marxism and the Middle East, Ayatollahs, Sufis and Ideologues: State, Religion and Social Movements in Iraq and (as co-editor) Tribes and Power: Nationalism and Ethnicity in the Middle East, all published by Saqi books. Recorded on 7 June 2018.
Deniz Kandiyoti is Emeritus Professor in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on the fields of gender relations and developmental politics in the Middle East, specifically Turkey.
Renad Mansour is Research Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House. His research explores the situation of Iraq in transition and the dilemmas posed by state-building.
Charles Tripp is Professor of Politics with reference to the Middle East at SOAS, University of London and Fellow of the British Academy. His research interests include the nature of autocracy, state and resistance in the Middle East, the politics of Islamic identity and the relationship between art and power.
Image credit: LSE Middle East Centre
Speaker: Cristina Moreno-Almeida, King's College College Chair: Shakuntala Banaji, LSE
This talk launches Cristina Moreno-Almeida’s book, ‘Rap Beyond Resistance: Staging Power in Contemporary Morocco’. In the book, Moreno-Almeida argues for a new way of looking at cultural resistance in the Arabic-speaking world that goes beyond secular liberal ideas of resistance. In doing, so, she provides an in-depth look at rap culture in Morocco, bringing light to a vibrant and varied rap scene, and uncovering the many ways in which young artists are being political beyond ‘radical lyrics’. Recorded on 21 June 2018.
Cristina Moreno-Almeida is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at King’s College London, UK, and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre.
Shakuntala Banaji is is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, where she also serves as Director of Graduate Studies and programme director for the MSc Media, Communication and Development.
Image credit: Yoriyas Yassine Alaoui
Speaker: Nasr al-Hariri, Syrian Negotiation Commission Chair: Ian Black, LSE Middle East Centre
The war in Syria has entered its eighth year with a worsening humanitarian crisis and an ever increasing threat to global security. Despite the West’s recent military response to the use of chemical weapons, the Assad regime, backed by Russia and Iran, continues with its military strategy unabated. In a conversation with Ian Black, Dr Nasr al-Hariri, President of the Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC) discusses the latest developments from inside Syria, and suggests practical steps the UK and its allies should take to enforce a comprehensive plan that protects civilians from all indiscriminate attacks, hold war criminals to account, and revive a failing UN-led political process. Recorded on 10 May 2018.
Dr Nasr al-Hariri is the President of the Syrian Negotiation Commission.
Dr Ian Black is Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. He is a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for The Guardian newspaper.
Image credit: Violaine Martin, © UN Geneva
Speaker: Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University Discussant: Malu Halasa Chair: Rahaf Aldoughli, University of Manchester
This event launches Wendy Pearlman's book, “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria”. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, the book features a collection of intimate wartime testimonies from a cross-section of Syrians whose lives have been transformed by revolution, war, and flight. Recorded on Wednesday 21 March.
Speaker: Andrew Noble, former British Ambassador to Algeria
Andrew Noble spent more than three years in Algeria, which spanned spanned among other things the start of the oil price crisis, advances in the Libyan and Malian discussions and a significant strengthening of the UK’s bilateral relations with Algeria in many areas. Given the difficulty of access to reliable information about Algeria, this discussion offers an insight into the state of Algeria, domestically and internationally. Recorded on 14 March 2018.
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons.
Speakers: Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE Middle East Centre; Steffen Hertog, LSE; Michael Farquhar, King's College London. Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre
King Salman of Saudi Arabia began his rule in 2015 confronted with a series of unprecedented challenges. The dilemmas he has faced are new and significant, from leadership shuffles and falling oil prices to regional and international upheaval. This talk launches the edited volume 'Salman’s Legacy', which interrogates this era and assesses its multiple social, political, regional and international challenges. Whether Salman’s policies have saved the kingdom from serious upheaval is yet to be seen, but no doubt a new kingdom is emerging. Recorded on 7 March 2018.
Speaker: Güneş Murat Tezcür, University of Central Florida Chair: Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre
Over the last three decades, tens of thousands of women have joined the ranks of the PKK and its affiliated organisations. What factors explain their violent mobilisation despite life-threatening risks? Building on a unique dataset of more than 9,000 militant bios and in-depth interviews with the families of militants, Güneş Murat Tezcür argues that gender inequality directly influences women's decisions to take up arms, believing that doing so provides them with a path out of patriarchal gender relations. Recorded on 7 February 2018.
Güneş Murat Tezcür is the Jalal Talabani Chair of Kurdish Political Studies at the University of Central Florida. His research focuses on political violence, social movements, and the geopolitics of the Middle East with a focus on the Kurdish question.
Image credit: Kurdishstruggle, Flickr.
Speakers: Silvia Quattrini, Minority Rights Group International; Austen Josephs, Alaco Limited; Alexandra Buccianti, BBC Media Action; Jessica Watkins and Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre
This talk, jointly hosted by BRISMES and the LSE Middle East Centre, is aimed at students interested in working in or on the Middle East. The panel discussion includes professionals from four different sectors – media, academia, business and not-for-profit. Recorded on 31 January 2018.
- We apologise for the abrupt ending of this podcast. The last few minutes of the recording were corrupted.
Speaker: Adel Iskandar, Simon Fraser University
Seven years since the popular uprising that shook Egypt, the relationships between state, society, social movements and corporate power have been reconfigured, perhaps even disfigured. On the eve of the anniversary of the January 25 revolution, Adel Iskandar reflects on these changes and asks how they have affected our understanding of social, cultural and political life in the country. He argues that Egypt today is a replica of various historic Egypts, each manifesting as an effigy built for either public scrutiny or glorification. Recorded on 24 January 2018.
Adel Iskandar is Director of the Global Communication Program at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Vancouver. He is the author of several works on Egypt and Arab media, including "Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution" (IB Taurus, 2013) and "Mediating the Arab Uprisings" (Tadween Publishing, 2012). He is a co-editor of Jadaliyya and an associate producer of the Status audio journal.
Image credit: Guillén Pérez, Flickr
Speaker: Soraya El Kahlaoui, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study
In this talk, Soraya El Kahlaoui discusses the ongoing resistance to urban expansion in Rabat, focusing on the Guich Loudaya tribal lands. The Guich lands have today been entirely relinquished to private developers linked to Morocco’s ruling elite who have sought to erect in their place one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Rabat: Hay Ryad. Soraya analyses the forms of resistance used by the “urban subaltern” and argues that the rhetoric of modernity underpinning urban growth in Morocco represents a continuation of the colonial logic of land grabs and the privatisation of communal agricultural spaces. Recorded on 16 January 2018.
Speakers: Shereen El-Feki, Chatham House; Joey Ayoub, University of Edinburgh Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre
With shifts in the political and economic landscape across the MENA region, the pillars of patriarchy are under increasing pressure. How do men see their lives and the changing world around them, including the roles and rights of women and girls? In this event, Shereen El Feki, Joey Ayoub and Courtney Freer discuss IMAGES MENA, the first study of its kind to explore the private and public lives of almost 10,000 men and women across the Middle East and North Africa, and what these findings mean for the future of the region. Recorded on 10 January 2018.
Image credit: World Bank, Flickr.
Speaker: Tom Woerner-Powell, University of Manchester Chair: Jonathan Hill, King's College London
From his struggle against French colonialism in North Africa to his stand against religious sectarianism in Syria, the actions of Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri have been an inspiration to many. The symbolic father of modern Algeria has frequently been presented as both an exemplary Muslim and a bridge between East and West. In this talk, Tom Woerner-Powell launches his book ‘Another Road to Damascus: an integrative approach to Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza’iri', in which he questions prevailing depictions of the historical figure in scholarly literature and beyond, and discusses his continued salience as a symbolic mediator between the supposedly conflicting zones of ‘Islam and Europe’, ‘East and West’. Recorded on 6 December 2017.
Speaker: Ian Black, LSE Middle East Centre Discussant: Tom Phillips, Royal College of Defence Studies Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
This talk launches Ian Black’s book Enemies and Neighbours: Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017, in which he traces how, half a century after the watershed of the 1967 war, hopes for a two-state solution and an end to occupation have all but disappeared. Drawing on declassified documents, oral histories and his own on-the-ground reporting, Black recreates the major milestones in the most polarizing conflict of the modern age from both sides. Recorded on 29 November 2017.
Speaker: Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE; John Chalcraft, LSE; Ewan Stein, University of Edinburgh Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
Three years after the Arab uprisings started in Tunisia, a panel of academics reflect on the causes and drivers behind these seminal events, how they have transformed countries like Egypt; but also why they have had less impact in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Recorded on 4 December 2013.
Speaker: Christian Emery, University of Plymouth Chair: Roham Alvandi, LSE
In this talk, Dr Emery discusses the main findings from his new book: 'US Foreign Policy and the Iranian Revolution: the Cold War Dynamics of Engagement and Strategic Alliance'. He focuses on how US policy objectives in Iran were refashioned in light of three major and converging crises: the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, and the onset of the Iran-Iraq dynamic. Recorded on 2 December 2013.
Image credit: U.S. Department of State, Flickr.
Speaker: Charles Shamas, MATTIN Group Chair: Federica Bicchi, LSE
In July the European Commission published "guidelines on the eligibility of Israeli entities and their activities in the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967 for grants, prizes and financial instruments funded by the EU from 2014 onwards." This step has been variously described as a 'political earthquake', a sanction targeting Israeli settlements and settlement policies, and a confrontational move to save the two-State solution and the Middle East Peace Process from final collapse. But what precisely is taking place and how did we get here? What are the likely political consequences? This presentation outlines the processes that have driven the EU's production of these guidelines. In this light it will examine the role of the EU as a normative power striving to respect international law and comply with its own law while intensifying EU-Israel relations. Recorded on 11 November 2013.
We apologise that the question and answer session is missing from this podcast.
Speaker: Christopher Schroeder Chair: Mark Schankerman, LSE
Schroeder shares the stories of young Middle Eastern entrepreneurs and describes the broader economic and political challenges and opportunities facing them. He argues that the Middle East is a lens into a massive shift we should all be engaging in now. Recorded on 2 October 2013.
Speaker: Saleh Muslim Mohamed, Democratic Union Party (PYD) Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE MEC
It is nine months since Kurds took control of towns in northern Syria, having established an unprecedented coalition of Kurdish parties. Saleh Muslim Mohamed, the co-President of the most prominent Syrian Kurdish party, assesses the progress of Kurdish politics and local government and the wider Syrian and regional context. Recorded on 3 May 2013.
Speakers: Karma Nabulsi, University of Oxford; Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter; Rosemary Hollis, City University London; Peter Kosminsky Chair: Jon Snow, Channel 4 News
In this panel discussion, the speakers discuss aspects of the current situation in Palestine, including: Palestinian domestic politics, Israel’s position, the international dimension of the impasse and the insights into the conflict provided by film-making. Recorded on 26 April 2013.
Speaker: Roland Dannreuther, University of Westminster Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE
When there are shifts in distribution of power in international politics, energy security emerges as a salient concern. Professor Dannreuther considers the implications of two shifts: first, the flow of energy from east to west (oil and gas) and the increasing links between Asia and energy-producing regions; and secondly, the flow from consumers of energy to producers of energy with the rise of resource nationalism. Recorded on 11 March 2013.
Speaker: Hazem Kandil, Cambridge University Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE
Hazem Kandil explains why Egypt's popular uprising has so far failed to overthrow the regime through exploring the positions of the main players in the revolt: the military, security, and the various political factions. Recorded on 4 March 2013.
Speaker: Fawwaz Traboulsi, American University of Beirut Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE
With few comprehensive histories of Lebanon, Professor Fawwaz Traboulsi's 'A History of Modern Lebanon, which weaves together more than five centuries of the country's social, political, cultural and economic history, has become a go-to reference for anyone who wants to understand the country. In this lecture, Traboulsi shares the problems he has faced in writing the history of Lebanon and how he has dealt and proposes to deal with these challenges. Recorded on 18 February 2013.
Speaker: Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE
While US policy towards Israel remains unchanged, the long-standing assumption that most Americans – even most Jewish Americans – agree with that policy no longer holds. In the media, in popular culture, in universities and particularly within the Jewish community, there are signs of major shifts. In conversation with Fawaz Gerges, Phyllis Bennis discusses these changes with reflection on her own political evolution from Zionist youth leader to anti-war internationalist and Palestinian human rights activist. Recorded on 8 February 2013.
Speakers: Lulu al-Sabah, Abolish Article 153; Hatoon al-Fassi, Qatar University Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme
A great deal of misinformation exists about women's rights in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In an effort to dispel outdated notions of women's places in such societies, top experts from the Gulf states will speak about the extent to which women today in the GCC face legal restrictions in everyday life and how women in the region are endeavouring to change the status quo. Recorded on 22 March 2017.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speaker: Shafeeq Ghabra, Kuwait University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Shafeeq Ghabra discusses some of the major political changes that the Arab world has undergone since 2011, focusing on power shifts, sectarianism, the role of youth groups and the challenges of reform in the region. He focuses in particular on the Gulf’s role in the Arab Spring and its aftermath, tracing GCC monarchies’ efforts at domestic reform and their involvement in the overarching political changes in the Middle East. Recorded on 12 January 2016.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speaker: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the Gulf are greatly discussed yet little understood. This lecture, based on findings from extensive field work in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, examines the historical and current political role of the Ikhwan in states traditionally considered impenetrable to Islamist movements due to their status as wealthy rentier states. Recorded on 11 November 2015.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speaker: Michael Herb, Georgia State University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
Despite recent setbacks, Kuwait's parliament remains the strongest amongst the GCC states. Michael Herb delves into Gulf history to explain why Kuwait's political system differs from those of its neighbours. Recorded on 18 March 2015.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speaker: Kristin Smith Diwan, American University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE MEC
In November 2014 Bahrain held parliamentary elections which took place under an election boycott by the political opposition. This talk will explore the implication of these elections for Bahrain's political development and stability. It will also draw upon Kuwait's own recent experience with an opposition boycott to reflect more generally on the evolving political order in the Gulf states, in the context of the the failure of the 2011 Arab uprisings and the emergence of the threat of the Islamic State. Recorded on 20 January 2015.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme Event.
Speaker: Anastasia Nosova, LSE Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme
When applied to the Gulf region in general and Kuwait more specifically, rentier state theory stipulates that the political relations between state and business are determined by rents, and therefore that business ceases to represent a strong political force and withdraws from the formal political field in exchange for wealth provided by the state. However, the evidence from Kuwait’s recent history suggests that there is great variation between the patterns of political engagement in Kuwait’s merchant families. Anastasia Nosova defines which factors explain why some merchant families engage in parliamentary politics, while others do not, and why at times the merchant community allies with the opposition, and at other times with the government. She also examines what impact this political engagement by business has on the country’s economic reform policies. Recorded on 17 January 2017.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speaker: Aisha Al-Sarihi, LSE Kuwait Programme Discussant: Michael Mason, LSE Chair: Dr Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme
The entry of the Paris Agreement into force in November 2016 coincides with the Gulf states’ acceleration of economic diversification strategies driven by the pressure to adjust fiscal deficits as a result of low oil prices. Aisha Al-Sarihi explains how economic diversification strategies create a window of opportunity for Gulf countries to progress towards the goal set in the Paris Agreement. Capturing these two challenges in a single policy could bring about ‘win-win’ outcomes that ensure both long-term benefits for climate and development. Using specific examples from Oman and the UAE, Aisha discusses the drivers of climate change action in the GCC, and potential challenges to including climate change in economic diversification strategies. Recorded on 25 April 2017.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speaker: Michael Stephens, RUSI Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme
As the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen moves into its eighth month, the country shows little sign of returning to stability. GCC operations in the country have swung the tide against the Houthi militias and their backer Ali Abdullah Saleh, however there appears little ability to connect military action to political reconciliation. The talk will focus on the ability of the GCC coalition to forge a political consensus in Yemen, on the back of a highly controversial military operation. Recorded on 17 November 2015.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speakers: Nadje Al-Ali, SOAS; Latif Tas, SOAS Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Horizontal organising within social movements is not necessarily sensitive to gender-based and other intersectional forms of inequalities and hierarchies. Nadje Al-Ali and Latif Tas present their paper on 'the Feminist Turn in the Kurdish Political Movement', in which they critically explore the attempts by political activists and elected representatives of the Kurdish political movement in south-eastern Turkey (northern Kurdistan) to challenge patriarchal and masculinist ideology and practices. Recorded on 7 March 2017.
This seminar forms part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Network.
Kuwait Programme Seminar Speaker: Lolwah Alkhater, University of Oxford Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme
Since the turn of the century, many GCC states have undertaken ambitious economic and social reforms, informed by international think tanks and consultancies. Lolwah Alkhater explores the role played by consultancies and think tanks in the GCC through the lens of "policy borrowing", looking specifically at Qatar's education reforms - the most ambitious of any Middle Eastern country - which were designed and led by American think tank RAND Corporation. Recorded on Monday 13 November.
Image credit: Northwestern University in Qatar, Wikimedia Commons.
Speaker: Karl Sharro aka Karl reMarks Chair: Dina Matar, SOAS
The Middle East is the mysterious land of veils, minarets and Orientalist clichés. Karl Sharro, aka Karl reMarks, talks about his six year journey of satirising how his enchanted native land is represented in Western media and punditry.
From the Arab Spring to the rise and decline of ISIS, Sharro discusses how his online alter ego tackled those delicate topics in tweets, blog posts, memes, animations and badly-drawn cartoons. From a more realistic James Bond movie that depicts him delivering a shipment of tear gas to a repressive regime to his 'one sentence explanation of the rise of ISIS', the talk will cover an eclectic range of subject matter. It closes with Sharro's Occidentalist work, as he returns the favour to the West in the aftermath of Brexit and Trump. Recorded on 6 November 2017.
Video podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXQdzoAlPU
Speaker: Michael Willis, University of Oxford Chair: William Sinton, Society for Algerian Studies
Algerian history has received a significant amount of scholarly attention but almost exclusively focused on its time under French colonial rule and especially the struggle to end this rule. Comparatively little attention has been drawn to Algeria’s independent postcolonial history despite its richness. Michael Willis looks at how, and possibly why, this is the case and discusses the controversies, challenges and rewards of researching and writing Algeria’s modern history, focusing in particular on the civil conflict of the 1990s. Recorded on 18 October 2017.
Image credit: OMAR-DZ, Flickr.
Speaker: Joost Jongerden, Wageningen University Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre
In its 1978 manifesto, the PKK declared the establishment of an independent state to be the most important political goal of any national liberation movement. Twenty years on, the party’s leader Abdullah Öcalan changed this when he developed an ideological framework based on the idea of self-governing, stateless societies as the best way of addressing socio-economic and socio-cultural injustices. Joost Jongerden explains this paradigm shift, which reoriented the PKK as well as other Kurdish movements in the Middle East. Recorded on 12 October 2017.
Image credit: Nora Miralles, Flickr.
Speaker: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Richard Saull, QMUL
In this lecture, Toby Dodge examines the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East, specifically its policy towards Iraq, the fight against the Islamic State, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. He also looks at the ideological and organisational divisions within the White House that have exacerbated President Trump’s own very distinctive style of leadership to deliver a set of contradictory and destabilising policies in one of the world’s most unstable regions. Recorded on 11 October 2017.
Image credit: Shealah Craighead / Official White House, Wikimedia Commons.
Speakers: Toby Dodge, LSE; Nussaibah Younis, Chatham House; Christine van den Toorn, IRIS
In this event, Toby Dodge, Nussaibah Younis and Christine van den Toorn discuss the final report of the Task Force on the Future of Iraq. The Task Force gathered the world's leading Iraq scholars under the chairmanship of Ambassador Ryan Crocker to develop a strategy for stabilizing Iraq in the long-term, beyond the immediate liberation of Iraq's territory from ISIS. The Task Force traveled to Iraq, Europe, and the US and met with dozens of Iraqi political leaders and Western policy-makers to determine the challenges that Iraq will continue to face and to propose ways in which the international community can continue to support the country. Recorded on 27 June 2017.
Speaker: Professor Hugh Roberts, Tufts University Discussant: Dr Aula Hariri, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Professor John Chalcraft, LSE
The Socialist Forces Front (FFS) is routinely referred to as Algeria’s oldest opposition party. Finally legalised in 1989, the FFS from its foundation in 1963 provided the main template of ‘opposition’ in Algeria, but its achievements have been meagre at best. Hugh Roberts examines the FFS’s origins in the rebellion of 1963-5, arguing that its achievements as an opposition movement have been limited because it has not been engaged in opposition properly so called, merely dissidence. Recorded on 30 May 2017.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Speaker: Mark Fitzpatrick, International Institute for Strategic Studies Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
With a framework agreement on the future shape of Iran's nuclear programme reached after marathon talks, the world powers and Iran now aim to draft a comprehensive accord by 30 June, resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis. However, the impending deal is still under heavy attack in both Washington and Tehran. Mark Fitzpatrick assesses the political and strategic ramifications of a resolution to the crisis as well as the technical and diplomatic issues involved. Recorded on 5 May 2015.
Image credit: Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äusseres, Flickr. Nuclear Talks between the EU+3 and Iran.
Speaker: Thomas Pierret, University of Edinburgh Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Over the last four years, the Syrian insurgency has witnessed the rise and consolidation of certain factions, particularly Islamist ones, but also the demise of once powerful groups of a more nationalist persuasion. Drawing on Paul Staniland's social-institutionalist conceptual framework, Thomas Pierret argues that groups that have relied on long-standing networks stemming from armed militancy or religious proselytism had a determining organisational advantage over counterparts that lacked such a background. Recorded on 2 May 2017.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Speakers: Danny Postel, Northwestern University; Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE Middle East Centre; Nader Hashemi, University of Denver; Toby Matthiesen, University of Oxford; Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, University of Oxford
As the Middle East descends ever deeper into violence and chaos, ‘sectarianism’ has become a catch-all explanation for the region’s troubles. The turmoil is attributed to ‘ancient sectarian differences’. In this talk, editors Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel join Madawi Al-Rasheed, Toby Matthiesen and Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi to challenge the use of ‘sectarianism’ as a magic-bullet explanation for the region’s ills, focusing on how various conflicts in the Middle East have morphed from non-sectarian (or cross-sectarian) and nonviolent movements into sectarian wars. Recorded on 8 May 2017.
Erbil-based Radio Al-Salam (https://soundcloud.com/radio-al-salam) interviewed LSE Middle East Centre Leverhulme Research Fellow Dr Filippo Dionigi about his current research project, which looks at host states' policies towards Syrian refugees. In this interview, he talks about his findings in Iraq, focusing on how the Kurdish Regional Government in particular is dealing with the presence of refugees in its territory.
Radio Al-Salam is a station in the city of Erbil, serving displaced and refugee families from Iraq and Syria.
Recorded on 4 May 2017.
Speaker: Rached Ghannouchi, Ennahdha Party
On Thursday 20 April 2017, the MEC hosted a talk by Ennahdha (Renaissance) Party founder Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi, in which he reflected on the achievements of the 2011 Tunisian uprising, the challenges facing the region, as well as the evolution of his Party.
Speaker: Siavush Randjbar-Daemi, University of Manchester Chair: Ali Ansari, University of St Andrews
Siavush Randjbar-Daemi discusses the origins and development of the presidential institution in the Islamic Republic from the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the present day. He provides an overview of both the possibilities and limitations that each president has faced whilst in power and reflects on whether the present-day Islamic Republic, now approaching its fourth decade of existence, can be defined according to the Western canons concerning state systems. Recorded on 31 January 2017.
Speakers: Nick Alton, FCO; Dania Akkad, Middle East Eye; Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre; Mina Toksoz, University of Manchester and Chatham House; Representative of Oxfam UK Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre
BRISMES and LSE Middle East Centre jointly hosted this careers event for students interested in working in or with the Middle East. This panel discussion involves professionals from five different sectors – government, journalism, academia, business and not-for-profit. Recorded on 18 January 2017.
Speaker: Ambassador Lukman Faily, Senior Advisor to Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi Chair: Professor Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Lukman Faily argues that the lack of social harmony in Iraqi society represents a key factor of instability and that it is necessary to identify and mediate this problem by encouraging increased cooperation between citizens though state-supported social and religious programmes. Recorded on 30 November 2016.
Image credit: Copyright: Thomas Koch, Shutterstock. Najaf, Iraq.
Speakers: Yoav Peled, Tel Aviv University; Horit Herman Peled, Tel Aviv University Chair: Amnon Aran, City, University of London
Yoav Peled and Horit Herman Peled examine the growing saliency of the religious outlook in Jewish Israeli society, in order to test the argument that Israeli society is undergoing a process of religionisation. They also analyse the counter-argument, that secular–religious relations among Jews in Israel went into crisis in the 1980s and that the society had actually secularised during the 1990s. They seek to explain the causes and significance of these two processes and the seeming contradiction between them, as well as the variance in the trajectory of religionisation between different historical periods. Recorded on 16 November 2016.
Image credit: Damir Janaev, Flickr. Jerusalem, 2015.
Speaker: Ali Ansari, University of St Andrews Chair: Pejman Abdolmohammadi, LSE Middle East Centre
The election of Hassan Rouhani to the Presidency of the Islamic Republic in 2013 for many signalled a popular rejection of the politics of confrontation endorsed by his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and support for greater liberalism at home and internationalism abroad. With his first term coming to an end and an agreement reached on Iran's nuclear programme, this talk revisits the 2013 Presidential election campaign and argues that the process retained much of the intricate management of previous elections and a willingness to 'believe the rhetoric' of the campaign has resulted in a dangerous mismanagement of expectations. Recorded on 10 November 2016.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons. Hassan Rouhani during the 2013 Presidential elections.
Speakers: Ginny Hill, LSE Middle East Centre; Baraa Shiban, Reprieve Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre
Yemen is embroiled in multiple civil wars, triggered by a long-term decline in oil production, the failure of state-building, strong sub-national identities and internal competition between rival elite networks that comprised the regime of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Ginny Hill and Baraa Shiban present their paper for the Remote Control Project, examining the use of special forces, mercenaries and armed drones. They highlight the moral and political risks for Western governments training and arming regional protagonists, such as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, to fight in Yemen. They argue that the implications of the Saudi-led intervention may extend far beyond Yemen’s borders to influence the conduct of future wars. Recorded on 9 November 2016.
Image credit: Richard Messenger, Flickr. Sanaa, Yemen.
Speaker: John Chalcraft, LSE Chair: Aitemad Muhanna-Matar, LSE Middle East Centre
John Chalcraft launches his book Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, which gives an account of popular protest that emphasizes the revolutionary modern history of the region. Challenging top-down views of Middle Eastern politics, Chalcraft looks at how commoners, subjects and citizens have long mobilised in defiance of authorities, taking examples from a wide variety of protest movements from Morocco to Iran. Recorded on 26 October 2016.
Speaker: Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi Chair: Professor Toby Dodge, LSE
In his lecture, UAE based writer and art collector Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi will be discussing the political undertones of iconic artworks of the 20th century in the Arab world. From the Baathist regimes of Syria and Iraq to Egypt’s pan-Arabism under Gamal Abdel Nasser, paintings and sculptures in addition to film and performance have been employed by various governments as a tool of soft power to propagate their policies to the public not only in their respective states but throughout the region and beyond. Despite this government patronage of the arts, many artists have chosen to challenge their authorities through their art practices. This talk is an attempt to shed light on an often neglected dimension in the modern history of the Arab world. Recorded on 18 October 2016.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Watch the video podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHpLbuvbROQ
Speaker: Amina Boubia, Sciences Po Centre for International Studies Discussant: Cristina Moreno Almeida, LSE Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Amina Boubia presents her paper which studies the role new music genres such as rock and rap have played in the Middle East and North Africa during the Arab Spring. She argues that music is a powerful form of collective action and should therefore be taken seriously by academics and stakeholders as it can either effectively strengthen contentious movements emerging in a specific context, thus challenging the established order, or, on the contrary, contribute to supporting the status quo. Recorded on 11 October 2016.
This seminar forms part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Network.
Speaker: Lahur Talabany, Zanyari Agency Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Since ISIS' occupation of Iraqi territory in June 2014, the Kurdish security forces have been on the frontline as one of the most effective forces in the international coalitions’ efforts to reclaim territory in both Iraq and Syria. Zanyari Intelligence Agency and Counter Terrorism Group Special Forces, under the leadership of Lahur Talabany, have played a key role in these efforts. Lahur Talabany will share with you his insights into how the struggle against ISIS is proceeding. Recorded on 6 October 2016.
Speaker: Nelida Fuccaro, SOAS; Ulrike Freitag, ZMO; Rasmus Christian Elling, University of Copenhagen Chair: Fran Tonkiss, LSE
Nelida Fuccaro launches her edited book 'Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East', with two of the contributors to the volume, exploring violence in the public lives of modern Middle Eastern cities, approaching violence as an individual and collective experience, a historical event, and an urban process. In reconstructing the violent pasts of cities, new vistas on modern Middle Eastern history are opened, offering alternative and complementary perspectives to the making and unmaking of empires, nations, and states. Recorded on 5 October 2016.
Lebanon hosts the highest number of Syrian refugees relative to its local population. This poses many challenges to a state known for its fragility and instability. UNHCR Representative to Lebanon Mireille Girard discusses the impact of the Syrian crisis on Lebanon and the responses of international and local institutions. This event launches an MEC workshop on the long-term challenges of forced migration in the Middle East.
Speaker: Rebecca Steinfeld, Goldsmiths, University of London Chair: Avi Shlaim, University of Oxford
Rebecca Steinfeld looks at the historical and contemporary struggles that have led to the gap between the restrictions on, and availability of, abortion in Israel. She attributes this gap to the compromise necessitated by conflicts amongst competing policymakers, motivated by opposing viewpoints and interests, over the objectives and substance of abortion policies. Recorded on 7 June 2016.
Speakers: Cengiz Çandar, Radikal; Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Turkey has traditionally favoured a policy of maintaining the status quo in its foreign relations in the Middle East and has placed limits on its own engagement with the region. Today however, it finds itself more deeply involved in Middle East politics than ever before. This event marks the launch of a collection of papers that were presented at a workshop aimed at untangling Turkey’s domestic politics and foreign policies in the Middle East under the current rule. Cengiz Çandar and Zeynep Kaya offer insights into significant changes now unfolding in Turkish, Syrian and Kurdish politics. Recorded on 18 April 2016.
Speaker: Filippo Dionigi, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
In this event, Filippo Dionigi discusses how states such as Lebanon and Jordan have coped with the challenges of mass displacement within their borders. He poses questions and advances hypotheses on the current and future implications of forced mass displacement in the Middle East for states in the region. Recorded on 24 February 2016.
Image credit: World Bank, Flickr. Line of refugees in front of the UNHCR registration center in Tripoli, Lebanon.
Speakers: Mandy Turner, Kenyon Institute (CBRL); Florian P. Kühn, Otto von Guericke University; Michael Pugh, University of Bradford; Caroline Hughes, University of Bradford; Christopher Phillips, QMUL; Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
In this book launch, the authors of ‘The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace’ critically explore the practices of peacebuilding, and the politics of the communities experiencing intervention. The contributions to this volume have a dual focus. First, they analyse the practices of western intervention and peacebuilding, and the prejudices and politics that drive them. Second, they explore how communities experience and deal with this intervention, as well as an understanding of how their political and economic priorities can often diverge markedly from those of the intervener. From Cambodia to Afghanistan, Iraq to Mali, interventions in the pursuit of peace have not achieved the results desired by the interveners. But, rather, they have created further instability and violence. The contributors to this book explore why. Recorded on 23 March 2016.
Speaker: David Roberts, King's College London Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme
Qatar’s reputation as an uncontroversial, peaceable, quasi-neutral state was undermined as its leadership systematically chose sides during the Arab Spring. Without the capacity, resources, or experience to effectively involve itself in the intractable conflicts that emerged from the Spring, Qatar gained a reputation as a dangerous dilatant, stoking anger among key allies in the Arab and western worlds.
David Roberts looks at the challenges that face Qatar’s Emir as he navigates a hazardous path, stuck between path dependency promoting the maintenance of old associations and the reality that Qatar struggles to control and use these relations effectively. Recorded on 22 March 2016.
Image Credit: Wikipedia. Qatari Emir Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani.
Speaker: Katerina Dalacoura, LSE Chair: Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre
Building on a long intellectual tradition going back to the late Ottoman period, debates in present-day Turkey on the role of culture and civilisation in world politics, and the relationship between modernity and Islam, are vibrant and ongoing. These debates are inevitably linked to power. In this talk Katerina Dalacoura attempts to move beyond the political maelstrom and focus on the ideas of individual thinkers and intellectual trends in relative isolation. Recorded on 2 March 2016.
Speaker: Filippo Dionigi, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
In this event, Filippo Dionigi discusses how states such as Lebanon and Jordan have coped with the challenges of mass displacement within their borders. He will pose questions and advance hypotheses on the current and future implications of forced mass displacement in the Middle East for states in the region.
Speaker: Katerina Dalacoura, LSE Chair: Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre
Building on a long intellectual tradition going back to the late Ottoman period, debates in present-day Turkey on the role of culture and civilisation in world politics, and the relationship between modernity and Islam, are vibrant and ongoing. This lecture discusses whether there exist, within this body of thought, new possibilities of going beyond the familiar categories of East and West, secularism and Islam. It asks whether alternative universalist understandings of culture and civilisation in world politics are on offer, or a chimera. Recorded on 2 March 2016.
Image description: In 1914, Abdullah Cevdet, an Ottoman intellectual, advocated the wholesale acceptance of Western civilization ‘with its roses and thorns’.
Speaker: Andrew Hammond, University of Oxford Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme
Despite the large presence of Salafism in Arabic political and religious discourse today, the term remains in fact highly contested and its history unclear. Yet Salafism, with its semantic confusions, is finding its way from Arabic and the Saudi sphere into Turkey and the Turkish language, which had been as a last bastion against its ideological spread. How did it happen, what are its consequences? Recorded on 1 March 2016.
Image Credit: Ekremsaringoz, Pixabay.
Speaker: Benedetta Voltolini, Sciences Po Paris & LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Dr Federica Bicchi, LSE
Benedetta Voltolini presents her paper investigating lobbying and framing in EU foreign policy towards the Middle East and North Africa. By relying on social network analysis and the literature on policy entrepreneurship, Benedetta will show how non-state actors are involved in processes of framing and knowledge construction, how frames become collective and under what conditions framing processes take place. EU foreign policy toward the Middle East and North Africa will be used as a case study. Recorded on 9 February 2016.
Speaker: Jonathan Hill, King's College London Chair: William Sinton, Society for Algerian Studies
The Arab Spring’s influence on the Maghreb has been piecemeal and partial. What explains these varied experiences? Why did Ben Ali’s regime fall and Bouteflika’s survive? Why has Morocco not gone the same way as Tunisia? And what of Mauritania, the oft forgotten and frequently ignored other Maghreb country? Jonathan Hill addresses these and other questions, analysing and comparing Morocco’s, Algeria’s, Tunisia’s and Mauritania’s political development over the past 10 years. Recorded on 3 February 2016.
This event is jointly organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Society for Algerian Studies.
Image credit: Copyright: EPA/Karim Selmaoui. Protest in Rabat, Morocco on 20 February 2011 demanding political reforms.
Speaker: Choukri Hmed, Paris Dauphine University Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Tunisia is frequently known as the small “noiseless country” of the MENA that achieved its political transition and successfully managed to avoid civil war and authoritarian consolidation. Based on an ongoing fieldwork, Choukri Hmed presents his paper which, without undermining these political outcomes, proposes an analysis of the (un)changing frames and issues in both social movements and the political field in the country. Recorded on 2 February 2016.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Image credit: Ezequiel Scagnetti, European Parliament Flickr. Demonstration ahead of Tunisian Constituent Assembly elections in 2011.
Speaker: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre
Toby Dodge, MEC Director and Kuwait Professor, considers the reasons behind the rise of the Islamic State and its expansion, looking at the implications of intervention by both international and regional powers on Iraq. Recorded on 27 January 2016.
Speaker: Nicola Pratt, University of Warwick Chair: Aitemad Muhanna-Matar, LSE
Oral history remains a largely untapped source in research on the Arab world. Simultaneously, women’s activism in the post-independence period remains relatively understudied, despite a heightened interest in women’s involvement in the Arab uprisings. Based on personal narratives of women activists of different generations in Egypt, Lebanon and Jordan, this lecture explores the history of women’s activism in the Arab world from the 1950s onwards. Recorded on 20 January 2016.
Image credit: An Egyptian woman tries to stop a military bulldozer in Cairo. Globovisión, Flickr.
Speaker: Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Analysis of both official and opposition Saudi divine politics is often monolithic, conjuring images of conservatism, radicalism, misogyny and resistance to democracy.
In this event, Madawi Al-Rasheed launches her new book in which she challenges this stereotype by examining a long tradition of engaging with modernism that gathered momentum with the Arab uprisings and incurred the wrath of both the Saudi regime and its Wahhabi supporters. She also challenges much of the scholarly received wisdom on Islamism in general, blurring the boundaries between secular and religious politics. Recorded on 14 January 2016.
Speaker: Dina Esfandiary, King's College London Chair: Roham Alvandi, LSE
With the July 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran, attention has shifted to regional security. The rise of ISIS and the instability left behind by the Arab Spring has cemented dysfunction and chaos in the Middle East. Tackling it will require Iran’s help, or at the very least, its input. Dina Esfandiary discusses who makes foreign policy decisions in Iran, Iran’s regional policy and explore the impact of the nuclear agreement on its efforts in Iraq and Syria in particular. She also explores the potential for meaningful dialogue on regional security issues between Iran and the Arab Gulf countries. Recorded on 9 December 2015.
Speaker: Abdulhadi Khalaf, Lund University Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
In this seminar, Abdulhadi Khalaf revisits the Bahraini trajectory of the Arab Spring. He examines the consequences of competition between moderate opposition networks and their diverse radical flanks. The paper argues that the positive roles of the radical flanks include developing new political opportunities and attracting new participants to join the movement. These, in the case of Bahrain, have outweighed the commonly cited negative outcomes, such fragmenting the movement and/or exposing it to manipulation by one or more of the protagonists in the ongoing contention. Recorded on 8 December 2015.
This event forms part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA event series.
Image Credit: Flickr, Chris Price. Flag of Bahrain.
Speaker: Pejman Abdolmohammadi, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Roham Alvandi, LSE
In the last three years, the main focus of the international community and the media dealing with Iran has been the nuclear issue and Iranian foreign policy. Despite the relevance of these two elements, Pejman Abdolmohammadi argues that there is another paramount aspect which, in the next two decades, could have a crucial influence over the future of Iran. This new aspect is related to Iranian civil society and its ongoing radical change and is defined by Abdolmohammadi as the “Iranian Renaissance”. Recorded on 1 December 2015.
Image Credit: Andrew Partain, Flickr. Iran's 2009 Green Revolution.
Speaker: Daniel Neep, Georgetown University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Why did Syria transition from a laissez-faire to a statist economy between 1946 and 1954? Existing scholarship proposes a political or class-based explanation: the anti-colonial old bourgeoisie that inherited power after independence was so discredited by its record of economic mismanagement, cronyism, and defeat in the 1948 war that army officers felt obliged to intervene. Daniel Neep presents his paper explaining the shift by using a constructivist historical institutionalist approach to emphasise the importance of ideas in producing economic shifts. Recorded on 29 October 2015.
Speaker: Toby Matthiesen, University of Oxford Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Toby Matthiesen launches his new book titled The Other Saudis: Shiism, dissent and sectarianism in which he traces the politics of the Shia in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia from the nineteenth century until the present day. The book outlines the difficult experiences of being Shia in a Wahhabi state, and casts new light on how the Shia have mobilised politically to change their position. The book is based on little-known Arabic sources, extensive fieldwork in Saudi Arabia and interviews with key activists. Of immense geopolitical importance, the oil-rich Eastern Province is a crucial but little known factor in regional politics and Gulf security. Recorded on 28 October 2015.
Speaker: Ed McAllister, University of Oxford Chair: John King, Society for Algerian Studies
From the perspective of a working-class Algiers neighbourhood, this talk looks at social memories of post-independence nation-building during the 1970s as reflections of the disappointments of the 1980s, the dislocation caused by civil war during the 1990s, and the reinforced state power and consumerism of the 2000s. In contrast to the scholarly attention commonly devoted to periods of violence and upheaval in Algerian history, McAllister sets out to explore how Algerians remember a much understudied decade of stability, and to ask what these memories reveal about current relationships to politics and society, by focusing on views of politics, urban space and sociability at neighbourhood level. Recorded on 21 October 2015.
This event is jointly organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Society for Algerian Studies.
Image credit: texturedutemps.org. Algiers in the 1970s.
Speaker: Sami Zemni, Middle East and North Africa Research Group Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
In this seminar, Sami Zemni presents his paper, co-written with Habib Ayeb, titled: Between Hegemony and Resistance: towards a moral economy of the Tunisian Revolution.
The revolutionary upheavals in Tunisia and across the MENA which began in 2011 have fundamentally challenged the frameworks traditionally used to define and interpret Arab political life, namely ‘authoritarian resilience’ and/or ‘democratization studies’. The paper uses a ‘moral economy’ approach in order to understand the massive mobilizations that led to Ben Ali’s disappearance, and to make sense of the nature of political change in the post-Ben Ali era. Recorded on 20 October 2015.
This event forms part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA event series.
Speakers: Fran Tonkiss, LSE; Dr Mona Khechen, AUB Chair: Romola Sanyal, LSE
This event represents the culmination of a collaborative research project between LSE and the American University of Beirut. The event addresses current processes of urban development in Beirut, focusing on the Ras Beirut neighbourhood. In contrast to the well-established literature on gentrification in North American and European cities, and increasing focus on development logics in cities in emerging and transitional economies, there is comparatively little academic research on urban restructuring in cities in the Middle East.
Speakers explore the remaking of Ras Beirut from the standpoint of comparative urbanism – highlighting the specificities of this case, placing it in the context of regional and international capital flows and real estate development, and analysing the relevance of established frameworks in critical urban studies and political economy to such a setting. Recorded on 1 October 2015.
Speakers: Martha Mundy, LSE; Rami Zurayk, American University of Beirut (AUB); Cynthia Gharios, AUB Chair: Michael Mason, LSE
This event is the culmination of field research carried out over four years in collaboration with the American University of Beirut.
Speaking to the work of the project ‘The Palimpsest of Agrarian Change’, Martha Mundy and Rami Zurayk and their colleagues Saker El-Nour and Cynthia Gharios present their findings on agrarian change in Lebanon. Food insecurity and ‘land grabs’ are as much a part of the Middle Eastern landscape as they are for neighbouring regions such as Africa. The historical layers that lie behind the conflicts over the capacity to produce food and access the land remain, however, remarkably poorly documented.
This project documents shifts in the forms of food production and the political ecology of urbanisation that can be traced back to the legacies of Ottoman and French Mandate rule and, more recently, war and labour migration. The result is both a critique (and contribution) to the historiography of South Lebanon and an essay in a history of landscape grounded in the materiality of land, labour, food and the making of space. Recorded on 29 September 2015.
Speaker: Stéphane Lacroix, Sciences Po Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
On 3 July 2013, Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s guidance bureau and the first democratically elected president of Egypt, was overthrown by a military coup led by General Abdelfattah al-Sisi. Since then, the Muslim Brotherhood has been designated a terrorist organization and brutally repressed. In contrast, the Salafi al-Nour party, the political arm of the "Salafi Call" (al-da'wa al-salafiyya), has supported Morsi’s overthrow, taken part in the writing of a new constitution and supported General Sisi in the May 2014 presidential elections. How can we account for al-Nour’s political strategy? What role does the party play in the emerging power structure in Egypt? And what does this tell us about al-Nour’s political identity? Recorded on 26 May 2015.
Speaker: Frédéric Vairel, University of Ottawa Discussant: Nawal Mustafa, LSE Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Frédéric describes how self-limitation works in contemporary Moroccan mobilisation, with particular reference to the 20th February Movement. In 2011, contestation dynamics did not reach national amplitude despite being spread across various parts of the country. Frédéric looks at the institutionalisation of contentious space, shedding light on the relation between contentious space and institutional politics. He also addresses how different actors within contentious spaces calculate their actions and explains why self-limitation is not embedded in a moral economy in Morocco. Recorded on 20 May 2015.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Image Credit: Hasna Lahmini, Flickr. Protesters carry the Moroccan flag during the February 20 protest in Rabat.
Speaker: Frédéric Vairel, University of Ottawa Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Most of the existing literature on the 2011 MENA uprisings looks in isolation at either the contentious politics of popular mobilisation or regime responses to them. Frédéric Vairel proposes a move away from this approach in order to understand the Moroccan case, instead considering both sides together by looking at the 20th February Movement and the regime’s response to it. He argues that by resorting to a number of short and long term reforms; toleration, repression and containment of street mobilisation, the regime was able to avoid producing ‘martyrs’, thereby containing potential backlash of the kind experienced elsewhere in the region. Recorded on 19 May 2015.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Image credit: Thierry Ehrman, Flickr. King Mohammed VI of Morocco painted portrait.
Speaker: Claire Beaugrand, Institut Français du Proche Orient Discussant: Filippo Dionigi, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Bahrain has had a long history of exiling its opponents as a way to regulate political dissent. The 2011 political uprising in Bahrain marked a new phase in the history of Bahraini outmigration and exile politics. The brutal repression with which the protest movement was met (particularly from March to July 2011) led to a new wave of political exile, affecting a wider range of socio-economic categories. With most of the Arab countries, notably Syria, themselves in turmoil and Gulf countries having closed ranks behind the Bahraini government, the destinations of out-migrants also became more limited with the UK and Lebanon on the top of the list.
This research examines the forms of opposition and advocacy that were built on previous exile experiences, focusing on a new generation of opponents that includes children of political exiles and long-time expatriates in Bahrain. This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'. Recorded on 3 June 2015.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Image credit: humanrightstv.com. Bahraini human rights activists Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja (left) and Nabeel Rajab (right).
Speaker: Jonathan Wyrtzen, Yale University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
Against a dominant historical narrative emphasizing the importance of war-time agreements (Sykes-Picot and others) and the post-World War I peace settlement in "making" the modern Middle East, Jonathan wyrtzen shifts the focus to the post-war decade, examining a set of synchronic "revolts" in the mid-1920s from Morocco to Turkey that were critical in negotiating new political topographies in North Africa and the Middle East. This comparative analysis looks at different typologies of state formation (both by the British, French, Italian, and Spanish colonial powers and by local actors including Ataturk, Ibn Saud, and Abd al-Krim) and of anti-state resistance, emphasising the importance of transregional linkages during this critical historical juncture. Recorded on 17 March 2015.
Image Credit: Wikipedia. Sheikh Hilal al-Atrash, Druze rebel leader, during The Great Syrian Revolt.
Speaker: Lahouari Addi, Sciences Po Lyon Chair: John King, Society for Algerian Studies
In this lecture, Professor Lahouari Addi discusses the current situation in Algeria, from the sickness and subsequent disappearance of Bouteflika from the public eye, to the protests in the south resisting the exploitation of the country's vast shale gas reserves and, importantly, the future of Algeria's economic situation in the face of declining oil prices. These issues are discussed against the backdrop of a nearing change in presidential leadership. This event was jointly organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Society for Algerian Studies. Recorded on 10 March 2015.
Abdelaziz Bouteflika painted portrait. Image Credit: Thierry Ehrman, Flickr.
Speaker: Marie Duboc, University of Tübingen Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
This talk focuses on labour protests in Egypt, before and after the fall of Hosni Mubarak. It argues that repression and radicalisation do not fully capture the dynamics of social movements in authoritarian contexts. Instead, it suggests to expand the contentious politics approach, the dominant theoretical framework used to study collective action. Through the study of labour action in Egypt Duboc moves away from approaches apprehending social movements as linear processes, explaining why they can lead to revolutionary situations as well as hinder them. Recorded on 25 February 2015.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Image Credit: Hossam el-Hamalawy, Flickr. Egyptian workers protest against state-backed Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions.
Speaker: Richard Schofield, King's College London Chair: Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE Middle East Centre
In trying to make sense of the spontaneous appearance of new borderland spatialities in Syria and Iraq, as well as recent instances of formal state boundary-making such as the Abyei arbitration, Richard Schofield asks what constitutes a borderland in the Middle East. Addressing both historical and contemporary concerns, with notable attention being paid to Iran-Iraq and Saudi-Yemen, he argues that developing a more overtly multidisciplinary basis for the study of contested borders will best aid their appreciation and understanding. Recorded on 24 February 2015.
Speaker: Colonel Joel Rayburn, National Defense University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
More than a decade after the US-led invasion of Iraq, most studies of the Iraq conflict focus on the twin questions of whether the United States should have entered Iraq in 2003 and whether it should have exited in 2011, but few have examined the new Iraqi state and society on its own merits. In this lecture, Joel Rayburn presents his book Iraq After America: Strongmen, Sectarians, Resistance, in which he examines the government and the sectarian and secular factions that have emerged in Iraq since the US invasion of 2003, presenting the interrelations among the various elements in the Iraqi political scene. Tracing the origins of key trends in recent Iraqi history to explain the political and social forces that produced them, particularly during the intense period of civil war between 2003 and 2009, he looks at some of the most significant players in the new Iraq, explaining how they have risen to prominence and what their aims are. Recorded on 17 February 2015.
Speaker: Steven Heydemann, United States Institute of Peace Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
How have the Arab Uprisings of 2011 affected authoritarian governance in the Arab world? How have Arab regimes responded to the distinctive challenges posed by the rapid emergence of oppositional forms of mass politics? What forms of authoritarian governance seem to be emerging in the wake of the Uprisings? Reflecting on the debate about the resilience of authoritarianism in the Middle East, Steven Heydemann analyses what regime responses to the rise of mass political movements tell us about the capacity of Arab regimes to adapt in the face of new challenges. Recorded on 12 February 2015.
Image Credit: Hossam el-Hamalawy, Flickr.
Speaker: Steven Heydemann, United States Institute of Peace Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
As the Syrian conflict nears its fourth anniversary, it poses a growing threat to the stability of the state order in the Levant and Arab East. In this lecture, Steven Heydemann argues that the widespread violence now gripping the Levant and Arab East has a logic and structure that can shed light on its underlying dynamics, its drivers, and its possible effects. Recorded on 11 February 2015.
Speaker: Filippo Dionigi, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Katerina Dalacoura, LSE
Launching his new book, Hezbollah, Islamist Politics, and International Society, Filippo Dionigi uses the example of Lebanon's Hezbollah to reflect on the role of international norms in influencing and shaping Islamist politics in the Middle East. Using empirical research and International Relations theory, he assesses the extent to which Islamist groups, which have traditionally attempted to shield their communities from 'external' moral conceptions, have been influenced by the principles that regulate international society. Recorded on 2 February 2015.
Speaker: Peter Neumann, King's College London Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
Large numbers of foreigners, including many Europeans, have joined jihadist groups in the Syrian/Iraqi conflict. Who are these people, why do they go, and what - if any - threat will they pose upon their return? Drawing on a large database with hundreds of social media profiles of Western fighters, dozens of interviews, and fieldwork, Professor Peter Neumann of King's College London's International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation will talk about the fighters' motivations and consequences. Recorded on 27 January 2015.
Speaker: Fadi Bardawil, University of North Carolina Discussant: Fuad Musallam, LSE Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Drawing on the theorisation of the Marxist group Socialist Lebanon, Fadi Bardawil looks at how Lebanon's simultaneous economic integration into the Arab area through its services-based mode of production, and its isolation from Arab political causes, was affected by the advent of the Palestinian Resistance on the national political scene. Bardawil pays particular attention to how the Left theorised the Lebanese State, class-formation, as well as the role of Palestinian Resistance as an external force that would transform the rules of the Lebanese sectarian political game by rallying the masses around the national question. Recorded 21 January 2015.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Speakers: Lina Khatib, Carnegie Middle East Center; Dina Matar, SOAS; Atef Alshaer, University of Westminster Chair: Filippo Dionigi, LSE Middle East Centre
In this talk, Dr Lina Khatib, Dr Dina Matar, and Dr Atef Alshaer present their most recent book, 'The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication'. The book addresses how Hizbullah uses image, language and its charismatic leader, Hassan Nasrallah, to legitimise its political aims and ideology and appeal to different target groups. Recorded on 2 December 2014.
Speaker: Ali Ansari, St Andrews University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
In this talk, Professor Ansari looks at the Iranian proposal in 1977 to establish a joint British-Iranian nuclear company which would have entailed the construction of up to twenty nuclear reactors in Iran in return for significant Iranian investment in British Industry. Had the deal been followed through, it would have marked an unprecedented shift in British-Iranian relations. Professor Ansari charts the rise and fall of the negotiations and what they reveal about the nature of Iran’s relations with Britain. Recorded 19 November 2014.
Speaker: Natalya Vince, University of Portsmouth Chair: John King, Society for Algerian Studies
As recent events in North Africa have demonstrated, the post-revolution is often accompanied by moral panic and a desire to 'reinstate' gendered order. This talk explores debates about the place of women in public space in Algeria in the 1960s. Seeking to go beyond commonly-held views of post-independence Algeria as locked in a binary struggle between, on the one hand, 'tradition' and ethno-cultural nationalism and, on the other hand 'modernity' and socialist development, Dr Vince considers how revolutionary progress could embrace puritanical single-mindedness and also how Algerian women in the 1960s responded to and contributed to these debates. Recorded on 12 November 2014.
Speaker: Aitemad Muhanna-Matar, LSE Chair: Lori Allen, SOAS
Aitemad Muhanna-Matar presents the findings of field research conducted in five countries (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Yemen and the occupied Palestinian territory) in 2013. The research focuses on the emergence of young female leaders who have shaped a new form of women’s activism that merges Islamism with feminism. It also reflects on the form of women's leadership that developed during and after the Arab Uprisings and how it could contribute to redefining women's activism and empowerment and its effect on social and gender transformation in Arab countries. Recorded on 6 November 2014.
Speaker: Joel Beinin , Stanford University Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Since 2002, local Palestinian popular committees have led a grass roots struggle against the separation barrier Israel has constructed, mostly on Palestinian land inside the West Bank. Israelis and internationals have joined this social movement. Using Doug McAdam’s conception of “high-risk activism” (derived from his study of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964) Joel Beinin explores the history of the struggle and the motivations of Israelis for participating in it. Recorded on 4 November 2014.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Speaker: Roham Alvandi, LSE Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, is often remembered as a pliant instrument of American power during the Cold War. In this lecture and book launch, Roham Alvandi offers a revisionist account of the Shah's relationship with the United States by examining the partnership he forged with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in the 1970s. Dr Alvandi will discuss how the Shah shaped US policy in the Persian Gulf under Nixon and Kissinger, including the CIA’s covert support for the Kurdish revolt in northern Iraq, and the US role in the origins of Iran’s nuclear program. Dr Alvandi will draw on the history of Iran’s Cold War partnership with the United States to examine the potential for Iranian-American cooperation in the Middle East today. Recorded on 16 October 2014.
Speakers: Toby Dodge, Faleh Jabar Chair: Sami Zubaida, Birkbeck, University of London
The seizure of Mosul by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and their rapid move south towards Baghdad has thrown Iraq into another post-regime change crisis. This panel examines the identity and background of the fighters in northern Iraq, as well as the root causes behind the violence and explains why the Iraqi armed forces, comprising over a million men under arms, collapsed so quickly. It explains how the political and constitutional system, set up in the aftermath of regime change, has contributed to the current situation. The speakers also discuss the consequences of the current crisis and what it means for the future of Iraq. Recorded on 26 June 2014.
Speaker: Marc Valeri, University of Exeter Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Oman’s foreign policy under Qaboos is usually considered to be pragmatic and independent – as illustrated by the sultanate’s role in facilitating the conclusion of the Iran-P5+1 nuclear deal in 2013 and its announcement that it would not join a hypothetical Gulf union. However such a widely accepted view should not obscure the fact that the price to pay for the perpetuation of this foreign policy has been an unquestioned political and economic dependence towards London and Washington. Recorded on 22 May 2014.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speaker: Charles Anderson, Georgetown University Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
Charles Anderson discusses his paper, which is part of a broader argument for a history from below of Arab society under the Palestine Mandate. By reexamining the political economy of the countryside under the first 18 years of British rule and the responses of peasants and ex-peasants to the escalating pressures they faced, it contends that greater attention to the history of the rural majority has much to teach us.
In tandem, it advances an analysis of the Mandatory regime as a liberal despotism, the policies of which consolidated the emergence of a “landless class” that ultimately rose against it during the multifaceted rebellion known as the Great Revolt (1936-39). Recorded on 20 May 2014.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Speaker: Raphael Espinoza, IMF Chair: Danny Quah, LSE
Raphael Espinoza analyses the challenges created by the changes the economies of the Gulf states have undergone in the last decade, spurred by high oil prices and ambitious diversification plans. Recorded on 15 May 2014.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speakers: Ambassador John Limbert, Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern (Iranian) Affairs; Chris Emery, University of Plymouth; Roham Alvandi, LSE Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
The historic September 2013 phone call between Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and U.S. President Barack Obama represented the highest-level contact between Iran and the United States since relations between the two countries were severed in 1980, in the midst of the Tehran hostage crisis. This roundtable examines the troubled history of US-Iran relations, past failed efforts at détente, and the prospects for a breakthrough in US-Iran relations in 2014. Recorded on 15 May 2014.
Speaker: Zaid Al-Ali, International IDEA Discussant: Toby Dodge, LSE
In this lecture, launching Zaid al-Ali’s new book 'The Struggle for Iraq’s Future', the author provides a uniquely insightful interpretation of Iraq’s nation-building progress in the wake of the 2003 war. Al-Ali argues that the 2005 constitution is illegitimate and established a system of government so extreme that it could never be implemented, creating a void that the country has been struggling to fill since. Recorded on Wednesday 7 May.
Speaker: Maha Abdelrahman, University of Cambridge Discussant: Ahmad Shokr, New York University Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
In this seminar, Dr Abdelrahman raises questions about some of the general features of new social movements such as decentralised organisational structures, working outside formal politics and a decision not to capture the state, specifically during moments of revolutionary upheaval. She uses the case of the 25 January uprising in Egypt to examine these features in relation to the inability of revolutionary forces to harness the power of the mobilised masses and to provide a coherent alternative(s) against institutions of the counter-revolution. Recorded on 6 May 2014.
Speaker: Jennifer Jenkins, University of Southampton Chair: Roham Alvandi, LSE
The Nazi-Soviet Pact, a central topic in the scholarship on the Second World War, is generally studied in its political and European dimensions. In this talk, Professor Jenkins takes a new look at the Nazi-Soviet Pact by embedding it in German and Soviet economic policies toward the Near East, specifically with Iran, from the early Weimar period forward. She also explores the history of German-Soviet-Persian economic cooperation in the interwar period, Iran's importance as a zone of cooperation between Germany and the USSR, and its place in the making of the Pact. Recorded on 30 April 2014.
Speaker: Raymond Hinnebusch, University of St Andrews Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
In this talk, Professor Hinnebusch examines Iraq-Syria relations with the aim of using their changing relations as indicators of changes in the regional states and regional states system. Recorded on 19 March 2014.
Speakers: Yvan Guichaoua, University of East Anglia; Imad Mesdoua Chair: John King, Society for Algerian Studies
The South of Algeria belongs to the widely integrated Saharan political economy also composed of large chunks of the Malian and Nigerian territories. As such, Algeria plays a key role in the livelihoods and geographical social and political mobility of Sahelian communities. In this talk, Dr Guichaoua examines the role of Algeria in recent (Tuareg then Jihadist) insurgencies in Mali and Niger as portrayed by various actors of the political crises in the Sahel. In turn, Imad Mesdoua examines the rationales guiding Algerian foreign policy in light of growing instability throughout the Sahel and Maghreb regions. Recorded on 10 March 2014.
Speaker: Steffen Hertog, LSE Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Gulf private sectors contribute the majority of national capital formation and employment, and have diversified into a wide range of manufacturing and service activities. National development strategies rely on private business as a primary driver of growth and development. At the same time, however, business contributes little to economic policy-making and is isolated in national politics, regularly failing to be represented in elected bodies. This talk explains this passive and isolated role of business by looking at how, despite all diversification, it remains structurally dependent on state spending and subsidies, and how its interests are at odds with those of GCC citizens at large. Recorded on 5 March 2014.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speakes: Adam Hanieh, SOAS Chair: Kamil Mehdi, LSE Middle East Centre
In this talk, Dr Hanieh draws on his new book, 'Lineages of Revolt', as well as recent fieldwork in the West Bank, to examine the political economy of Palestinian neoliberalism in the most recent period. He discusses the essential contours of Palestinian Authority development strategy, its links to donor-led imperatives and the Israeli occupation, as well as the wider regional political economy. Recorded on 24 February 2014.
Speaker: Salwa Ismail, SOAS Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
In this seminar, Professor Ismail discusses dimensions of contention and oppositional action anchored in urban space. She addresses the following questions: How, in the context of the Arab Revolutions, did the urban-based mass protests link with existing patterns of urban political action? What forms of contentious action undergird and animate these protests? In answering these questions, she focuses on urban popular forces in Cairo, their modes of inhabiting the city, and on the politics of the urban everyday. Recorded on 12 February 2014.
This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.
Speaker: Ahron Bregman Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
In this talk, Bregman argues that ending the Israeli occupation and establishing a Palestinian state could only be achieved if three elements come together: first, the arrival in the occupied territories of the Arab Spring in the shape of a third, non-violent Palestinian intifada against the occupation. Second, massive international pressure particularly on Israel but also on the Palestinians to compromise. Third, the remaining in power of a right wing government in Israel. Recorded on 10 February 2014.
Speaker: Sami Zubaida, SOAS Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
In this event, Professor Zubaida explores the question of changing identities. What constitutes authenticity in different spheres of culture is contested between political and religious groups and ideologies. Discourses of difference between Muslim/national cultures and ‘the West’, and the resistance to perceived cultural invasion have featured prominently in these contests. These themes are explored in relation to religion, national culture, sexuality, music and food. Recorded on 5 February 2014.
Speaker: Florence Gaub, EUISS Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
In this talk, Dr Gaub covers post-2011 Libya and asks key questions related to post-conflict reconstruction, security sector reform and transitional justice. What can we learn for future cases of regime change? How can security be built without external security provision? What are the factors that facilitate or impede political transitions? Recorded on 3 February 2014.
Speaker: Gilbert Achcar, SOAS Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE
The euphoria that welcomed the Arab uprising in its initial stage tended to turn into gloom in later years. Away from impressionistic reactions, Gilbert Achcar assesses and discusses the latest developments in the Arab-speaking region on the occasion of the publication of his new book, 'The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising'. Recorded on 27 January 2014.
Speaker: Alice Wilson, University of Cambridge Chair: John King, Society for Algerian Studies
The outbreak of the 2011 uprisings marked the 35th year of the conflict over Western Sahara, Africa’s last decolonization case. The international community has so far failed to produce a political climate conducive to the resolution of the conflict. In this talk, Alice Wilson analyses changes that have been recently enacted on the ground by Sahrawis both in Western Sahara and in the refugee camps in Algeria where exiled Sahrawis live. Recorded on 22 January 2014.
Speaker: Aitemad Muhanna-Matar Chair: Sumi Madhok, LSE
In this talk, Dr Muhanna-Matar discusses her new book, which explores how gender and gender relations of power in Gaza are renegotiated to develop material mechanisms of coping or resistance. The book provides empirical evidence of Gazan women’s capacity to actively exercise their agency. Recorded on 20 January 2014.
Speaker: Omar Nashabe
In this talk, Dr Nashabe discusses the creation of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and addresses the tribunal's decision to indict five members of Hezbollah and in turn to try them in absentia. Recorded on 16 January 2014.
Speaker: Yezid Sayigh, Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Professor Sayigh explores the nature of Syria’s revolution, its armed rebellion, and its opposition. He reflects on the drivers and dynamics of armed struggle and its impacts, placing this in comparative perspective with other historical experiences and anticipating likely trajectories going forward. Recorded on 13 January 2014.
Speaker: Anoush Ehteshami, Durham University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
The victory of President Hassan Rouhani represents the defeat of the most peripheral groups in the Iranian political. In this talk, Professor Ehteshami asks what drives President Rouhani’s worldview and what does his election victory tell us about Iran and the where it might be heading? Recorded on 27 November 2013.
This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.
Speaker: Lina Sinjab, BBC Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE
In this talk, Lina Sinjab focuses on the realities on the ground in Syria and the resilient civil society that is striving to continue amidst civil war. Recorded on 22 November 2013.
Speaker: Roger Owen, Harvard University Chair: Charles Tripp, LSE
Roger Owen offers a personal history of the emergence of modern Middle Eastern Studies as a distinct multi-disciplinary field, focusing mainly on the creation of University Centres in London, Oxford, Harvard and others by a set of academic entrepreneurs beginning with Sir Hamilton Gibb.
Speaker: Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Sumi Madhok, LSE
Professor Al-Rasheed introduces her new book and discusses the ‘question of women’ in Saudi Arabia in the context of interconnection between state, religion and society. Recorded on 7 October 2013.
Speakers: Laila El-Haddad, Maggie Schmitt Chair: Helena Cobbin, Just World Books
In this event, writer Laila El-Haddad and food documentarian Maggie Schmitt discuss their book 'The Gaza Kitchen: A Palestinian Culinary Journey', which represent the first-ever codification of Gaza's rich culinary heritage. Recorded on 8 May 2013.
Speakers: Steffen Hertog, LSE; Giacomo Luciani, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies; Marc Valeri, University of Exeter; Khalid AlMezaini, Qatar University Chair: Jon Marks
Although most Arab countries remain authoritarian, many have undergone a restructuring of state-society relations. This launch for 'Business Politics in the Middle East' (Hurst, 2013) covers the political role of regional capitalists during and after the Arab uprisings, prospects for the emergence of a more independent bourgeoisie, economic reform and new social contracts. Recorded on 21 March 2013.
Speaker: Ali Ansari, University of St Andrews Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre
Launching his latest book, 'The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran', Ali Ansari explores the idea of nationalism in the creation of modern Iran, considering the broader developments in national ideologies that took place following the emergence of the European Enlightenment and showing how these ideas were adopted by a non-European state. Recorded on 18 March 2013.
Speakers: Fawaz Gerges, LSE; Charles Tripp, SOAS Chair: Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, LSE
What drives large-scale, popular mobilizations in the Middle East and North Africa? And what are the challenges and prospects for democratic transformation and consolidation in the region? This book launch for 'The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World' (CUP, 2013), explores these questions and more. Recorded on 21 February 2013.
Speaker: Valerie Bunce, Cornell University Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE
Why do publics decide to challenge authoritarian rulers; why do they take different approaches to achieving these ends; and what explains the spread of such challenges across state boundaries? In this lecture, Valerie Bunce compares these three waves of popular challenges to authoritarian rulers providing insights into the MENA dynamic and important issues related to cross-national diffusion. Recorded on 4 February 2013.
Speaker: Rabah Aissaoui, University of Leicester Chair: John King, Society for Algerian Studies
In this talk, Dr Aissaoui examines some key developments in the political mobilisation of Algerians prior to the Second World War. He looks at how the French colonial authorities, and more specifically the French security services, responded to the political situation in Algeria by implementing a number of changes to the intelligence gathering process, changes that were marked by internal conflicts and tensions. Recorded on 28 January 2013.
Image credit: Wikipedia. 'French' Algiers.
Speaker: Dr Tariq Tell, American University of Beirut Chair: Professor Fawaz Gerges, LSE
Dr Tell contextualises contemporary politics in Jordan by examining the history of the emergence and consolidation of the modern state in Jordan under Ottoman, British, and Hashemite rule. He explores how the sources of Hashemite social power in Jordan were forged and why they have proven more durable than those fashioned under more auspicious circumstances elsewhere in the Arab east. Recorded on 23 January 2013.
Speaker: Haleh Afshar Chair: Alastair Newton, BRISMES
Prominent Muslim feminist Baroness Haleh Afshar speaks on the situation facing Iranian women in their country today. Recorded on 16 January 2013.
Image credit: Wikipedia. Women protesting during the 1979 Iranian Revolution.