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.

The Islamic Movement in Israel

This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was the launch of Francis O'Connor's latest book 'Understanding Insurgency: Popular Support for the PKK in Turkey' published by Cambridge University Press. 

No insurgent movement can survive without some degree of popular support, but what does it mean to support an armed group? Focusing on the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which has come to global attention in recent years for its efforts in resisting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but has been present and active in the region for much longer, Francis O'Connor explores the first three decades of the PKK's insurgency in Turkey.

Looking at how the relationship between armed groups and their supporters should be conceptually understood, how this relationship varies spatially and what role violence has in their relationship, O'Connor draws on Civil War, Social Movements and Rebel Governance literatures to outline how the PKK survived a military coup in 1980 and slowly won popular support through incipient forms of rebel governance, the targeted use of violence and a nuanced projection of its ideology and objectives. In doing so, the book provides an historical narrative to an organisation which has managed to successfully resist NATO's second largest army with limited weapons for decades and has become a key player of Kurdish rights in the wider region.

Francis O’Connor is a Marie Curie Skłodowska Post-Doctoral Fellow in Rural Sociology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. His research addresses the grey-area between violent and non-violent mobilization. He particularly focuses on the relationship between insurgent movements and their supporters: his current project Routinised Insurgent Space looks at the spatial dynamics of insurgent support in the cases of the PKK in Turkey and the M-19 in Colombia. He is a member of the Centre of Social Movement Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy, a member of the International Expert Network for the Right-wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe Dataset and sits on the Advisory Academic Board for The Commentaries. He has published on insurgent movements in Turkey, Mexico and Colombia, anti-austerity protest in Europe, lone-actor radicalisation and social movement mobilisation in secessionist referendums.

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.

Understanding Insurgency: Popular Support for the PKK in Turkey

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.

Tunisia's Economic Development: Why Better than Most of the Middle East but Not East Asia (Webinar)

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.

Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism

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.

Collecting Traces for Future Struggles: Archiving in Times of Revolts

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.

Ruptured Domesticity Exhibition Launch: In Conversation with Sana Murrani

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.
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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

Abu Dhabi (Dis)connected: an evening of art and research (Seminar)

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.

The History and Development of Kurdish Studies with Professor Martin van Bruinessen

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).

Israel's Covert Diplomacy in the Middle East

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.

The Age of Counter-Revolution: States and Revolutions in the Middle East

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.

Charity in Saudi Arabia: Civil Society under Authoritarianism

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.

Art and Activism in Iraqi Kurdistan: Feminist Fault Lines, Body Politics and the Struggle for Space

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.

A New Diaspora of Saudi Exiles: Challenging Repression from Abroad

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.

Student Careers Panel

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.

Broken Bonds: The Existential Crisis of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, 2013–22

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 speakers

Hamza 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.

Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region

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.

Voices That Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey

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

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

Artificial Intelligence and Development in MENA: Inclusion or Inequality?

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 speakers

Eylaf 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.

Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution

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

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.

Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition

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).

Political Elites, Civil Society and the Future of Sudan

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

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/

Art Meaning and Art Making with Nadim Choufi

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.

Navigating the Crisis: Yemen 10 Years On

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 Speakers

Rim 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.

13 Years After the Arab Spring: What are the Chances for Legitimate Constitutions in the Arab World?

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/.

Living In the Future with Rahel Aima

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