Welcome to Season 3 of Instant Coffee, your quick fix of everything Middle East.

From fintech to drones, Abbasid-era paper technologies to the Anglo-Iranian oil company, this season is all bout how technology has developed in the region. We speak to people applying, adapting and re-imagining technology in their fields.

Instant Coffee - Season 3

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/

Digital Rights and Big Tech in MENA

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.

Knowledge Production Across Empires

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.

Re-Appropriating Technologies with and for Refugees and Migrants

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=jo
https://shayan.es/

Fintech, Crypto and Sanctions in Iraq and Iran

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/en

Sana 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/

Archiving and Mapping Technologies in Palestine and Syria

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).

Data for Development with Nagla Rizk

Welcome to the LSE Middle East Centre's podcast feed.

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.

Follow us and keep up to date with our latest event podcasts and interviews!