Middle East Centre

Professor Naghmeh Sohrabi, Charles (Corky) Goodman Professor of Middle East History and Director for Research at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, describes the role of the family in the 1979 Revolution in Iran.

Professor Amaney A. Jamal discusses findings from surveys in Gaza and the West Bank, as the 46th Annual George Antonius Memorial Lecture. Guest Speaker: Professor Amaney A. Jamal (Dean of Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, University of Princeton) Chair: Professor Eugene Rogan (University of Oxford)

MEC Women's Rights Research Seminar delivered by Dr Heba El-Shazli (George Mason University) Chaired by Dr Maryam Alemzadeh (St Antony's College) The seminar was delivered on Tuesday 7th May

This talk delves into the multifaceted challenges Palestinian women activists face, revealing how intersecting oppressions within a settler-colonized society shape their organizing efforts and experiences, challenging singular analyses of patriarchy. How can we understand the multiple, intersecting webs of oppression that Palestinian women activists face in their everyday organizing? The talk is going to illuminates the context and complexity of the lived experiences of women activists in Palestine, aiming to contribute to feminist perspectives on organizing and how activists’ daily practices and interactions ‘inhabit’ institutions, creating, maintaining and transforming them. The analysis exposes a ‘simultaneity of oppressions’ which highlights the challenges faced by Palestinian women attempting to organize to challenge the social structure, within their quasi-state, settler-colonized context. The talk aims to uncover multiple intersecting inequalities produced by dominant institutional and societal structures, yet experienced differently by women activists, in an oppressed, colonized setting. This distinctive political context, aligned with the collaborative security setting with the occupier, elucidates how violations of the quasi-state, colonizer and other social structures like patriarchy and family manifest and intersect institutionally to violate and undermine women. Dr. Nazzal challenges the singular monolithic analysis of patriarchy, revealing how different patriarchal positions towards women expose different modes of oppression, while serving at times as a protective, supportive system.

This lecture explores how parliamentary activity affects the candidacy list placements of MPs in closed-list PR systems, particularly focusing on the interaction between gender and candidacy list decisions. While it is generally argued that the parliamentary activities of the MPs will increase their chances for re-election, this link is not straightforward in closed-list PR systems, where the party leaderships dominate the candidate selection processes. The determinants of the centralized candidate selection processes are highly ambiguous, making it hard to understand how accountability works for MPs in such settings. Furthermore, existing research pays little attention to how politicians' gender interacts with these processes. This article aims to answer these questions by analyzing the determinants of candidacy list placements using a novel dataset containing over 200,000 parliamentary speeches in Turkey. We present evidence that (1) parliamentary activity has a statistically significant positive effect on the candidacy list placement decisions of the party elites, and yet, (2) this effect is conditional upon politicians' gender. We found that speech is associated with higher candidacy list placements in the next election for women politicians while no such effect exists for men. We suggest that this heterogeneity is driven by intra-party competition and the perception that women MPs would be less threatening for existing party leadership positions compared to men MPs. Dr Tugba Bozcaga joined EIS as a lecturer in politics with a specialisation in political methodology. She earned a PhD in political science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2020. Before coming to King's, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University. She is also a faculty fellow at the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS). Her research focuses on political economy of development, with a substantive focus on local governance, bureaucracy and state capacity, distributive politics, social welfare, and migration. Her work has been awarded Mancur Olson Best Dissertation Prize in Political Economy (Honorable Mention) from American Political Science Association (APSA). She also received the Best Comparative Policy Paper Award from APSA Public Policy Section, APSA MENA Politics Section Best Paper Award, and APSA Religion and Politics Section Best Paper Award.

In this podcast, Oxford Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim compares notes with Exeter University Professor Ilan Pappé on the prospects for a binational state in the aftermath of the events of 7 October and the Gaza War.

A discussion of European initiatives to recognize the State of Palestine to advance the prospects for a two-state solution. In this episode, former Israeli Ambassador and Director General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs Alon Liel speaks with Haizam Amirah-Fernández, Senior Analyst for Mediterranean and Middle Eastern affairs at the Elcano Institute in Madrid, and Chris Doyle, Director of CAABU, the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, to consider European initiatives to recognize the State of Palestine to advance the prospects for a two-state solution. The Middle East Centre convenes its Hilary Term 2024 seminar each Monday night in term around the theme of 'Political Options Following the Gaza War.' The aim is to bring primarily Palestinian and Israeli speakers each week to discuss the different options facing policy makers in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel and the 2023-2024 War in Gaza. While some in the Israeli government call for continued security control over all Palestinian territories, many in the international community believe Palestinian statehood and the end of occupation the only sustainable course of action. In one session, speakers from Britain, Spain, and Israel will consider European proposals for recognizing Palestinian statehood. However, Palestinian independence is not the only option. Others continue to argue that a binational state, in which Palestinians and Israelis would enjoy citizenship, is the most feasible option, given the fragmentation of the West Bank by Israeli settlements. Yet all recognize that the political environment for substantive change has become far more difficult as a result of the 7 October attack and the Gaza War.

Prof Noura Erakat explores the significance of South Africa's application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in the Gaza Strip before the International Court of Justice, and the Court's decision to hear the case. The Middle East Centre convenes its Hilary Term 2024 seminar each Monday night in term around the theme of 'Political Options Following the Gaza War.' The aim is to bring primarily Palestinian and Israeli speakers each week to discuss the different options facing policy makers in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel and the 2023-2024 War in Gaza. While some in the Israeli government call for continued security control over all Palestinian territories, many in the international community believe Palestinian statehood and the end of occupation the only sustainable course of action. In one session, speakers from Britain, Spain, and Israel will consider European proposals for recognizing Palestinian statehood. However, Palestinian independence is not the only option. Others continue to argue that a binational state, in which Palestinians and Israelis would enjoy citizenship, is the most feasible option, given the fragmentation of the West Bank by Israeli settlements. Yet all recognize that the political environment for substantive change has become far more difficult as a result of the 7 October attack and the Gaza War. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Dr Hagar Kotef from SOAS examines the current situation of Israeli settlers both in the West Bank and in the Cabinet to assess the impact of the settler movement in political options following the Gaza War. The Middle East Centre convenes its Hilary Term 2024 seminar each Monday night in term around the theme of ‘Political Options Following the Gaza War.’ The aim is to bring primarily Palestinian and Israeli speakers each week to discuss the different options facing policy makers in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel and the 2023-2024 War in Gaza. While some in the Israeli government call for continued security control over all Palestinian territories, many in the international community believe Palestinian statehood and the end of occupation the only sustainable course of action. In one session, speakers from Britain, Spain, and Israel will consider European proposals for recognizing Palestinian statehood. However, Palestinian independence is not the only option. Others continue to argue that a binational state, in which Palestinians and Israelis would enjoy citizenship, is the most feasible option, given the fragmentation of the West Bank by Israeli settlements. Yet all recognize that the political environment for substantive change has become far more difficult as a result of the 7 October attack and the Gaza War. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

In the opening meeting of the Middle East Centre’s Hilary Term seminar series, the Fellows of the Centre led a panel discussion to set out the agenda for the series examining the political options following the Gaza War. The Middle East Centre convenes its Hilary Term 2024 seminar each Monday night in term around the theme of ‘Political Options Following the Gaza War.’ The aim is to bring primarily Palestinian and Israeli speakers each week to discuss the different options facing policy makers in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel and the 2023-2024 War in Gaza. While some in the Israeli government call for continued security control over all Palestinian territories, many in the international community believe Palestinian statehood and the end of occupation the only sustainable course of action. In one session, speakers from Britain, Spain, and Israel will consider European proposals for recognizing Palestinian statehood. However, Palestinian independence is not the only option. Others continue to argue that a binational state, in which Palestinians and Israelis would enjoy citizenship, is the most feasible option, given the fragmentation of the West Bank by Israeli settlements. Yet all recognize that the political environment for substantive change has become far more difficult as a result of the 7 October attack and the Gaza War. With presentations by Eugene Rogan, Raihan Ismail, Maryam Alemzadeh and Walter Armbrust, the opening panel set the stage for the next seven sessions to follow. The session attracted an overflow audience that filled the lecture theatre to capacity.

Professor Yuli Tamir considers Israeli public opinion following the 7 October 2023 attack and the constraints that public opinion imposes on the political options moving forward. The Middle East Centre convenes its Hilary Term 2024 seminar each Monday night in term around the theme of ‘Political Options Following the Gaza War.’ The aim is to bring primarily Palestinian and Israeli speakers each week to discuss the different options facing policy makers in the aftermath of the 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel and the 2023-2024 War in Gaza. While some in the Israeli government call for continued security control over all Palestinian territories, many in the international community believe Palestinian statehood and the end of occupation the only sustainable course of action. In one session, speakers from Britain, Spain, and Israel will consider European proposals for recognizing Palestinian statehood. However, Palestinian independence is not the only option. Others continue to argue that a binational state, in which Palestinians and Israelis would enjoy citizenship, is the most feasible option, given the fragmentation of the West Bank by Israeli settlements. Yet all recognize that the political environment for substantive change has become far more difficult as a result of the 7 October attack and the Gaza War. In the second seminar in the Hilary Term series, ‘Political Options Following the Gaza War,’ the Centre welcomed Professor Yael (Yuli) Tamir, President of Beit Berl College, former Member of the Knesset, and former Cabinet Minister, to consider Israeli public opinion following the 7 October 2023 attack and the constraints that public opinion imposes on the political options moving forward. Once again, the lecture theatre was filled to overflow and generated extensive exchange between the audience and the speaker.

Join Professor Ghassan Salamé for his Lecture on 'Lessons from 2003 Iraq: Twenty Years Later.' Jointly organised by Invisible East and St Antony's College, University of Oxford, with the generous support of the Middle East Centre, the Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series connects individual stories to larger questions on the history and contemporary issues of the Middle East. The series aims to recognise and promote, in particular, micro-histories, oral and documentary history, and fieldwork analysis. The series honours the life and work of Reza Hosseini (1960-2003) who last served as Humanitarian Officer in Iraq. The series is launched on the 20th anniversary of the attack on the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003 which killed Reza and 21 colleagues. Guest Speaker: Ghassan Salamé (Professor of International Relations at Sciences-Po)

Adam Mestyan argues that post-Ottoman Arab political orders were not, as many historians believe, products of European colonialism but of the process of "recycling empire." Adam Mestyan is Associate Professor of History at Duke University. His works include Modern Arab Kingship - Remaking the Ottoman Political Order in the Interwar Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2023), Primordial History, Print Capitalism, and Egyptology in Nineteenth-Century Cairo (Ifao, 2021); and Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2017). He is the PI of the collaborative Islamic digital humanities project, Digital Cairo - Studying Urban Transformation through a TEI XML Database, 1828-1914, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and L'Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire (Ifao). In this groundbreaking book, Adam Mestyan argues that post-Ottoman Arab political orders were not, as many historians believe, products of European colonialism but of the process of "recycling empire." Mestyan shows that in the post-World War I Middle East, Allied Powers officials and ex-Ottoman patricians collaborated to remake imperial institutions, recycling earlier Ottoman uses of genealogy and religion in the creation of new polities, with the exception of colonized Palestine. These polities, he contends, should be understood not in terms of colonies and nation-states but as subordinated sovereign local states-localized regimes of religious, ethnic, and dynastic sources of imperial authority. Meanwhile, governance without sovereignty became the new form of Western domination.

Professor Yoav di Capua offers a comprehensive empirical, theoretical, and methodological reassessment of the Arab 60s as a global pursuit with lessons that transcend the geography of the Middle East - the fruit of a decade of research on Arab thought. A common understanding of the 1960s is that of an integrated global era marked by a revolutionary quest for self-liberation, transnational solidarity, sexual revolution, radical self-fashioning, anti-imperialism, a renewed understanding of gender and race relationships as well as an intellectual drive to articulate universal ethics of emancipation. But in the Arab world, with few exceptions, most narratives portray a radically different image: one of a failed revolutionary project marked by ideological bigotry, political messianism, personality cults, ethnocentric particularism, economic ruin, and an overall sense of a cultural defeat. Are these two images reconcilable?

Professor Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab offers some reflections on the challenges that a post-2011 Arab critique might be facing. What have the Arab Uprisings done to "Contemporary Arab Thought"? It is an undisputable fact that the Arab uprisings since 2011 have been a most dramatic turn in the Arab region since the founding of the modern Arab states: an unexpected and explainable event that continues to impact Arab life on all levels, including the intellectual. In my talk I look at the new light that that event might have shed on was/is known as "contemporary Arab thought," the aspects of continuity and discontinuity that it might have revealed about that thought? I ask to what extent we, inhabitants of that region, are still contemporaries of that thought? And to what extent that "contemporary Arab thought" was contemporaneous to the societies it came from? Guest Speaker: Professor Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab (Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar) Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Professor Avi Shlaim gives the George Antonius Memorial Lecture 2023, examining the Jewish exodus from Iraq in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and arguing the Zionist movement played an active part in the uprooting of Iraqi Jews. This annual lecture is also a launch for Avi Shlaim’s new book, 'Three Worlds: Memoir of an Arab-Jew' which will be published by Oneworld on 8 June. The three worlds of the title are Baghdad to the age of 5, Ramat Gan, Israel, 10 to 15, and school in London, 15 to 18. The book uses a family history to tell the bigger story of the Jewish community in Iraq, its rich culture, its integration into Iraqi society, and its contribution to nation-building at various levels. The lecture revolves round the central concept of the Arab-Jew. It examines the circumstances surrounding the Jewish exodus from Iraq in the aftermath of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It challenges the Zionist narrative which claims that antisemitism was the main driver of the exodus. It argues that the Zionist movement played an active part in the uprooting of Iraqi Jews, and it presents new evidence to support this argument. Avi Shlaim is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. His books include Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (1988); War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995); The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000, updated edition 2014); Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (2007); and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009). Speakers: Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim, FBA (University of Oxford) Chair: Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College) Recorded Thursday, 15 June 2023 Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

The Director and Fellows of the Middle East Centre, St Antony’s College convened a memorial in honour of Derek Hopwood OBE, Emeritus Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies (1933-2020) and Celia Kerslake, Emeritus Fellow in Turkish (1946-2023). Guest Speakers and times: 0:00 - 4:17 Eugene Rogan, Middle East Centre Director (moderator and opening remarks) 4:17 - 15:30 Roger Goodman, Warden of St Antony's College 15:30 - 21:40 Rosie MacGregor, sister of Celia Kerslake 21:40 - 32.33 Michael Willis, Muhammad VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies, tribute to Derek Hopwood 32:33 - 42:29 Laurent Mignon, Professor of Turkish, tribute to Celia Kerslake 42:29 - 55:20 Linda Schilcher ('69 Antonian), tribute to Derek Hopwood 55.20 - 1:12:18 Ahmed Al-Shahi ('65 Antonian), tribute to Derek and Celia 1:12:18 - 1:21:43 Dimitris Antoniou ('03 Antonian), student of Celia Kerslake 1:21:43 - 1:29:44 Gina Rowland ('85 Antonian), student of Derek Hopwood Closing remarks by Eugene Rogan

Women's Rights Research Seminar where guest speaker, Dr Roel Meijer (Guest Lecturer in Islam Studies, Radboud Universiteit) presents on Women’s movements and citizenship in the Middle East. Citizenship is not often mentioned in relation to women in the Middle East. Mostly women’s movements are analyzed in relation to nationalism, Islamism, law, and civil society. Citizenship, however, predates nationalism and Islamism. Moreover it is broader than law and more fundamental than political or religious ideologies, especially when it comes women’s movements and the sense of rights. Although I will concentrate on Egypt, I want to demonstrate in this talk how concepts of citizenship can help to analyze historical and present women’s movements in the Middle East. Biography: Roel Meijer was previously Associate Professor at Radboud University, Nijmegen) and has co-edited three volumes on citizenship in the Middle East and North Africa and is currently working on a Dutch history of the Middle East and North Africa. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Dr Haytham Alhamwi draws on his personal experiences to explain the story of the conflict in Syria. Through his personal story as a previous political prisoner, he starts by describing the situation in Syria before the Arab Spring in 2011, followed by how the Syrian uprising began, and his personal involvement in the non-violent movement. The presentation will cover how Assad’s regime reacted with lethal force to organised movements asking for change. The uprising escalated to a military conflict causing the death of approximately half a million people and the displacement of over half of the population. The presentation will highlight the involvement of different rebel factions (including perceived Jihadists and other terrorist groups) in the Syrian conflict, the heavy military-cum-financial support of the Syrian regime’s allies including Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, and the inadequate action of regional and international actors to support the Syrian uprising and the aspiration of the Syrian people. Finally, there will be an explanation of the current de facto partitions of Syria and a discussion on possible avenues for reaching a political solution in the near future. Dr Haytham Alhamwi graduated from the University of Damascus' Medical School in 1999. He was detained in Syria as a political prisoner from 2003 to 2005 for his civic activism in his hometown Daraya. He came to Manchester in 2007 to do his PhD, and upon graduation in 2012 he helped to establish Rethink Rebuild Society, a Manchester-based charity supporting Syrian refugees and asylum seekers. In 2019 he co-founded the Syrian British Consortium, a political body amplifying the voices of Syrians in the UK and advocating for an inclusive and democratic Syria. Dr Haytham Alhamwi is the Chairman of the Syrian British Consortium, a London-based advocacy body for British Syrians. He is also a co-founder and the manager of Rethink Rebuild Society, a charity established in Manchester in 2013 to support Syrian refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

This lecture examines the resilience of the Iraqi state and nation before and after the 2003 invasion. Since 1980, Iraq weathered the longest conventional war of the 20th century, the Iran-Iraq War, followed by one of the shortest, the 1991 Gulf War, and the subsequent uprisings that swept through 15 of its 18 provinces, and a decade of sanctions. Since the 2003 war, Iraq has witnessed an occupation, the collapse of its national military, an insurgency, a civil war, the ensuing terrorist statelet of ISIS, which led to genocide against the Yezidi population, an aborted bid for Kurdish independence, a sustained protest movement, a pandemic, and a proxy war between the US and Iran that continues to this day. Iraq has endured despite numerous forecasts of its imminent collapse into three states. Nevertheless, Iraq’s future during the Anthropocene still looks uncertain, and climate change will have uneven effects on the nation from a geographic, generational, and gendered perspective. Biography Ibrahim Al-Marashi is Associate Professor of Middle East history at California State University San Marcos and visiting professor at the IE University School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, Spain, and formerly at Ivan Franko University in Lviv, Ukraine. He obtained his doctorate in Modern History at University of Oxford, completing a thesis on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, part of which was plagiarized by the British government prior to the 2003 Iraq War, otherwise known as the “Dodgy Dossier.” His research focuses on 20th century Iraqi history, and currently is focusing on the effects of climate change on the nation. He is co-author of Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008), The Modern History of Iraq (Routledge 2017), and A Concise History of the Middle East (Routledge, 2018). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

The Rt Hon Sir Peter Gross (Formerly, Lead Judge for International Relations) shares his insight into the Judicial and Rule of Law developments in Iraq. Abstract: IRAQ 2018-2019: The Rule of Law: a perspective At the invitation of the President of the Supreme Judicial Council of Iraq, Chief Justice Dr Faiq Zidan, and supported by the FCDO, I visited Iraq in early 2018 and again in 2019, on each occasion to attend the Iraqi Judiciary Day. The visits embodied the success of peer-to-peer Judicial Engagement. Short stays can only present snapshots, but these timely visits (as Iraq was emerging from its Ba’thist past under Saddam) symbolised a wider and enduring yearning for the Rule of Law, together with the good governance it underpins. For my part, it entailed a combination of both pride and humility in the honour the visits accorded to the UK Judiciary. The visits generated mutual benefits. They affirmed the UK as the Iraqi Judiciary’s international partner of choice. On the Iraqi side, they assisted in boosting the position of the Judiciary in Iraqi society, also facilitating increased standing for the Iraqi Judiciary in the region and the integration of the Iraqi Judiciary into the international Judicial community, notably, in SIFoCC (the Standing International Forum of Commercial Courts). Furthermore, the visits enhanced the focus on women in the Iraqi Judiciary, benefited the relationship between Bench and Bar in Iraq and promoted improved relations between Judges in Baghdad and Erbil. Perspective is essential. The Judicial system in Iraq (as elsewhere) faces continued challenges in dealing with terrorism, human rights and corruption. This is a work in progress. The visits prompt a focus on Judicial and Rule of Law developments and reforms in the region. In a broader context, the principal need is to institutionalise arrangements for Judicial Engagement of this nature, so that they do not hinge on the individuals in post or office at the time and, on a continuing basis, harness the UK’s world-class reputation in the Rule of Law sphere. Biography: Practised in commercial chambers at 3 Essex Court (now Twenty Essex). Queen’s Counsel 1992. Appointed Judge of the Queen’s Bench Division 2001, Presiding Judge of the South-Eastern Circuit 2005-2008, Judge in Charge of Commercial Court 2009-2010. Appointed to the Court of Appeal in 2010. Senior Presiding Judge for England and Wales 2013-2015. Lead Judge for International Relations 2018-2019. Worked extensively internationally, including in the Middle East, on international Judicial relations. On retirement from the Court of Appeal, appointed President of the Slynn Foundation in November 2019, dedicated to advancing the Rule of Law internationally. In 2020, appointed by the Lord Chancellor to chair the Independent Human Rights Act Review (IHRAR) examining whether the Human Rights Act 1998 is working effectively. Judicial Commissioner of IPCO. Sir Peter practises as an Arbitrator and is a Judge of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) Courts. Treasurer of Gray’s Inn 2022. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Why did Iraq fail to prove its WMD absence before the 2003 invasion? This seminar examines new evidence from Iraq and United Nations sources to shed light on the internal debates leading up to the 2003 war. Why did the Iraqi regime fail to demonstrate it no longer had WMD prior to the 2003 invasion? For the past twenty years, there has been surprisingly little debate about this key question. In this seminar I draw on primary sources that I have collected from Iraqi sources and the United Nations inspectors investigating Iraqi WMD disarmament between the 1991 Gulf War and the 2003 invasion. Drawing on this new evidence, I argue that two factors were vital in shaping Iraqi WMD disclosures during the 2002-2003 period. First, a crucial strategic dilemma was that new admissions of past deception would bolster the case for war. Second, the Iraqi regime faced far greater difficulties in ensuring that its subordinates cooperated with the United Nations inspectors, despite the growing threat of war, than was recognized at the time. Drawing on these rich new primary sources, I highlight the debates and disagreements about what to disclose and to deny that unfolded inside the Iraqi state apparatus during these fateful months. Biography: Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo, and heads the Oslo Nuclear Project. She has previously been a Junior Faculty Fellow at CISAC, Stanford University (2012-13), and a pre- and post-doctoral fellow at the Belfer Center, Harvard University (2008-10). She received her doctoral degree from London School of Economics in 2010, which received the Michael Nicholson Thesis Prize from BISA the following year. She published Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Cornell University Press, 2016) based on her dissertation research. Her work has been published in numerous outlets including International Security, The Middle East Journal, the New York Times (online), International Herald Tribune, Monkey Cage and War on the Rocks. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

This talk examines the Shi‘ite political parties linked to Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) and their influence over the state, exploring their strategies for legitimacy in politics, religion, and society. Despite their modest performance at the ballot box in comparison to the 2018 parliamentary elections, the Shi‘ite political parties associated with Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) have remained important brokers with sufficient power to steer the government’s decision-making. Having been recognised as a state-sanctioned paramilitary umbrella since November 2016, the PMU regard themselves as entitled to co-shaping not only the political process, but also the very nature of Iraqi statehood. Their continued leverage over the contested Iraqi state and its institutions raises the question of how such an array of hybrid auxiliary forces has managed to consolidate its position and reap the benefits of its alliance with the country’s ruling elites. To provide an answer, Rudolf will present her analysis of how the PMU and their affiliates have sought to attain legitimacy within the political, religious, and civic fields – the main arenas of competition underlying the power dynamics within the fragmented Iraqi state. Biography: Dr. Inna Rudolf is a Senior Research Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) and a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Divided Societies. Within the XCEPT consortium, she is analysing the implications of identity politics and the mobilisation of violent memories in conflict-affected borderlands. As part of her PhD thesis at the War Studies Department of King’s College London, Rudolf focused the hybridization of security sector governance, examining Iraq’s paramilitary umbrella – the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) – and their quest for legitimacy within the state. She received her master’s degree in political science and Islamic studies in 2012 at the University of Heidelberg, specialising in Conflict Resolution, Peace Building and Political Islam. In addition to her field work in Iraq, she lived in Libya, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia and Palestine for several years. Prior to joining the research team at ICSR, she represented the BMW Foundation in the Middle East and North Africa region. She is also a partner at the Candid Foundation – an independent Berlin based think tank working on political, social and cultural challenges facing Muslim communities in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and beyond.

The evolution of religion-civil society relations in post-2003 Iraq. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 created a seismic shift in clerical-state relations. For decades, the Shia religious establishment had a contentious relationship with the Iraqi state, who feared their mobilization capacity and persecuted them as a result. After 2003, the Shia religious leadership played a powerful role in political affairs, guiding the country towards a constitutional referendum, earlier-than-planned elections, and intervening in critical moments to stem the flow of violence and to uphold order and stability. An onslaught of Shia Islamist parties seized control of the country through popular elections where the majority Shia population rewarded them for their opposition against Saddam Hussein. As the years drew on, however, these Islamist parties lost the public’s trust and Iraq’s population, and burgeoning civil society began to protest perceived religious control of the state. As the Islamist Parties were punished by civil society, so too were the clerical classes, who rushed to distance themselves from politics to salvage their reputation. How have clerics navigated their position amidst popular protests and an increasingly vocal civil society? Biography Marsin Alshamary is a research fellow at the Middle East Initiative at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs with the Harvard Kennedy School. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. She is an incoming assistant professor of political science at Boston College. Her research examines the intersection of religion and politics in the Middle East, looking particularly at how the Shi'a religious establishment in Iraq has intervened in formal politics, in protest, and in peacebuilding. She holds a PhD in Political Science from MIT and a BA from Wellesley College. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Katerina Dalacoura will presents her research project entitled ‘The International Thought of Turkish Islamists’, funded by a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. The project engages with the idea of a ‘global International Relations’ by exploring Turkish Islamist thought in the Republican period. Drawing on insights from global intellectual history, it shows that Turkish Islamism evolved in conversation with philosophical and political debates and trends in both Western and Muslim settings. The study examines texts written by iconic and minor Islamist intellectuals, and the ideologies of religious associations and political organisations in Turkey that underpin them, to investigate three overlapping themes about ‘the international’: history and historiography; civilisation and culture; nation and state. Biography: Dr Katerina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has been awarded a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust for three years starting September 2021. Her project, entitled ‘The International Thought of Turkish Islamists: History, Civilisation and Nation’ will be a work of intellectual history that engages with the concept of a ‘global IR’. In 2015-16, she was British Academy Mid-Career Fellow and in 2016-19 she participated in a project on the ‘Middle East and North Africa Regional Architecture’, sponsored by the European Commission under the auspices of Horizon 2020 (2016-19). She previously worked at the University of Essex and at the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Dr 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. Her latest research focuses on the role of culture and civilization in International Relations with special reference to Turkey. She has a continuing interest in questions of secularity and secularization in the Middle East. She is author of Islam, Liberalism and Human Rights: Implications for International Relations (I. B. Tauris, 2007), Islamist Terrorism and Democracy in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and of a number of chapters and articles in peer-reviewed journals. Dr Dalacoura teaches a third year undergraduate course on the Middle East and International Relation theory and a course on the international politics of culture and religion at MSc level; as well as undergraduate and post-graduate courses on international relations theory. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

A Middle East Centre Seminar on Salafism. Salafism was the religious idiom that dominated Egypt's aborted political transition in the wake of the 2011 revolution and up to the 2013 military coup. The leading political actors of the moment all mobilized strands of Salafism in a fight for religious legitimacy against each other: the Salafi Call and its political party al-Nour (itself internally divided), Hazim Abu Isma'il and his movement of revolutionary Salafis, and even the Muslim Brotherhood, which now openly borrowed from Salafi references and relied on Salafi religious figures, despite the movement’s distinctive political-religious history. That reality stood in staunch contrast with the aspirations of Egypt’s more secular-leaning youth protest movements, which had played a key role in the initial uprising. How did this hegemonization of Salafi discourse in the Egyptian religious sphere come to be? And how do the resulting dynamics explain some of the Egyptian political transition's eventual shortcomings? Biography: Stéphane Lacroix is an associate professor of political science at Sciences Po, a senior researcher at Sciences Po’s Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) and the co-director of Sciences Po's Chair on religion. His work deals with religion and politics, with a focus on the Gulf and Egypt. He is the author of "Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia" (Harvard University Press, 2011), "Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change" (Cambridge University Press, 2015, with Bernard Haykel and Thomas Hegghammer), "Egypt's Revolutions: Politics, Religion, Social Movements" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, with Bernard Rougier) and "Revisiting the Arab Uprisings: The Politics of a Revolutionary Moment" (Oxford University Press, 2018, with Jean-Pierre Filiu). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

A talk with a focus on the contemporary militant group referred to by the acronym ISIS (or ISIL) and its views on the “caliphate.” As this group sees it, its so-called Islamic State represents the resurrection of the historical office of the caliph after its abrogation in 1923. ISIS anchors this position in the concept of “the creed of Abraham” (millat Ibrahim) mentioned in Qur’an 2:124 in order to derive a scriptural and theological mandate for their project. The lecture analyzes how credible this position is by resorting to a survey of the views of several influential Muslim exegetes on the concept of millat Ibrahim and explore whether their views align with those of ISIS. It concludes by reflecting on what the larger implications of this survey are for the contemporary period. Biography: Asma Afsaruddin is Professor of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Class of 1950 Herman B. Wells Endowed Professor in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. She received her PhD in Arabic and Islamic Studies from Johns Hopkins University and previously taught at Harvard and Notre Dame universities. Her research interests include Islamic religious and political thought (both modern and pre-modern); Islamic intellectual history; Qur’an and hadith; and gender in Islam. She is the author and editor of eight books, including Jihad: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2021); Contemporary Issues in Islam (Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Striving in the Path of God: Jihad and Martyrdom in Islamic Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013), recently translated into Indonesian, which won the World Book Award in Islamic Studies from the Iranian government (2015) and was a runner-up for the British-Kuwaiti Friendship Society Book award (2014); and The First Muslims: History and Memory (OneWorld Publications 2008), which has been translated into Turkish and Malay. She has also written over fifty research articles and book chapters on topics as diverse as Qur’anic hermeneutics, hadith criticism, pluralism in Islamic thought, inter-faith relations, war and peace in the Islamic tradition; Islamic feminisms, and modern reform movements in Muslim-majority societies. Professor Afsaruddin is currently a member of the academic council of the Prince al-Waleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and is a past member of the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Religion. She was previously the Kraemer Middle East Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the College of William and Mary (2012) and a visiting scholar at the Centre for Islamic Studies at the London School of Oriental and African Studies (2003). She has also been a fellow with the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) based in Cairo and the American Research Institute of Turkey (ARIT) based in Istanbul. Afsaruddin lectures widely on various aspects of Islamic thought in the US, Europe, and the Middle East and has served as a consultant for the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, the US Institute of Peace, and other governmental and non-governmental agencies. Her research has been funded by the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which named her a Carnegie Scholar in 2005. In 2019 she was inducted into the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars in recognition of the scholarly and professional distinction she has achieved in her field. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Professor Mohammad Khalil scrutinises the claim by New Atheists like Richard Dawkins that Islam is a fundamentally violent religion Is Islam fundamentally violent? For influential New Atheists such as Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Richard Dawkins, the answer is an emphatic yes, largely because of the Islamic doctrine of jihad. According to this view, when al-Qaeda plotted 9/11 or ISIS planned any one of its recent terrorist attacks, they were acting in accord with Islamic scripture. In this presentation, Mohammad Hassan Khalil will scrutinize this claim by comparing the conflicting interpretations of jihad offered by mainstream Muslim scholars, violent Muslim radicals, and New Atheists. Mohammad Hassan Khalil is a Professor of Religious Studies, an adjunct Professor of Law, and the Director of the Muslim Studies Program at Michigan State University. Before returning to his hometown of East Lansing, Michigan, he was an Assistant Professor of Religion and visiting professor of Law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in Islamic thought and is author of Islam and the Fate of Others: The Salvation Question (Oxford University Press, 2012; Indonesian translation published in 2016) and Jihad, Radicalism, and the New Atheism (Cambridge University Press, 2017); editor of Between Heaven and Hell: Islam, Salvation, and the Fate of Others (Oxford University Press, 2013) and Muslims and US Politics Today: A Defining Moment (ILEX and Harvard University Press, 2019); and lead investigator of the Muslims of the Midwest digital archive (muslimsofthemidwest.org). He has presented papers at various national and international conferences and has published peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters on various topics, from early Islamic historiography to bioethics. Speaker: Professor Mohammad Khalil (Michigan State University, USA) Chair: Professor Eugene Rogan (University of Oxford) Recorded Friday, 14 October 2022, Investcorp Lecture Theatre, St Antony's College

How historians can gain new insights from global history, and how historians and histories of Iran can contribute Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Annual Lecture - Centres, Peripheries and New Histories of the Left in Iran What can historians working on Iran gain from new insights generated in sprawling fields associated with global history such as global urban history and global intellectual history; and what can historians and histories of Iran contribute to these fields? With examples from recent and ongoing work on the history of the Iranian Left, and in particular, the revolutionary organization Sazman-e Charik-ha-ye Fada’i-ye Khalq or Fadais, Rasmus Elling will present examples of such dialogues between global fields and Area Studies. In particular, Elling will discuss two cases from his research to show how theoretical and methodological prisms such as 'urban/rural' and 'center/periphery’ can illuminate understudied aspects of Iran’s modern social, political and ideological history. These cases raise two overall questions: What was ‘urban’ about a quintessential urban guerrilla movement of the 1970s such as the Fadais? And where did minorities on Iran’s geographical periphery fit into the Third-Worldist views of a movement such as the Fadais? Tuesday, 29 November 2022 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm Venue: Investcorp Lecture Theatre, St Antony's College Speaker(s): Rasmus Christian Elling (University of Copenhagen) Chair: Dr Stephanie Cronin (Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies) Biography: Rasmus Elling is Associate Professor and Unit Coordinator of Middle East Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, where he teaches Iranian and Middle Eastern history as well as Cross-Cultural Studies. He is a social historian studying modern Iran through four attention points: urbanism, ethnicity, political movements and ideology. Elling has worked with Iranian society, culture and politics for more than 20 years and written extensively on minorities, nationalism, student movements, urban violence and the Iranian revolution. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Prof. Esther Hertzog gives a talk on the vulnerable situation of motherhood in the Israeli welfare state. This talk will examine the role of state authorities, especially the welfare system and the courts, in undermining disadvantaged women's motherhood. State authorities undermine mothers' custodial rights over their offspring, especially through the discourse on 'child's wellbeing' and 'parental capability', blaming mothers for physically endangering and neglecting their children. It will be argued that while the formal discourse emphasizes the value of biological motherhood, yet in practice underprivileged mothers' custody over their offspring can be easily expropriated. Single parent mothers are a susceptible group from which babies can be taken away to adoption and their children taken to welfare institutions. The research on 'single parent mothers' ignores the phenomenon of expropriating disadvantaged mothers' parenthood by State authorities as well as the coercive means that are employed in the process. This talk will propose a critical analysis of the connection between "children at risk" discourse and disadvantaged women's motherhood.

Helen Lackner speaks about Yemen’s enduring crisis. Helen Lackner updates the seminar on the Yemeni war, providing a brief analysis of the origins of the conflict and addressing the main constraints and perspectives for the future. While focusing on the domestic aspects of the situation, she puts them in the regional context and also address the role of the international allies of the major parties involved. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Professor Joseph Sassoon in conversation with Dr Michael Willis about his recent book, The Global Merchants: The Enterprise and Extravagance of the Sassoon Dynasty (Allen Lane, Penguin Group, 2022). Emeritus Professor Avi Shlaim joins them. Abstract: The influential merchants of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shaped the globalization of today. The Sassoons, a Baghdadi-Jewish trading family, built a global trading enterprise by taking advantage of major historical developments during the nineteenth century. Their story is not just one of an Arab Jewish family that settled in India, traded in China, and aspired to be British. It also presents an extraordinary vista into the world in which they lived and prospered economically, politically, and socially. The Global Merchants is not only about their rise, but also about their decline: why it happened, how political and economic changes after the First World War adversely affected them, and finally, how realizing their aspirations to reach the upper echelons of British society led to their disengagement from business and prevented them from adapting to the new economic and political world order. Professor Joseph Sassoon is Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown University. He holds the al-Sabah Chair in Politics and Political Economy of the Arab World. He is also a Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 2013, his book Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won the prestigious British-Kuwait Prize for the best book on the Middle East. Professor Sassoon completed his Ph.D at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has published extensively on Iraq and its economy and on the Middle East. The Global Merchants is his fifth book. Professor Avi Shlaim is Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College and a former Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2006. His main research interest is the Arab-Israeli conflict. He is author of Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (1988); The Politics of Partition (1990 and 1998); War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995); The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000, second edition 2014); Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace (2007); and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009). He is co-editor of The Cold War and the Middle East (1997); The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (2001, second edition 2007); and The 1967 Arab-Israeli War: Origins and Consequences (2012). Professor Shlaim is a frequent contributor to the newspapers and commentator on radio and television on Middle Eastern affairs. Dr Michael Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and 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). He is the author of 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). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Dr Raphaël Lefèvre in conversation with Dr Neil Ketchley about his recent book, 'Jihad in the City: Militant Islamism and Contentious Politics in Tripoli' (Cambridge University Press, 2021). Militant Islamists are often assumed to be driven by global goals and transnational networks. But this narrative misses a crucial point: from Tawhid during the Lebanese civil war to Tahrir al-Sham in the current Syrian conflict, Islamist armed groups often seek to recruit and mobilize local communities not appealed by their religious ideology - certain tribes, social classes, and neighbourhoods. Why? How do they go about it? And to what extent, then, is all Islamist politics local? Dr Raphaël Lefèvre is a Senior Fellow at the University of Oxford and Research Associate at the University of Aarhus. He investigates Islamist armed groups in the Middle East. His latest book is Jihad in the City: Militant Islamism and Contentious Politics in Tripoli (Cambridge University Press, 2021). He is also the author of Ashes of Hama, the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria (Oxford University Press, 2013). His PhD thesis which he did at the University of Cambridge was awarded the Bill Gates Sr Prize by the Gates Cambridge Trust and the Syrian Studies Association Prize. Dr Neil Ketchley is Associate Professor in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, and a Fellow of St Antony's College. He is a political scientist of the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa working at the intersections of political sociology and comparative politics. Neil's book, Egypt in a Time of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won the Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award. His current research interests include episodes of mass protest in the MENA, the rise of political Islam in interwar Egypt, and the changing profiles of regional political elites. Join us for our MEC live webinars – registration essential; details available from Middle East Centre Events, St Antony's College or subscribe to our weekly e-mailing newsletter by emailing mec@sant.ox.ac.uk and follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford Middle East Centre | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Marilyn Booth speaking on her new book. This book is an intellectual biography of early Arabic feminist Zaynab Fawwaz (c.1850-1914) and a study of her life in Ottoman Syria and Egypt, in the context of Arabophone debates on gender, modernity and the good society, 1890s-1910. Chapters take up her writing and debates in which she participated, concerning social justice, girls’ education, marriage, divorce and polygyny, the question of ‘Nature’ and Darwinist notions of male/female, and intersections of nationalism, anti-imperialism, and feminism. Fawwaz’s two novels and play are analysed in the context of fiction rewriting history, and on theatre as a reformist tool of public education. The book also comprises a study of some important periodical venues for public debate in Egypt in this period, particularly the nationalist press and one early women’s journal, and it highlights the writings of lesser-studied journalists and other intellectuals, within the context of the Arab/ic Nahda or intellectual revival. The talk will focus particularly on a central argument: that Fawwaz’s feminism, based on an Islamic ethical worldview, was distinct from prevailing ‘modernist’ views in posing a non-essentialist, open-ended notion of gender that did not (for instance) highlight maternalist discourses and that rejected fixed notions of sex-gender identity. Fawwaz’s background was Shi’i, an element that is quietly present in her work. Biography: Marilyn Booth is Khalid bin Abdallah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World, University of Oxford. Her most recent monograph, The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz: Feminist Thinking in Fin-de-siècle Egypt (2021), is amongst numerous publications on early feminism, translation, and Arabophone women’s writing in Egypt and Ottoman Syria. Translator of eighteen works of fiction and memoir from the Arabic, she was co-winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Jokha Alharthi’s Celestial Bodies.

Dr Neil Ketchley in conversation with Professor Walter Armbrust about his current research. The post-WWII era saw coups and “revolutions from above” break out across the Middle East and North Africa. How did these events transform colonial-era state elites? We theorize that post-colonial regimes had to choose between purging perceived opponents and delivering key state functions, leading to important variation in individual turnover and survival. To illustrate our argument, we trace the careers of 674 colonial-era ministers and civil servants in Egypt following the 1952 Revolution. Our analysis shows that individuals connected to Egypt's deposed monarch, very senior officials, and those with military backgrounds were more likely to be purged. Experienced officials and those with advanced university degrees were more likely to be retained. Residual workplace effects suggest that the logics of purging threats and retaining experienced officials also operated at the institutional level. The findings point to important instances of elite-level continuity during episodes of radical political change. Dr Neil Ketchley is Associate Professor in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations, the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, and a Fellow of St Antony's College. He is a political scientist of the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa working at the intersections of political sociology and comparative politics. Neil's book, Egypt in a Time of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won the Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award. His current research interests include episodes of mass protest in the MENA, the rise of political Islam in interwar Egypt, and the changing profiles of regional political elites. Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Additional contributor, Mr Gilad Wenig, PhD student, UCLA. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Join us as we listen to Dr Usaama al-Azami (Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford) in conversation about his new book, 'Islam and the Arab Revolutions, the Ulama between Democracy and Autocracy'. Dr Michael Willis (St Antony’s College) is chairing the webinar. The live webinar took place on 21st January 2022 as part of the Middle East Centre webinar series. The book is available for purchase in the UK from Hurst Publishers, quote the discount code ISLAMARAB35 at check-out for 35% discount; and to purchase outside the UK, from Oxford University Press, quote ADISTA5 for your discount. This video is also available with accessibility features as a podcast at http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre The Arab revolutions of 2011 were a transformative moment in the modern history of the Middle East, as people rose up against long-standing autocrats throughout the region to call for ‘bread, freedom and dignity’. With the passage of time, results have been decidedly mixed, with abortive success stories like Tunisia contrasting with the emergence of even more repressive dictatorships in places like Egypt, with the backing of several Gulf states. Focusing primarily on Egypt, this book considers a relatively understudied dimension of these revolutions: the role of prominent religious scholars. While pro-revolutionary ulama have justified activism against authoritarian regimes, counter-revolutionary scholars have provided religious backing for repression, and in some cases the mass murder of unarmed protestors. Usaama al-Azami traces the public engagements and religious pronouncements of several prominent ulama in the region, including Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Ali Gomaa and Abdallah bin Bayyah, to explore their role in either championing the Arab revolutions or supporting their repression. He concludes that while a minority of noted scholars have enthusiastically endorsed the counter-revolutions, their approach is attributable less to premodern theology and more to their distinctly modern commitment to the authoritarian state. Biographies Dr Usaama al-Azami read his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford, and his MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Alongside his university career, he also pursued Islamic studies in seminarial settings in which he has also subsequently taught. He has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, living for five years in the region. He is also an enthusiastic teacher who is very eager to support the formation of research scholars, and always welcomes students with such aspirations to get in touch with him. Usaama al-Azami is primarily interested in the interaction between Islam and modernity with a special interest in modern developments in Islamic political philosophy. His first book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions looks at the way in which influential Islamic scholars responded to the Arab uprisings of 2011 through 2013. His PhD, which is a separate project which he hopes to develop into a monograph in the near future, is entitled "Modern Islamic Political Thought: Islamism in the Arab World from the Late Twentieth to the Early Twenty-first Centuries". In it, he explores how Arab ulama of a mainstream "Islamist" orientation have engaged Western political concepts such as democracy, secularism and the nation-state, selectively adapting and assimilating aspects of these ideas into their understanding of Islam. His broader interests extend to a range of disciplines from the Islamic scholarly tradition from the earliest period of Islam down to the present. Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and 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). He is the author of 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). Join us for the live webinar next time – registration essential; details available from Middle East Centre Events | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) (https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre/events) or subscribe to our weekly e-mailing newsletter by emailing mec@sant.ox.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC Middle East Centre, St Antony's College, University of Oxford Middle East Centre | St Antony's College (ox.ac.uk) https://www.sant.ox.ac.uk/research-centres/middle-east-centre

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 3rd December 2021 for the Middle East Centre Like many parts of the world, the environment in the Middle East is in crisis. Climate change, biodiversity loss and unsustainable material extraction will have the same detrimental consequences for life as elsewhere on the planet. In recent years, however, the state of the environment in the Middle East has been framed in a sensationalistic manner; with little evidence, it is blamed for conflict and migration and is predicted to lead to societal collapse. Using a lens of political ecology, this talk will illustrate how these assumptions are problematic; they are rooted in a Western perception of the environment in the Middle East that is determined by cultural and political imaginaries. Political ecology also tells us that the current policies enacted by regional states to address sustainability will probably fail, on the basis that they are technopolitical. But it also tells us that there is a potential for an alternative that offers a more optimistic future, albeit one that requires radical change and a departure from the current system. Christian Henderson is assistant professor at Leiden Institute for Area Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands. His research focusses on the agrarian political economy and the political ecology of the Middle East and North Africa. His work has previously been published in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Environment and Planning A, Review of African Political Economy and the Journal of Arabian Studies. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Thursday 25th November 2021 for the Middle East centre. Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi (Associate Professor of Middle East history at California State University San Marcos and Visiting Professor at the IE University School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, Spain) and Kate Clark (Co-Director and Senior Analyst, Afghanistan Analysts Network (AAN), https://www.afghanistan-analysts.org ) present ‘Afghanistan and the Middle East’. Dr Michael Willis (St Antony’s College, Oxford) chairs this webinar. Ibrahim Al-Marashi - Contesting the "Graveyard of Empires" Trope: Situating Afghanistan within Middle East History". First, this talk will examine the relevance of history, particularly Middle Eastern history for understanding the current crisis in Afghanistan, from antiquity to the Soviet invasion of the nation. This talk will examine the relevance of history, particularly Middle Eastern history for understanding the current crisis in Afghanistan. The fall of Kabul has been compared to the 1975 fall of Saigon or the British and Soviet defeats, hence the epitaph of the "Graveyard of Empires." While historical context is crucial, the aforementioned historical tropes are misleading, denying agency to Afghanistan as a nation and people Kate Clark - Killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg: How overnight Afghanistan became a rentier state with no rent. The capture of the Afghan state by the Taliban was an economic calamity. The foreign assistance which had made up 43 per cent of GDP was cut. UN and US sanctions applied to the Taliban as an armed group suddenly applied to the whole country. Afghanistan’s foreign reserves and World Bank funds were frozen and the banking sector was paralysed. The repercussions are already catastrophic: only one in 20 households now have enough to eat. With such shaky economic foundations, will the Taliban’s new Islamic Emirate prove any more sustainable than the old post-2001 Islamic Republic? Biographies: Kate Clark has worked for AAN, a policy research NGO based in Kabul, since 2010. Her research and publications have focussed on the conflict, including militia formation and investigations into breaches of the Laws of War, detentions and the use of torture. She has written extensively on Afghanistan’s political economy, as well as its wildlife and the environment. Kate experienced both of the most recent falls of Kabul, in 2021, and in 2001, when she was the BBC correspondent (1999-2002). During the last years of the first Taleban emirate, she was the only western journalist based in Afghanistan. Kate has also worked at the BBC Arabic Service, on Radio 4 news and current affairs programmes, and has made radio and television documentaries about Afghanistan, including on the insurgency, weapons smuggling, corruption, the opium economy and war crimes. Kate has an MA in Middle Eastern Politics from Exeter University in Britain and has also lived, studied and worked in the Middle East. Ibrahim Al-Marashi obtained his doctorate in Modern History at St Antony's College, University of Oxford, completing a thesis on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. His research focuses on 20th century Iraqi history. He is co-author of Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008), and The Modern History of Iraq, with Phebe Marr (Routledge 2017), and A Concise History of the Middle East (Routledge, 2018). If you would like to join the live audience during this term’s webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Accessibility features of this video playlist are available through the University of Oxford Middle East Centre podcast series: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 19th November 2021 for the MEC. Dr Michael Mason, Director of the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science presents “Failing Flows: The Politics of Water Management in Southern Iraq”. Dr Michael Willis (St Antony’s College, Oxford) chairs this webinar. In July 2018 massive protests erupted in Basra city as residents demanded improvements in public services. Failings in water management were at the heart of local grievances: an outbreak of water-related illnesses was triggered by the increased use of polluted water from the Shatt al-Arab, Basra’s principal source of water. However, the deterioration of public water infrastructure has its roots in decades of armed conflict and international sanctions. Tap water has been undrinkable since the 1990s, forcing most households to rely on private water vendors. Water infrastructure upgrading was a priority for state-rebuilding after 2003 but receded under the sectarian civil war. Governmental and donor plans for mega-infrastructure water projects have stalled in the face of political stasis and systemic corruption. Compact water treatment units are the dominant purification technology, supplying 83% of treatment capacity across Basra governorate and 92% in Basra city. The effectiveness of this water treatment technology is reduced by irregular supplies of freshwater from the Bada’a Canal - flows negatively impacted by upstream dam construction, climatic variability and illegal water tapping. There is a pressing need to diversify water sources for Basra and improve the efficiencies of treatment technologies and distribution networks. The LSE report that Dr Michael Mason refers to in his presentation is available from the LSE website: Failing_Flows_003_.pdf (lse.ac.uk) Artworked credit: Azhar Al-Rubaie, 2021 Dr Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre and Associate Professor in Environmental Geography at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. His research addresses both global environmental politics and environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East. He has a particular interest in environmental issues within conflict-affected areas and occupied territories, including Iraq, northern Cyprus, and the occupied Golan Heights. Alongside articles in a wide range of journals and chapter contributions, he is the author or editor of five books, of which the most recent is the forthcoming co-edited volume, The Untold Story of the Golan Heights (2022). Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and 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). He is the author of 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). If you would like to join the live audience during this term’s webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

This is a recording of a live webinar held on Friday 12th November 2021 for the MEC. Dr Mattin Biglari (SOAS, University of London) presents “Air Pollution, Toxicity, and Environmental Politics in the History of Iranian Oil Nationalisation”. Dr Stephanie Cronin (Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford) chairs this webinar. As we witness the increasingly visible effects of the global climate emergency, it is paramount that the study of the environment is better integrated into the social sciences and humanities. This is especially so in the case of Iran, where the recent drying up of rivers in the province of Khuzestan has caused water scarcity for the local population and led to subsequent political mobilisation. Yet it is also vital to consider less spectacular forms of environmental degradation that equally afflict the country today, particularly air pollution, which presents one of the world’s greatest health challenges and each year contributes to over 8 million deaths globally. This talk will turn attention to the toxicity of air pollution to illuminate its relationship to embodied subjectivity, (in)visibility, temporality and infrastructure, especially with reference to the politics of Iran’s oil nationalisation in 1951. By focusing on subaltern experiences in the oil refinery town of Abadan, it will offer an alternative account to challenge dominant nationalist narratives of this important episode in the country’s history. In doing so, it connects the modern history of Iran to a burgeoning body of work in the environmental and energy humanities that highlights the relationship between global pollution and imperialism in the Middle East and wider Global South. Dr Mattin Biglari is a Research Associate and Teaching Fellow at SOAS. His research focuses on the intersection of energy, environment, infrastructure and labour, especially in the history of Iran and the Middle East. His doctoral thesis, which was awarded the 2021 BRISMES Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize for best PhD dissertation, examines the technopolitics of Iranian oil nationalisation, especially focusing on expertise, labour and anti-colonialism in Abadan. His monograph based on this thesis entitled Refining Knowledge: Labour, Politics and Oil Nationalisation in Iran, 1933-51 will be published with Edinburgh University Press in 2023. Mattin has also published about banditry in Iran during the early twentieth century, examining its relationship to the country’s constitutional revolution and integration into the capitalist world economy. He has also written an article in Diplomatic History about how perceptions of Shi’a Islam shaped U.S. foreign policy during the 1978-79 Iranian revolution. Mattin completed his PhD in History at SOAS in 2020. Previously he attained an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS and a BA in History at the University of Cambridge. Stephanie Cronin is Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Research Fellow, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. She is the author of Armies and State-building in the Modern Middle East: Politics, Nationalism and Military Reform (I. B. Tauris, 2014); Shahs, Soldiers and Subalterns in Iran: Opposition, Protest and Revolt, 1921-1941 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010); Tribal Politics in Iran: Rural Conflict and the New State, 1921-1941 (Routledge, 2006); and The Army and the Creation of the Pahlavi State in Iran, 1910-1926 (I. B. Tauris, 1997). She is the editor of Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa (Routledge, 2007); Reformers and Revolutionaries in Modern Iran: New Perspectives on the Iranian Left (Routledge, 2004); and The Making of Modern Iran; State and Society under Riza Shah, 1921-1941 (Routledge, 2003). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

On 25 July 2021 Tunisian President Kais Saied dismissed the government and suspended parliament, subsequently employing the army and security forces around government buildings to thwart any opposition to his power grab. How did Tunisia – long hailed as a democratic model in the region – reach such a stage? Who is President Saied and what does he plan on doing? What are his sources of power and support, both within Tunisia and internationally? And does his power grab mean the end of Tunisian democracy? This panel will tackle these questions and more. Youssef Cherif runs the Columbia Global Centers | Tunis, the North and West African research centre of Columbia University. He is a Tunis-based political analyst, member of Carnegie’s Civic Activism Network, and a regular contributor to number of think-tanks (Carnegie, ISPI, IAI, IEMed, etc.). He consulted previously for IWPR, IACE, the United Nations, The Carter Center, and the Tunisian Institute for Strategic Studies (ITES). He comments on North African affairs for several media outlets, including Al Jazeera, BBC, DW, France 24, among others. He holds a Chevening Master of Arts in International Relations from the Dept. of War Studies of King's College London, and a Fulbright Master of Arts in Classical Studies from Columbia University. Youssef is the editor of the book The Modern Arab State: A Decade of Uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, 2021. Dr Anne Wolf is a Fellow at All Souls College, University of Oxford, where she teaches Authoritarian Politics. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford (St Antony’s College) and an MPhil in Politics and International Relations from the University of Cambridge (Clare College), where she was previously the Margaret Smith Research Fellow in Politics and International Relations (Girton College). Her 2017 book Political Islam in Tunisia: The History of Ennahda, published by Oxford University Press, won the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. Her second book, Ben Ali’s Tunisia: Power and Contention in an Authoritarian Regime is forthcoming with OUP. Wolf has published numerous journal articles on Authoritarian Politics in the Arab world. She is an Associate Editor at the Journal of North African Studies and a Senior Research Fellow at the Project of Middle East Democracy.

Oil price volatility and accelerated energy transitions away from hydrocarbons to meet climate change mitigation measures have presented existential threats to the economies of hydrocarbon-dependent welfare states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). These state rely on oil and gas not only in their exports to fund welfare distributive measures, but also domestically for highly-subsidized energy and water consumption. In response, each GCC state announced economic development plans presented as avant-garde “Visions”—one tailored to each of the six GCC states— reflecting a future target of transformation away from oil and gas through energy and economic diversification and reform. In a fundamental policy shift, GCC states implemented energy subsidy reform following the 2014 oil price declines, with varying degrees of success. In another fundamental policy shift in October 2020, in preparation for COP26 in Glasgow, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 or 2060. Beyond the economic pressures, GCC states also face environmental challenges owing to their highly subsidized energy and water consumption and emissions in an already-constrained environment owing to climate change. This talk summarizes the state of the environment in the Gulf states and examines the role of the environment in the economic and energy diversification plans of their Visions. It argues that the environment has had a limited role in the Visions, despite the state of the environment in the region, offering a striking difference with other regions. The talk concludes with implications on the region’s long-term sustainability and success of proposed reforms. MEC Friday Webinar. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 5th November 2021 for the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Dr Manal Shehabi (Academic Visitor, St. Antony's College, University of Oxford; and Senior Research Fellow, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies) presents “Environment Discounted: Energy and Economic Diversification Plans in the Gulf”. Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College, Oxford) chairs this webinar, and Dr Michael Willis is the Q&A Moderator. The combination of oil price volatility and the accelerated energy transitions away from hydrocarbons to meet climate change mitigation measures have presented existential threats to the economies of hydrocarbon-dependent welfare states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). These state rely on oil and gas not only in their exports to fund welfare distributive measures, but also domestically for highly-subsidized energy and water consumption. In response, each GCC state announced economic development plans presented as avant-garde “Visions”—one tailored to each of the six GCC states— reflecting a future target of transformation away from oil and gas through energy and economic diversification and reform. In a fundamental policy shift, GCC states implemented energy subsidy reform following the 2014 oil price declines, with varying degrees of success. In another fundamental policy shift in October 2020, in preparation for COP26 in Glasgow, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 or 2060. Beyond the economic pressures, GCC states also face environmental challenges owing to their highly subsidized energy and water consumption and emissions in an already-constrained environment owing to climate change. This talk summarizes the state of the environment in the Gulf states and examines the role of the environment in the economic and energy diversification plans of their Visions. It argues that the environment has had a limited role in the Visions, despite the state of the environment in the region, offering a striking difference with other regions. The talk concludes with implications on the region’s long-term sustainability and success of proposed reforms. Dr Manal Shehabi is an applied economist with expertise in economic, energy, resource sustainability & policy making in resource-dependent economies, focusing on the Middle East and Gulf regions. She publishes in academic journals, books, and policy reports. Using economy-wide modeling and political economy, her research made important contributions to the analysis of economic and energy diversification, economic adjustments, decarbonization and hydrogen, and policy alternatives in Gulf hydrocarbon economies following the energy transition and oil price volatility. Her research also impacted policy making, for example she constructed an economic model for policymaking in Kuwait, led or co-authored various policy reports (such as to the UNFCCC, KISR, the IPCC, and G20’s T20 Italy), and conducted capacity building for economic and climate policymakers in Gulf countries and beyond. A polyglot, regularly advises policymakers & firms. Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and 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). He is the author of 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). If you would like to join the live audience during this term’s webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Accessibility features of this video playlist are available through the University of Oxford Middle East Centre podcast series: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre

This is a recording of a live webinar held on 29th October 2021 for the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Dr Jamie Furniss (Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain (Tunis) / Department of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh) presents: The blue-clad fennec: authoritarian environmentalism in Tunisia, and its afterlives. Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College, Oxford) chairs this webinar, including the Q&A session. There is hardly a city in the whole of Tunisia without a faded sign reading “Boulevard de l’environnement” (Shari‘ al-bi’a) on one of its most prominent thoroughfares. If it hasn’t fallen over from neglect or been removed—for example by angry protesters or as a sort of nostalgic and kitsch lawn ornament—one may find a statue of desert fox (Fennec) in a blue jumpsuit, minus a few limbs, standing at the end of the avenue. These are the traces of the authoritarian environmentalism of Ben Ali’s Tunisia, the forms and afterlives of which this paper seeks to sketch. I begin by arguing that environment emerged as a category of political action in 1990s Tunisia largely as a way of papering over the totalitarian state by appealing to strategic hot-button issues in the eyes of the “West” (like women’s rights), as well as an attempt at aesthetic and moral discipline. I then evoke some of the consequences this genealogy has on the ways “environment” is used and understood in Tunisia today. What exactly does “environment” refer to in Tunisia is both a necessary contextual backdrop to this paper and a question that emerges from the political and social history I aim to examine. From some examples such as analysis of the Arabic terms (bi’a vs. muhit), the discourse in public signage pertaining to waste, the creation in 2017 of Tunisia’s “environmental police” and participant observation I have conducted on civil society “environmental” projects, I attempt to demonstrate that environment is a concept characterized by visuality and proximity. This makes garbage and in particular its visual accumulation in public space a kind of archetypal “environmental problem”. The rapid political telescoping of waste into issues of corruption (e.g. during the “Italian waste scandal”) as well as the use of cleanup as a political idiom (e.g. during the halit wa‘I movement following Kais Said’s election as president) are indices of ongoing political overtones of the issues of waste, cleanliness, and environment more broadly, in contemporary Tunisia. Dr Jamie Furniss is currently a researcher at the Institut de recherche sur le Maghreb contemporain in Tunis, on leave from a position as a lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh. He has a DPhil from the University of Oxford in International Development and has conducted fieldwork in Egypt and Tunisia, primarily on topics pertaining to environment, waste, and urban development. Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). If you would like to join the live audience during this term’s webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Accessibility features of this video playlist are available through the University of Oxford Middle East Centre podcast series: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre

Dr Hussam Hussein investigates the construction of the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan, and the political economy of the water sector. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 22nd October 2021 for the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Dr Hussam Hussein (Lecturer in International Relations at DPIR, Oxford Martin School Fellow in Water Diplomacy, and Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College) presents the politics of water scarcity in the case of Jordan. Dr Neil Ketchley (St Antony’s College, Oxford) chairs this webinar and Dr Michael Willis (St Antony’s College, Oxford) moderates the Q&A. This talk investigates the construction of the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan, and the political economy of the water sector. It identifies the actors constructing the discourse and the elements comprising the discourse. The research finds that there is a single dominant discourse of water scarcity, which is composed of two narratives: water insufficiency and water mismanagement. The water insufficiency narrative is constructed to emphasise factors external to the responsibility of the Jordanian government as reasons for water scarcity, like nature, refugees, and neighbouring countries. It is mainly constructed by governmental aligned actors and deployed to open solutions on the supply and conservation sides and ultimately to maintain the status quo of the current water uses. The water mismanagement narrative is constructed to emphasise as reasons for water scarcity factors of mismanagement of water resources and deployed to increase economic efficiency in the water sector, challenging existing uses, allocations, and benefits. Dr Hussam Hussein’s research focuses on the role of discourses in shaping water policies in the Middle East, on transboundary water governance, and on issues related to the political economy of water resources in arid and semi-arid regions. Hussam has also worked on issues of sustainable development and environmental governance for the Italian Embassy in Jordan, the European Parliament, the World Bank and UNICEF. He obtained his PhD from the University of East Anglia with a thesis on hydropolitics and discourses of water scarcity in the case of Jordan. Dr Neil Ketchley is Associate Professor in Politics in the Department of Politics and International Relations (DPIR) and the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA). His research focuses on the dynamics of protest and activism in the Arabic-speaking Middle East and North Africa. His most recent book, Egypt in a Time of Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won the Charles Tilly Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association. His work has appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and Mobilization. Neil's current research interests include episodes of historic mass protest in the MENA, the rise of political Islam in Egypt, and the changing profiles of regional political elites. Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and 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). He is the author of 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). If you would like to join the live audience during this term’s webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC. Accessibility features of this video playlist are available through the University of Oxford Middle East Centre podcast series: http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/middle-east-centre

MEC Friday Webinar. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 15th October 2021 for the first episode of the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. MEC Friday Webinar. This is a recording of a live webinar held on 15th October 2021 for the first episode of the MEC Friday Seminar Michaelmas Term 2021 series on the overall theme of The Environment and The Middle East. Oxford academics Dr Michael Willis, Professor Walter Armbrust, Dr Laurent Mignon and Dr Usaama al-Azami reflect upon how issues of the Environment relate to their own research. Dr Michael J. Willis is Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and 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). He is the author of 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). Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Dr Laurent Mignon is Associate Professor of Turkish language and literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of St Antony’s College and Affiliate Professor at the Luxembourg School of Religion and Society. His research focuses on the minor literatures of Ottoman and Republican Turkey, in particular Jewish literatures, as well as the literary engagement with non-Abrahamic religions during the era straddling the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republic. In March and April 2019, he was invited as Visiting Professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris. He is an Associate Member of the Centre de Recherche Europes-Eurasie at INALCO, Paris. His newest publications are: Uncoupling Language and Religion: An Exploration into the Margins of Turkish Literature, Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2021. https://www.academicstudiespress.com/ottomanandturkishstudies/uncoupling-language-and-religion Alberto Ambrosio and Laurent Mignon (ed.), Penser l'islam en Europe: Perspectives du Luxembourg et d'ailleurs, Paris: Hermann, 2021. https://www.editions-hermann.fr/livre/9791037005472 Dr Usaama al-Azami is Departmental Lecturer in Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford. He read his BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford and his MA and PhD in Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Alongside his university career, he also pursued Islamic studies in seminarial settings in which he has also subsequently taught. He has travelled extensively throughout the Middle East, living for five years in the region. Usaama al-Azami is primarily interested in the interaction between Islam and modernity with a special interest in modern developments in Islamic political thought. His latest book, Islam and the Arab Revolutions: Ulama Between Democracy and Autocracy (Hurst Publishers, October 2021; Oxford University Press, USA, forthcoming 2022) looks at the way in which influential Islamic scholars responded to the Arab uprisings of 2011 through 2013. His broader interests extend to a range of disciplines from the Islamic scholarly tradition from the earliest period of Islam down to the present. If you would like to join the live audience during this term’s webinar series, you can sign up to receive our MEC weekly newsletter or browse the MEC webpages. The newsletter includes registration details for each week's webinar. Please contact mec@sant.ox.ac.uk to register for the newsletter or follow us on Twitter @OxfordMEC.

Dr Orkideh Behrouzan (SOAS University of London), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series on 21st May 2021, chaired by Edmund Herzig (Faculty of Oriental Studies). Discussant: Dr Maziyar Ghiabi (University of Exeter). Iran has been one of the worst hit countries by the Coronavirus pandemic, while its pandemic response has been shaped by the politicization of the outbreak and the securitization of information about it. This landscape of suspicion reveals a particular form of biopolitics that underlies the society’s structures of social and moral immunity, which are significant in determining the afterlife of a pandemic and emerging local and global biologies and socialities. This project is an attempt to trace the psychological life of the Coronavirus pandemic and the psycho-politics of its emergence and evolution, in order to understand the specific processes and forces in which the pandemic gains a local life and what it reveals about society. Biographies: Orkideh Behrouzan is a physician, medical anthropologist, anthropologist of science and technology, and the author of Prozak Diaries: Psychiatry and Generational Memory in Iran (2016, Stanford University Press). She is the founder of the Beyond Trauma Initiative, and a bilingual author and poet in Persian and English. For more, please see: https://www.orkidehbehrouzan.com Maziyar Ghiabi is a Wellcome Lecturer in Medical Humanities at the University of Exeter. His primary work has concerned the study of illegal drugs and ‘addiction’ in West Asia and in the global South. Maziyar’s current project is titled Living ‘Addiction’ in States of Disruption funded by Wellcome Trust (2021-26). Before this, Maziyar was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Drugs & (Dis)Order Project, based at the SOAS (University of London) and held research and teaching positions at Oxford University, the EHESS and SciencesPO. His first book Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (London: Cambridge University Press, 2019, also in Open Access) was awarded the 2020 Best Book of the Year (Nikki Keddie Prize) by the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA). Maziyar obtained his DPhil in Politics from Oxford University in 2017

Professor Marie Ladier-Fouladi (CNRS)/ CETOBaC) gives a talk for the MEC Women's Rights Research Seminars. Chaired by Soraya Tremayne (Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology). Marie Ladier-Fouladi is a senior Researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS)/ CETOBaC (Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques) and professor of Political Sociology and Population Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Marie Ladier-Fouladi earned her Ph.D. in Demography and Social Sciences from the EHESS (École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales - Paris) in 1999 and entered CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) in 2000. In 2012, she earned her full Professorship (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches -HDR) in Demography and Social Sciences. The title of her HDR’s dissertation was: “Understanding the Socio-Political Change Through the Prism of Demography”. In October 2019, she joined the Centre for Turkish, Ottoman, Balkan and Central Asian Studies (CETOBaC). Her research investigates the relationship between demographic changes and socio-political transformations, especially relying on the case of Iran. This approach consists in analyzing demographic phenomena by putting them in relation to their context, in the historical, social, economic, and political perspective. It is from this reflection on the relationship between demography and politics, and the perspectives they open up to understand social behaviors that she has defined her methodological approach. She has conducted several research projects on women and youth as new protagonists of political change in Iran, family and solidarity networks, social policy, immigration policy, political elections and population’s political horizon in Iran. She recently started working on a new research program entitled: From Global to Local: The Disturbing Future of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2010, the Iranian government reversed the neo-Malthusian policy it had introduced in December 1989, and opted for a new population policy that I will define as populationist. It consisted in deploying all possible means to reach a target population of 150 million, within an unspecified timeframe though. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, fully endorsed this policy, and in May 2014, for the sake of speeding up the process, he drew up a strategic program in a 14-article decree, called “Population General Policies”, which sanctioned the state’s new population policy, and instructed the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary powers to implement it. Grounded in the alleged threat of population aging due to birth control and declining fertility, the new population policy aims to accelerate population growth by reversing the downward trend in fertility. There is no doubt that the process of population aging has started in Iran, but not to the extent that this demographic evolution may justify the implementation of incentive, coercive and particularly aggressive measures in order to entice Iranian people into having more children. While, by reappropriating their fertility, Iranian women succeeded in coming out of “the male sphere of domination” and thus reaching dignity and equality, they again find themselves subject to injunctions that violate their reproductive health rights and thereby their human rights. I first shed light on the actual yet concealed objective of the new population policy of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The examination of coercive as well as incentives measures shall then evidence the detrimental effect of this new policy on Iranian women's rights.

Hamid Dabashi (Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York), gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre. The first comprehensive social and intellectual biography of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, this book explores the life and legacy of Jalal Al-e Ahmad (1923-69), arguably the most prominent Iranian public intellectual of his time and contends that he was the last Muslim intellectual to have articulated a vision of Muslim worldly cosmopolitanism, before the militant Islamism of the last half a century degenerated into sectarian politics and intellectual alienation from the world at large. This unprecedented engagement with Al-e Ahmad’s life and legacy is a prelude to what Dabashi calls a post-Islamist Liberation Theology. The Last Muslim Intellectual is about expanding the wide spectrum of anticolonial thinking beyond its established canonicity and adding a critical Muslim thinker to it is an urgent task, if the future of Muslim critical thinking is to be considered in liberated terms beyond the dead-end of its current sectarian predicament. A full social and intellectual biography of Jalal Al-e Ahmad, a seminal Muslim public intellectual of the mid-20th century, this book places Al-e Ahmad’s writing and activities alongside other influential anticolonial thinkers of his time, including Frantz Fanon, Aimé Césaire and Edward Said. Chapters cover Jalal Al-e Ahmad’s intellectual and political life; his relationship with his wife, the novelist Simin Daneshvar; his essays; his fiction; his travel writing; his translations; and his legacy. Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He received a dual PhD in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. He wrote his dissertation on Max Weber's theory of charismatic authority with Philip Rieff (1922-2006), the most distinguished Freudian cultural critic of his time. Professor Dabashi has taught and delivered lectures in many North American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. Professor Dabashi has written twenty-five books, edited four, and contributed chapters to many more. He is also the author of over 100 essays, articles and book reviews on subjects ranging from Iranian Studies, medieval and modern Islam, and comparative literature to world cinema and the philosophy of art (trans-aesthetics). His books and articles have been translated into numerous languages, including Japanese, German, French, Spanish, Danish, Russian, Hebrew, Italian, Arabic, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish, Urdu and Catalan. His books include Authority in Islam [1989]; Theology of Discontent [1993]; Truth and Narrative [1999]; Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future [2001]; Staging a Revolution: The Art of Persuasion in the Islamic Republic of Iran [2000]; Masters and Masterpieces of Iranian Cinema [2007]; Iran: A People Interrupted [2007]; and an edited volume, Dreams of a Nation: On Palestinian Cinema[2006]. His most recent work includes Shi’ism: A Religion of Protest (2011), The Arab Spring: The End of Postcolonialism (2012), Corpus Anarchicum: Political Protest, Suicidal Violence, and the Making of the Posthuman Body (2012), The World of Persian Literary Humanism (2012) and Being A Muslim in the World (2013).

Gillian Mosely (Film Director and Producer) joins Dr Anne Irfan, Professor Eugene Rogan and our Middle East Centre webinar audience to talk about her documentary film, The Tinderbox - Israel and Palestine: time to call time? Dr Anne Irfan (Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford) and Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College, Oxford). Extract from British Council Film website: Knowledge is power, but lack of knowledge keeps power where politicians want it... From BAFTA-award-winning producer Gillian Mosely, in association with multi-award winners, Spring Films (NIGHT WILL FALL, THE ACT OF KILLING), THE TINDERBOX is a controversial, revealing, and timely new feature documentary exploring both sides of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. It’s the first time the facts behind the divide have been brought to the screen in a single film, and delves deep into history, as well as hearing from contemporary Israeli and Palestinian voices. Exposing surprising, shocking and uncomfortable truths, not least for its Jewish director and onscreen investigator, this is an important film that will provide valuable context and help people make up their minds – or even change them. http://www.thetinderboxfilm.com A first-time director, Gillian Mosely began producing films in 1997, creating, developing, producing and exec producing a wide range of high end documentaries for Arte, BBC, Channel 4, Discovery, History, ITV, NatGeo, PBS and ZDF among others. In 2017 Gillian produced her first Feature Documentary: Manolo: the Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards (Netflix). TV films include “Ancient Egypt: Life and Death in the Valley of the Kings,” BBC2, and BAFTA, Royal Television Society and AIB award-winning “Mummifying Alan,” Channel 4, Discovery, NGCI. Dr Anne Irfan is Anne Irfan is Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration at the Refugee Studies Centre. She holds a Dual Master’s Degree from Columbia University and the LSE and a PhD from the LSE, where she wrote her doctoral thesis on the historical role of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in the Palestinian refugee camps. She previously taught at the University of Sussex and the LSE, and is an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. Anne’s research interests include global refugee history, UNRWA and Palestinian refugees, forced migration in the Middle East, the spatiality of refugee camps, and archival suppression. She is currently Co-Investigator on the British Academy-funded research project Borders, global governance and the refugee, examining the historical origins of the global refugee regime. In recent years, she has spoken at the UK Parliament in Westminster, and the UN Headquarters in New York and Geneva about the functions of the UNRWA regime and the exclusions facing Palestinian refugees from Syria. Anne’s work has been published in Journal of Refugee Studies, Jerusalem Quarterly and Forced Migration Review, as well as media outlets The Washington Post and The Conversation. Her article ‘Is Jerusalem international or Palestinian? Rethinking UNGA Resolution 181’ was named co-winner of the 2017 Ibrahim Dakkak Award for Best Essay on Jerusalem. She is currently working on a book about UNRWA’s institutional history. Professor Eugene Rogan is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at the University of Oxford and Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College. He is author of The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920 (Penguin, 2015) which was named The Economist books of the year 2015 and The Sunday Times top ten bestseller; and The Arabs: A History (Penguin, 2009, 3rd edition 2018), which has been translated in 18 languages and was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Economist, The Financial Times, and The Atlantic Monthly. His earlier works include Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge University Press, 1999), for which he received the Albert Hourani Book Award of the Middle East Studies Association of North America and the Fuad Köprülü Prize of the Turkish Studies Association; The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2001, second edition 2007, with Avi Shlaim), which has been published in Arabic, French, Turkish and Italian editions; and Outside In: On the Margins of the Modern Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2002).

Professor Irene Schneider (Georg-August-Universität Göttingen), gives a talk for the MEC Women's Rights Research Seminars. Chaired by Professor Marilyn Booth (Magdalen College, Oxford) Irene Schneider is Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies. She received her PhD from Tuebingen University in 1989 and published her Dissertation under the title "Das Bild des Richters in der adab al-qadi-Literatur". In 1996 she finished her habilitation at the University of Cologne with a Study published under the title "Kinderverkauf und Schuldknechtschaft. Untersuchungen zur frühen Phase des islamischen Rechts" (English short version in the article: Freedom and Slavery in Early Islamic Time (1st /7th and 2nd /8th centuries), in: al-Qantara. 28. 2007, S. 353-382). In 2008 she turned down the offer of the Chair "Islamic Studies and Gender Studies" at the University of Zurich and in 2014 the offer of the Sharjah Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter/UK. Abstract: Irene Schneider: "Debating the Law, Creating Gender“ My book strived to break new ground in mainly four research areas. 1. First, by observing legal iterations/debates (Benhabib 2003) in connection with the construction of gender roles in a Muslim state for a period of more than seven years (2012–2018), the question was asked why these iterations partly lead to “jurisgenerative” results, i.e. to “lawmaking” and partly failed to do so. The aim was to understand how these iterations developed in Palestinian society and “who belled the cat,” i.e., who steered these iterations successfully and how some discourses became dominant while others did not. Research so far had most often considered only short-term developments leading to reforms, ignoring long-term developments and discourses that ended without success. 2. Second, the research combined the analysis of the dominant discourses in these iterations between 2012 and 2018 – khulʿ in the first phase (2012–2014) and the question of how international law can be brought into harmony with national law in the second phase (2014–2018) – on the socio-legal level with an in-depth linguistic analysis based on Koselleck’s Begriffsgeschichte and the approach of translating from the “global” to the “local.” This linguistic analysis proved essential in understanding the shifts in these iterations as well as the social power struggle behind these shifts. 3. Third, the concentration on university teaching as part of iterations, especially when combined with an analysis of the textbook and the actual teaching process has revealed a deeper understanding of intellectual discourses in Palestine in a section of the public sphere, i.e., the universities, which has been ignored so far. It is still a surprisingly underresearched area taking into consideration that it is in universities that the future elite – in this case future lawyers, judges, and scholars – are trained. The question, whether they are well-enough equipped with the existing education to take up the task of harmonizing international law with national law based on Islamic legal terminology must be seriously asked. 4. Fourth, because of the political situation especially since 2007, there has been more research on the West Bank than on Gaza and research most often concentrated on one area or the other but was not combined and compared as is done in this book. Especially the research focus on Gaza lead to surprising results in comparison with West Bank iterations.

A webinar that explores the complex history binding Iraq and the U.K. from the First World War through the mandate and creation of the Hashemite monarchy, and Britain’s role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. With Eugene Rogan, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History, University of Oxford, and author of The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, 1914-1920 Dina Rizk Khoury, Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University and author of Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom and Remembrance. And Charles Tripp, Professor Emeritus of Politics with reference to the Middle East and North Africa, SOAS, University of London, and author of A History of Iraq. Introduced by Dr Myfanwy Lloyd (Guest Curator, Ashmolean Museum)

Sponsored in association with Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali, Founder and Chair, Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute. With Professor Anoush Ehteshami (Professor of International Relations in the School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University) The event is chaired by Dr Stephanie Cronin (St Antony's College, Oxford), Q and A moderated by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford). Part of the MEC Friday Seminar series The Arab uprisings of a decade ago threatened to redraw the political map of the Middle East and North Africa region, and set in motion forces that as first sight appeared to be out of the control of ruling regimes, dominant regional powers, and external interested parties. Within the region, the one country whose policies and behaviour was profoundly influenced by the early-2010s uprisings was the Islamic Republic of Iran. Iran’s mood music swung between a celebration of the Arab ‘Islamic awakening’ and euphoria about Iran’s new geopolitical opportunities, to the need and duty to mobilise in defence of the Assad presidency in Syria and the protection of the ‘resistance front’. What determined Iran’s policies in the uprisings and how the uprisings shaped Iran’s regional role and political posture will form the body of this lecture.

Dr Marc Owen Jones (Hamad Bin Khalifa University) and Dr Sahar Khamis (University of Maryland) give a talk for the MEC Friday Seminars Series. Chaired by Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College, Oxford). Moderator: Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford) This evening Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College) is joined by Dr Mark Owen Jones (Assistant Professor, Hamad Bin Halifa University) and Dr Sahar Khamis (Associate Professor, University of Maryland). Ten years after the eruption of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, which had a wide range of eclectic outcomes, it became obvious that the transitions to democratization have been derailed in the so-called post-Arab Spring countries, with the exception of Tunisia. This presentation unpacks the complexity of the parallel surge in anti-authoritarianism resistance movements, on one hand, and repressive counter-revolutionary movements, on the other hand, in this post-Arab Spring mediated political and media environment. It explains how anti-authoritarian activists continue to resist dictatorships across the Arab world, using a plethora of digital media platforms, and how authoritarian regimes are using the same digital tools and techniques, in parallel, to sabotage such efforts. In doing so, it illustrates how the phenomenon of “cyberactivism” is opening up new horizons in this ongoing tug-of-war between authoritarian rulers and their opponents in the Arab region, who are not just resisting political repression, but are also pushing back against all forms of gender-based, socially-based, culturally-based, and politically-based marginalization and discrimination, simultaneously. Biographies: Dr Marc Owen Jones received his BA in Journalism, Film and Broadcasting from Cardiff University in 2006, and a CASAW-funded MSc in Arab World Studies from the University of Durham in 2010. Following this, he completed his PhD (funded by the AHRC/ESRC) in 2016 at Durham, where he wrote an interdisciplinary thesis on the history of political repression in Bahrain. His thesis won the 2016 AGAPS prize. He spent much of his childhood in Bahrain, and has also lived in various parts of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria. Prior to joining HBKU, he won a Teach at Tubingen Award at Tuebingen University’s Institute for Political Science, and worked as a Lecturer in the History of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula at Exeter University’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies. He is currently Assistant Professor in Middle East Studies and Digital Humanities at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar. He is co-editor of two books Gulfization of the Arab World (Gerlach Press, 2018) and Bahrain’s Uprising: Resistance and Repression in the Gulf (Zed Books 2015), and author of the recently published book Political Repression in Bahrain (Cambridge University Press, 2020). In addition to his academic work, he enjoys communicating his research to broader audiences, and has bylines in the Washington Post, New Statesman, CNN, the Independent, PEN International, and several others. He has also appeared frequently on the BBC, Channel 4 News, and Al Jazeera. Dr Sahar Khamis is an expert on Arab and Muslim media, and the former Head of the Mass Communication and Information Science Department in Qatar University. She is a former Mellon Islamic Studies Initiative Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago. Sahar is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Communication, University of Maryland, USA. She is the co-author of the books: Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Discourses in Cyberspace (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Egyptian Revolution 2.0: Political Blogging, Civic Engagement and Citizen Journalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), and the co-editor of Arab Women's Activism and Socio-Political Transformation: Unfinished Gendered Revolutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Additionally, she has authored and co-authored numerous book chapters, journal articles and conference papers, regionally and internationally, in both English and Arabic. She is the recipient of a number of prestigious academic and professional awards, as well as a member of the editorial boards of several journals in the field of communication, in general, and the field of Arab and Muslim media, in particular. Dr. Khamis is a media commentator and analyst, a public speaker, a human rights commissioner in the Human Rights Commission in Montgomery County, Maryland, and a radio host, who presents a monthly radio show on “U.S. Arab Radio” (the first Arab-American radio station broadcasting in the U.S. and Canada).

Hela Ammar (Artist) and Mohamed Kerrou (University of Tunis El Manar) give a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series. Chaired by Dr Michael Willis (St Antony's College, Oxford), the discussant was Professor Charles R H Tripp (SOAS). The overthrow of Ben Ali's dictatorship in 2011 was revolutionary both in its method and in its outcome, involving mass participation and opening the way for the establishment of democratic institutions. However, like all such events, it is part of a process that continues as Tunisians grapple with the challenge of bringing about significant change not simply in their governing institutions, but also in the other areas of political, social, cultural and economic life that shape the lives and the rights of citizens. This panel will explore some of the achievements of the past ten years, but also the unfinished business and unrealised hopes that have marked Tunisia's political trajectory. Speaker Biographies Dr Héla Ammar https://www.helaammar.com/index.php/about Héla Ammar is a Tunisia based visual artist. In addition to her training in visual art, she holds a Phd in Law. Author of Corridors (2014), a photo book on Tunisian prisons, and co-author of Siliana Syndrome (2013), a survey of death row in Tunisia, she recently developed a whole artwork around the prison environment. In 2011, immediately after the revolution, she was part of the Artocracy Inside Out project that sought, through art, to reclaim public spaces in Tunisia for the Tunisian public. She was also a member of the commission set up by the Tunisian government in 2011 to look into the conditions of prisons across the country. More generally, her photographs and installations address issues of memory and identity. A selection of her works now forms part of the British Museum (London) and the Institut du Monde Arabe (Paris) permanent collections. Her work has been showcased in various international biennials and exhibitions including the Biennial of Contemporary Arab World Photographers (Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris, 2017), Réenchantements Dak’art Biennial 2016 (Senegal), Fragments d’une Tunisie contemporaine, MuCem (Marseille,2015), Bamako Encounters (Mali, 2015 and 2017), Something Else, Off Biennial Cairo (Egypt 2015) International Photography Encounters of Fes (Morocco, 2015), Monochromes Dak’art Biennal, (Senegal 2014), the 27th Instants Vidéo (Festival numérique et poétique, Marseille 2014), World Nomads New York ( USA, 2013), Les rencontres photographiques d’Arles (France, 2013), Dream City (Tunisia, 2010, 2012 and 2017) Prof Mohamed Kerrou Mohamed Kerrou is Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Tunis El Manar. He is also a permanent member of the Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters Beit Al-Hikma, as well as a founding member of the Tunisian Observatory for Democratic Transition. He has published numerous articles and books, amongst which: L'autre révolution. Essai, Tunis, Cérès, 2018; L'homme des questions. Hommage à Abdelkader Zghal, Tunis, Cérès, 2017; Hijâb. Nouveaux voiles et espaces publics, Tunis, Cérès, 2010; D'islam et d'ailleurs. Hommage à Clifford Geertz, Tunis, Cérès, 2007. His forthcoming book, currently in press, is entitled: Jemna. L'oasis de la révolution, Tunis, Cérès, 2021.

Anas El Gomati (Sadeq Institute) and Mary Fitzgerald (King's College London) give a talk on Libya for the Middle East Centre seminar series. Chaired by Dr Usaama al-Azami (St Antony's College). Libya's February 2011 uprisings offered an early example of the dangers of the regional upheavals when met with the military might of a recalcitrant dictator. The civil war that ensued and ultimately led to the killing of Gaddafi in October 2011 marked the beginning of a challenging transition that has been held back by repeated set backs, complex civil wars, wars by proxy, and shaky ceasefires. The future remains uncertain but deserves our attention and careful consideration. Speaker biographies: Mary Fitzgerald is a researcher specialising in the Euro-Mediterranean region with a particular focus on Libya. She has reported on and researched Libya since February 2011 and lived there in 2014. An Associate Fellow at ICSR, King's College London, she has conducted research on Libya for International Crisis Group (ICG), the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and United States Institute of Peace (USIP) among others. Previously a journalist, her reporting on Libya has appeared in publications including the Economist, Foreign Policy, the New Yorker, the Financial Times, and the Guardian. She is a contributing author to an edited volume on the Libyan revolution and its aftermath published by Oxford University Press. Anas El Gomati is the founder and current Director General of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, the first public policy think tank in Libya's history established in August 2011. He has held several positions in the region and Europe, as a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, Lebanon and visiting lecturer at the NATO defence college in Rome, Italy. He is a frequent commentator on Libya and the MENA region on Al Jazeera, BBC, France 24, Sky News.He is the author of 'Libya's Islamists and Salafi Jihadists - the battle for a theological revolution' of the edited volume 'The Arab Spring Handbook' (Routeledge Press 2015). He is the co-author of 'the conversation will not be televised' ‘a divided gulf, anatomy of a crisis’ on the role of gulf states across North Africa (Palgrave 2019).

Dr. Shadi Hamid (Brookings Institution; contributing writer, The Atlantic) and Professor Nadia Oweidat (Kansas State University) give a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday seminar series. Chaired by Dr Usaama al-Azami (St Antony's College). It is often noted that the Arab uprisings of 2011 were not started by Islamists, but that these groups were often their initial beneficiaries given their long-standing grassroots presence and their ability to effectively organise for elections. Yet ten years on from the initial openings, the political landscape has changed almost beyond recognition, with Islamists decidedly on the backfoot alongside the emergence of new secular voices that would like to see religious politics consigned to the history books. Dr. Shadi Hamid (Brookings Institution; contributing writer, The Atlantic) Professor Nadia Oweidat (Kansas State University) Chair: Dr Usaama al-Azami (St Antony's College) Series: Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series It is often noted that the Arab uprisings of 2011 were not started by Islamists, but that these groups were often their initial beneficiaries given their long-standing grassroots presence and their ability to effectively organise for elections. Yet ten years on from the initial openings, the political landscape has changed almost beyond recognition, with Islamists decidedly on the backfoot alongside the emergence of new secular voices that would like to see religious politics consigned to the history books. Speaker biographies: Dr Shadi Hamid, senior fellow, Brookings Institution; contributing writer, The Atlantic Dr. Shadi Hamid is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a contributing writer at The Atlantic, and founding editor of Wisdom of Crowds. He is the author of Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World, which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on foreign affairs, and co-editor of Rethinking Political Islam. His first book Temptations of Power: Islamists and Illiberal Democracy in a New Middle East was named a Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2014. In 2019, Hamid was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine. He received his B.S. and M.A. from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and his DPhil in politics from Oxford University. Dr. Nadia Oweidat, as Assistant Professor at Kansas State University and Senior Middle East Fellow at New America Foundation My research focuses on the history, culture, and politics of the modern Middle East and North Africa region as well as the intellectual history of Islamic thought. My doctoral research examined obstacles to reforming Islamic thought in the second half of the twentieth century. While I include the arguments of various intellectuals and thinkers, my case study was the Egyptian scholar, Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd (1943-2010). My current book project examines individuals who are attempting to challenge extremist thought and Islamic theology through social media. The rise of the internet and social media has made available information and texts, including historical texts not previously readily available . My book, in detailing these changes through case studies, narratives, and quantitative research, argues that the impact of these technological developments is analogous to that of the Reformation and the printing press in Europe.

Maha Yahya (PhD, Director, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Centre) Maysoon Pachachi (Film director) give a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St. Antony's College, Oxford). Iraq and Lebanon: When the Arab world rose up against failed governance in 2011, Lebanon and Iraq stood out as exceptions to the regional trend. Yet by the end of the decade, massed popular demonstrations would demand the fall of the regime in both countries. With their electoral systems, the Iraqis and Lebanese did not confront deeply entrenched dictators. Rather, protestors rose against sectarian politics and called for a new order based on citizenship without reference to religion. Speaker biographies: Maha Yahya is director of the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center, where her work focuses broadly on political violence and identity politics, pluralism, development and social justice after the Arab uprisings, the challenges of citizenship, and the political and socio-economic implications of the migration/refugee crisis. Prior to joining Carnegie, Yahya led work on Participatory Development and Social Justice at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA). She was previously regional adviser on social and urban policies at UN-ESCWA and spearheaded strategic and inter-sectoral initiatives and policies in the Office of the Executive Secretary which addressed the challenges of democratic transitions in the Arab world. Yahya has also worked with the United Nations Development Program in Lebanon, where she was the director and principal author of The National Human Development Report 2008–2009: Toward a Citizen’s State. She was also the founder and editor of the MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies. Yahya has worked with international organizations and in the private sector as a consultant on projects related to socioeconomic policy analysis, development policies, cultural heritage, poverty reduction, housing and community development, and postconflict reconstruction in various countries including Lebanon, Pakistan, Oman, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. She has served on a number of advisory boards including the MIT Enterprise Forum of the Pan Arab Region and the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. Yahya is the author of numerous publications, including most recently Unheard Voices: What Syrian Refugees Need to Return Home (April 2018); The Summer of Our Discontent: Sects and Citizens in Lebanon and Iraq (June 2017); Great Expectations in Tunisia (March 2016); Refugees and the Making of an Arab Regional Disorder (November 2015); Towards Integrated Social Development Policies: A Conceptual Analysis (UN-ESCWA, 2004), co-editor of Secular Publicities: Visual practices and the Transformation of National Publics in the Middle East and South Asia (University of Michigan Press, 2010) and co-author of Promises of Spring: Citizenship and Civic Engagement in Democratic Transitions (UN-ESCWA, 2013). MAYSOON PACHACHI is a London-based filmmaker of Iraqi origin, who was educated in Iraq, the USA and the UK. She studied Philosophy at University College London (BA Hons) and Filmmaking at the London Film School (MA) and worked for many years as a documentary film, TV drama and feature film editor in the UK. Since 1994 she has worked as an independent documentary film director and has just completed a fiction feature film, ‘Our River…Our Sky’ (Arabic title: Kulshi Makoo), which was shot in Iraq in 2019. The project was awarded the IWC Gulf Filmmaker Award for the script, at the Dubai International Film Festival in December 2012. Maysoon has also taught film directing and editing in Britain and Palestine (Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah). In 2004, with Londonbased Iraqi director and cameraman, Kasim Abid, she co-founded INDEPENDENT FILM & TELEVISION COLLEGE, a free-of-charge film-training centre in Baghdad, which ran for 10 years and whose students produced 18 short documentary films, which were shown internationally and received 14 festival prizes. Documentary Films VOICES FROM GAZA (52 mins) Channel 4 (UK) 1990 (producer/editor) Red Ribbon Award, American Film and Video Festival, San Francisco IRAQI WOMEN - VOICES FROM EXILE (52 mins) Channel 4 (UK) 1994 (director/producer) A broad range of Iraqi women, of different ages, religions and political backgrounds, living in London recount their experiences – creating a sense of the modern history of Iraq as experienced by the country’s women. SMOKE 1997 (director/producer/editor) Part of an art installation by prize-winning artist, UK/Brazilian artist Lucia Nogueira. The film is now in the permanent collection of the Tate Modern Gallery, London IRANIAN JOURNEY (83 mins) ZDF/Arte 2000 (director) (First Prize, Kalamata International Documentary Festival, 2000) A documentary road-movie about a 24-hour bus trip with the only woman longdistance bus driver in the Islamic world. LIVING WITH THE PAST: People and Monuments in Medieval Cairo, (52 mins) ECHO Productions (USA) 2001 (director) A portrait of Cairo’s Darb Al Ahmar, a neighborhood in the heart of the old city facing a process of radical change. BITTER WATER, (76 mins) (Legend Productions/Oxymoron Films) 2003 (co-director/producer) Feature-length documentary about 4 generations of refugees in a Palestinian camp in Beirut. RETURN TO THE LAND OF WONDERS (88 mins) 2004 ZDF/Arte (director/producer/camera/editor) Made in 2004 on the first trip back to Baghdad in more than 35 years. OUR FEELINGS TOOK THE PICTURES OPEN SHUTTERS IRAQ (102 mins) (2008) (director/producer/camera/editor) (Jury Special Mention, Arab Film Festival Rotterdam, 2009) 12 women and a 6 year-old girl, travel to Damascus from 5 cities in Iraq. They live together for a month, during which they tell their life stories and learn to take photographs. The remarkable photo-stories they produced about their lives at a difficult and dangerous time in Iraq, were exhibited internationally and were also the subject of a book.

Ece Temelkuran, author of How to Lose a Country: the Seven Steps from Democracy to Dictatorship (2019) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar series. Chaired by Dr Laurent Mignon (St Antony's College, Oxford). A certain political and moral insanity seems to be taking over the world. Both the political and the moral consensuses are under the consistent attack of rightwing populist leaders using authoritarian tools. Although in each country this attack is perceived as an independent chaos specific to the local political and social conditions, it in fact has a pattern repeating exactly the same way regardless of the national differences. Democracies are destroyed through seven political steps to pave the way to the new form of fascism. Unless the peoples of the world agree on the fact that the matter is global, the planet will lose its political triangulation points. Ece Temelkuran is one of Turkey’s best-known novelists and political commentators, and her journalism has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, New Statesman, Der Spiegel etc. She won PEN Translate Award with Women Who Blow On Knots (2013) and with her political long essay Turkey: The Insane And Melancholy (2016) she received New Ambassador Of Europe Prize from Poland. Her latest book How To Lose A Country: The Seven Steps From Democracy to Dictatorship (2019) was internationally acknowledged. Her new book Together is coming out in May 2021.

Dr Lina Khatib, Director, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham, Jeremy Bowen (Middle East Editor, BBC News) give a talk on Syria and it's current political situation. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford). After nine years of civil war, the prospects for regime change in Syria seem more remote than ever. Its society dispersed and its economy shattered, Syria remains a central state in the Middle East. Regional stability cannot be restored while Syria’s conflict rages, yet the gulf separating the warring sides seems unbridgeable so long as Bashar al-Asad remains in power. In this webinar, Dr Lina Khatib, Director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, and Jeremy Bowen, BBC Middle East Editor, will discuss the contemporary struggle for Syria and Assad’s survival Speaker biographies: Jeremy Bowen (Middle East Editor, BBC News) I have been with the BBC since 1984 and have reported extensively from the Middle East since 1990. For the purposes of this session on Syria - I did the last major interview of Bashar al Assad in 2015, the third time I interviewed him. I've done many reporting assignments in Syria before the war and since it started, on both sides of the front line. My reporting of the Syria war won various journalism awards, including interview of the year from the Royal Television Society for the Assad interview - also in the US I received an Emmy and a Peabody award for Syria reporting. Dr Lina Khatib Dr Lina Khatib leads the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House. She was formerly director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and co-founding Head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Her research focuses on the international relations of the Middle East, Islamist groups and security, political transitions and foreign policy, with special attention to the Syrian conflict. She is a research associate at SOAS, was a senior research associate at the Arab Reform Initiative and lectured at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published seven books and also written widely on public diplomacy, political communication and political participation in the Middle East. She is a frequent commentator on politics and security in the Middle East and North Africa at events around the world and in the media.

Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College, Oxford), author of Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series on 20th November 2020. Chaired by Dr Michael Willis (St Anthony's College, Oxford) Professor Walter Armbrust is a Hourani Fellow and Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000). Abstract: When the Covid-19 pandemic began many people thought that a virus-induced apocalypse, while painful, provided a chance to rethink and fix everything from school funding to global warming. Yet as the initial effervescence of our entry into the liminality of lockdown dragged into a dreary limbo, darker possibilities emerged. The rich grew richer; once laughable conspiracy theories became politically weaponized; the environment became less important than economic recovery; and in this country, Covid-induced economic distress has provided perfect cover for getting the hardest of Brexits done. A crisis, real or perceived, produces real change - just not the sort of change progressive activists may have envisioned, as the Egyptian revolutionaries I wrote about in Martyrs and Tricksters discovered to their dismay. Indeed, crisis provides ideal conditions for the flourishing of tricksters in mainstream politics, and many a trickster politician harbours the kernel of an authoritarian. My talk explores links between crisis and authoritarianism in the Middle East, but also more widely, and not only in the context of Covid (though it provides an excellent point of entry to my topic), but also in longer historical and social contexts. There may well be a “dictatorship syndrome,” as Dr al-Aswany’s book suggests, but the institutionalization of dictators and the habituation of populations to their rule is only part of the story. Dictators are often born from crisis as tricksters. Hitler started as a trickster. Donald Trump is perhaps the clearest instantiation of a trickster politician in history. Some crises are unforeseeable - earthquakes, pandemics, revolutions for example. Others are increasingly structured, economically and by communication technologies. We tend not to think of the economy as intrinsically crisis-prone, though perhaps we should, given the dominance of capitalism and its requirement for constant disruptive change and expansion. The crisis potential of media technologies is easier to imagine when we have so close at hand the wreckage of whiplashing from hopeful “Facebook Revolutions” to propagandistic “Fake News” in the space of a decade. In the end the notion of a dictatorship syndrome in the Middle East perhaps distracts us from the much greater danger of an authoritarian virus spreading throughout the world. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Benjamin Dubrulle (Maison Française d'Oxford), gives a seminar for the MEC Women's Rights Research Seminars. Chaired by Dr Soraya Tremayne (School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford) on 18th November 2020. ‘God Does not Discriminate’: Inclusive Mosques Politics in France and the United Kingdom In the last ten years, mosques welcoming believers regardless of their gender and sexuality have been established in France and the United Kingdom. Known as ‘inclusive mosques’, these spaces are managed by both heterosexual and queer women who aim at practicing Islam outside of patriarchal constraints. Based on recent ethnographic data, this seminar will explore the different forms of pastoral care provided by Muslim women in these spaces for their community. Islamic feminism is a major component of pastoral care in the British context. Through various events -monthly feminist discussion groups, Jumma, conferences- queer Muslim women in the United Kingdom produce and share religious knowledge relevant to their experiences and struggles. Taking into account their specific vulnerability enables them to design relevant emancipatory practices. In France, a new inclusive mosque reclaims the French tradition of laïcité. Staying away from identity politics enables these women to focus on the universal values of justice in Islam. Despite material and spiritual obstacles that will be examined, these women seek to fight existing discriminations within local communities through radical inclusivity. Their theological work based on the Quran aims at promoting gender justice and recognition of sexual diversity. Ultimately, these projects seek to protect the local community against both queer-phobia and islamophobia, and unify the oumma. Bio: Benjamin Dubrulle is currently a PhD candidate in sociology at the EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences) in Paris, under the supervision of Dr. Céline Béraud. He is also a member of the CéSor (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences of Religion) at the CNRS and is currently in residency at the Maison Française d’Oxford. Benjamin Dubrulle is a member of the Jewish-Muslim Research Network. His research is situated at the intersection of social sciences of religion, gender studies and queer studies. It focuses on initiatives designed by Muslim communities to promote gender equality and sexual diversity within an Islamic framework. Dubrulle has a particular interest in democracy and secularism, and the way politics impact lived experiences of Muslim minorities on the ground.

Professor Sami Zemni (Ghent) gives a talk on the Tunisian Revolution on its 10 year anniversary. Part of the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series, chaired by Dr Michael Willis (St Anthony's College). On the eve of its ten year anniversary, Sami Zemni reflects on the outcomes of the Tunisian Revolution. Touted as the only success story of the Arab Uprisings, Tunisia is facing a major economic crisis, social instability and political paralysis while nostalgia for authoritarian rule seems on the rise. Is there anything to celebrate? Sami Zemni is professor of Political and Social Sciences at Ghent University (Belgium) where he heads the Middle East and North Africa Research Group (MENARG). His research focuses on issues of political change in North Africa (Morocco and Tunisia), more specifically he currently focuses on processes of marginalization and uneven development leading to different forms of urban and rural resistance.

Madawi Al-Rasheed (KCL and LSE), author of Salman’s Legacy: The Dilemmas of a New Era in Saudi Arabia (2018) and Ben Hubbard (The New York Times), author of MBS: The Rise to Power of MBS (2020) give a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series. Chair ed by Dr Usaama Al-Azami (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford) The seminar discusses the simultaneous phenomena of reform and repression in Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Muhammad ibn Salman. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has seen swift social and economic changes, including women being granted the right to drive and efforts to diversify the economy. The same period has also seen waves of detention, heightened restrictions on free speech and the flight of Saudis abroad. How will these changes interact as Saudi Arabia moves forward?

Part of the Middle East Centre Women's Rights Research Seminars. With Dr Mine Yildirim Chair: Dr Nazila Ghanea (Department for Continuing Education,University of Oxford). The place of women in the religious space of mosques in Turkey has been a long debate- more so recently. The Women in Mosques Movement’s challenge of the quality of space allocated for women in mosques led to strong criticism but also aroused genuine discussion about the deeply held beliefs underlying the place given to women as well as the space women carve out for themselves. The seminar will explore the implications of international human rights law, particularly women’s right to freedom of religion or belief, for the key demands of the Women in Mosques Movement. Bio – Dr. Mine YILDIRIM is the Head of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee’s Freedom of Belief Initiative project and Member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. She a scholar of human rights law and an expert on international protection of freedom of religion or belief. She is the founder of the Freedom of Belief Initiative, and works with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee on this Initiative monitoring and reporting on freedom of religion or belief in Turkey. Yildirim is a member of the OSCE/ODIHR Panel of Experts on Freedom of Religion or Belief. Her work covers different facets of religious freedom, including the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief, gender dimension of freedom of religion or belief, religious minorities and freedom of religion or belief in education. She was the co-recipient of the Stefanus Prize in 2016. She received her doctoral degree at AAbo Akademi Institute for Human Rights with her thesis on the collective dimension of freedom of religion or belief. Her doctoral thesis is published as a book entitled The Collective Dimension of Freedom of Religion: A Case Study on Turkey. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the academic journal Religion & Human Rights and has published extensively in academic journals and contributes to Forum 18. She has served as a consultant on numerous international projects.

Professor Gregory Gause (Head of International Affairs Department, The Bush School of Government and Public Service) gives a talk on Saudi Arabia crown prince Muhammad bin Salman. Introduced by Dr Toby Matthiesen (St. Antony's College, Oxford. Since his father King Salman assumed the throne in 2015, his son Prince Muhammad bin Salman has been the driving force behind Saudi domestic and foreign policy, since 2017 as crown prince. While it is incontestable that the young prince has made substantial changes in the kingdom, just how significant and lasting will they be? This talk will explore this question in four areas: economic policy, social policy, regional foreign policy and the politics of the ruling family. F. Gregory Gause, III is Professor and John H. Lindsey '44 Chair of International Affairs at the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A and M University, as well as serving as head of School's Department of International Affairs and as an affiliate faculty member of the School's Albritton Center for Grand Strategy. He was previously on the faculties of the University of Vermont (1995-2014) and Columbia University (1987-1995) and was Fellow for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1993-1994). During the 2009-10 academic year he was Kuwait Foundation Visiting Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. In spring 2009 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the American University in Kuwait. In spring 2010 he was a research fellow at the King Faisal Center for Islamic Studies and Research in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. From 2012 to 2015 he was a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. His research focuses on the international politics of the Middle East, particularly the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf, and American foreign policy toward the region. He has published three books, most recently The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 2010). His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Middle East Journal, Security Studies, Journal of Democracy, Washington Quarterly, National Interest, and in other journals and edited volumes. He received his Ph.D. in political science from Harvard University in 1987 and his B.A. (summa cum laude) from St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia in 1980. He studied Arabic at the American University in Cairo (1982-83) and Middlebury College (1984).

Dalia Fahmy (Long Island University) editor of Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (2017), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series. This talk will address the dictatorship syndrome specifically through the lens of liberalism in Egypt. It will seek to address why a particular denomination of Egyptian liberalism, despite at face value being wholly opposed to dictatorship, ultimately proved susceptible to the allures of the dictatorship syndrome in the aftermath of the events of 2013 in Egypt. Also on the panel is Daanish Faruqi (Duke), editor of Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (2017) Chaired by Dr Usaama Al-Azami (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford) Dr. Dalia Fahmy Bio: Dr. Dalia Fahmy is Associate Professor of Political Science at Long Island University and Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Global Policy in Washington DC. Dr. Fahmy's books: “The Rise and Fall of The Muslim Brotherhood and the Future of Political Islam” (undercontract), and co-edited volumes “Arab Spring: Modernity, Identity and Change,” “Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy,” and “International Relations in a Changing World”, cover her research areas. Daanish Faruqi Bio: Daanish Faruqi is currently a Visiting Scholar at the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights (CGHR) at Rutgers University, and a doctoral candidate (ABD) in History at Duke University. A scholar of Middle Eastern and Islamic history, with a particular emphasis on Islamic political thought, he had previously spent several years in the Arab Middle East as a researcher and journalist, which gave rise to two books, most recently Egypt and the Contradictions of Liberalism: Illiberal Intelligentsia and the Future of Egyptian Democracy (co-edited with Dalia F. Fahmy). His work straddles between classical and contemporary Islamic thought, with a particular emphasis on the Maghrib region on the one hand and on the Levant on the other hand. Most recently his work investigates transnational politically activist strands of Sufi mysticism, tracing their diasporic origins in the colonial Maghrib to their ultimate migration to late-Ottoman Syria, to their most recent role in the 2011 Syrian revolution. A recognized subject matter expert, Faruqi has given talks and symposia on his research at the UCLA Law School, Georgetown University, the National Press Club, and other institutions. Additionally, he is a frequent journalist and commentator on the politics of the Middle East, having published in Al Jazeera English, Foreign Policy, CommonDreams.org, USC-Annenberg/Religion Dispatches, among other media outlets.

Maryam Alemzadeh (Princeton) Siavush Randjbar-Daemi (St Andrews), author of The Quest for Authority in Iran: a history of the presidency from revolution to Rouhani (2017), give a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series. Chaired Professor Edmund Herzig (Faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford) Scholars have shown the dictatorial function of the parallel political system of the Islamic Republic: although the authoritarian office of supreme leadership and the security apparatuses strictly limit the quasi-democratic institutions (i.e. the presidency and the parliament), they avert any criticism of the government’s malfunction to the latter, thereby saving ideological face among dedicated supporters. In this functionalist explanation of the dual system of power, the qualitative difference of the two sides’ working mechanisms goes unnoticed. In this talk I address the organizational dynamics of the nonconventional section of state in Iran, with a special focus on the Islamic Revolutionary Guards. I demonstrate that behind the security apparatus Panopticon and its capillary power lies a “revolutionary” institution—one that tolerates and encourages revolutionary direct action, thereby sustaining a sizable popular base over the years. The popular base is not necessarily brainwashed to serve the state. Rather, I argue, institutions of power keep it committed and interested by authorizing spontaneous, direct action, even though revolutionary times are long passed. Maryam Alemzadeh-Bio Maryam Alemzadeh is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University's Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. She earned her PhD in sociology at the University of Chicago in 2018, and has previously worked as the Grinspoon Junior Research Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University. Maryam is a historical and cultural sociologist of revolutions, state building, and grassroots militias, specializing on Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Based on detailed historical findings, she writes about cultural practices as a sociologist, and about contemporary US-Middle East politics as an Iran expert. Her work has appeared in the British Journal of Middle East Studies and Foreign Affairs, among other places.

Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Dictatorship Syndrome (2019), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford) Alaa Al Aswany is Egypt’s most celebrated novelist and essayist whose books are runaway bestsellers in Arabic and have been translated into more than 30 languages. His second novel, The Yacoubian Building (2002) established Al Aswany as a global literary figure. This was followed by Chicago (2007), The Automobile Club (2013), and most recently, The So-called Republic (2018). A newspaper columnist until he was banned from publishing by the Egyptian government, Al Aswany has published a number of works of non-fiction treating on current affairs, including On the State of Egypt: What Made the Revolution Inevitable (2011), and Democracy is the Answer: Egypt’s Years of Revolution (2015). His most recent book is The Dictatorship Syndrome (2020), where he considers the conditions, signs, symptoms, and cures for what he terms the malady of dictatorship. The study of dictatorship in the West has acquired an almost exotic dimension. But authoritarian regimes remain a painful reality for billions of people worldwide who still live under them, their freedoms violated and their rights abused. They are subject to arbitrary arrest, torture, corruption, ignorance, and injustice. What is the nature of dictatorship? How does it take hold? In what conditions and circumstances is it permitted to thrive? And how do dictators retain power, even when reviled and mocked by those they govern? In this deeply considered and at times provocative short work, Alaa Al Aswany tells us that, as with any disease, to understand the syndrome of dictatorship we must first consider the circumstances of its emergence, along with the symptoms and complications it causes in both the people and the dictator.

Book launch for the new book Palestinian Refugees in International Law by Lex Takkenberg and Francesca Albanese. Lex Takkenberg (Former chief of the Ethics Office at the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees) Francesca Albanese (The Institute for the Study of International Migration (ISIM), Georgetown University) The Palestinian refugee question, resulting from the events surrounding the creation of the state of Israel over seventy years ago, remains one of the largest, most protracted, and most politically fraught refugee questions of the post-WWII era. Numbering over seven million in the Middle East alone, Palestinian refugees’ status varies considerably according to the state or territory ‘hosting’ them, the UN agency assisting them and political circumstances surrounding the Question of Palestine. International law, while being crucial to the protection of these refugees, remains marginal in political discussions concerning their fate. This new book, building on the seminal contribution of the first edition (1998), aims to bring order and logic into a matter which is politically fraught, discussing the legal status of Palestinian refugees in a historical and factual fashion, building on extensive research of international and national legal norms and systems, doctrine and jurisprudence alike. It offers a comprehensive and compelling analysis of various areas of international law (refugee law, human rights law, humanitarian law, the law relating to stateless persons, principles related to internally displaced persons, as well as notions of international criminal law), and probes their relevance to Palestinian refugees. It so manages to be innovative in a field of study where much has been written in either general terms (discussing Palestinian refugees as part of the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict) or specific terms (discussing specific issues pertaining to Palestinian refugees e.g. which UN agency is responsible for them, their right of return and compensation, Palestinian in Lebanon, in Jordan, in Egypt), without any other manuscripts being able to offer the broad picture of Palestinian (refugees’) continuous dispersal and protection issues. The new edition includes: a wealth of information concerning origins, crucial facts and legal tenets of the Palestinian refugee question; an updated analysis of the distinctive regime set up for them, made of a plurality of UN agencies (UNCCP, UNRWA and UNHCR); a rigorous analysis of current interpretations of Article 1D of the 1951 Refugee Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, and the various definitions of Palestinian refugees; a detailed examination of specific rights of these refugees and a the protection regime they are afforded; an innovative framework for solutions, building on important development in the field of refugee law and practice and on a holistic rights-based approach. This book makes for an indispensable reading to anyone willing to get a better understanding of the Palestinian refugee question and its resolution. Being so painstakingly researched, this book is meant to be, for many years to come, the ultimate reference about Palestinian refugees.

Peter Hill (Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne), gives a talk on his new book, Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St. Antony's College, Oxford). Peter is a historian of the modern Middle East, specialising in the intellectual and cultural history of the nineteenth-century Arab world. He is currently Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow in History at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and was previously a Junior Research Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford. His research focusses on political thought and practice, the politics of religion, and translation and intercultural exchanges. He also has a strong interest in comparative and global history. Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda, Peter's first book, is published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. He has also published a number of articles on translation and political thought in the Middle East, in journals such as Past and Present, Journal of Arabic Literature, and Intellectual History Review. Exploring the 'Nahda', a cultural renaissance in the Arab world responding to massive social change, this study presents a crucial and often overlooked part of the Arab world's encounter with global capitalist modernity, an interaction which reshaped the Middle East over the course of the long nineteenth century. Seeing themselves as part of an expanding capitalist civilization, Arab intellectuals approached the changing world of the mid-nineteenth century with confidence and optimism, imagining utopian futures for their own civilizing projects. By analyzing the works of crucial writers of the period, including Butrus al-Bustani and Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, alongside lesser-known figures such as the prolific journalist Khalil al-Khuri and the utopian visionary Fransis Marrash of Aleppo, Peter Hill places these visions within the context of their local class- and state-building projects in Ottoman Syria and Egypt, which themselves formed part of a global age of capital. By illuminating this little-studied early period of the Arab Nahda movement, Hill places the transformation of the Arab region within the context of world history, inviting us to look beyond the well-worn categories of 'traditional' versus 'modern'.

Professor Toby Dodge, LSE, gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre seminar series. Chaired by Dr Toby Matthiesen (St. Antony's College, Oxford). The assassination, on 2 January 2020, of Qasim Sulimani, the Commander of the Quds Force of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the senior commander of Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi and the founder of Kata'ib Hezbollah militia, has thrown Iraqi and wider regional politics into turmoil. However, Iraqi politics were already in a state of tumult with its the major cities in the south and central of the country racked by a large and sustained protest movement. These avowedly secular and nationalist demonstrations called for the overthrow of Iraq's post-2003 system, the Muhasasa Ta'ifiya, and the politically sanctioned corruption at is core. Iraq’s ruling elite first responded by issuing unrealistic promises of further spending and jobs. When this failed, they used overt and covert violence, spearheaded by the militias Muhandis controlled, in an attempt to suppress the movement. In the wake of both the assassinations and the protest movement, the future of Iraqi politics is in the balance. Those who run the militias at the core of Al-Hashd Al-Sha’abi and those that have been demonstrating on the stress of Iraqi cities have radically different visions for Iraq’s future. This talk will investigate the ideological organisation and actions of the major actors in Iraqi politics and where the country maybe heading.

Professor Jonathan Brown, Georgetown University, gives a talk for the Middle East seminar series. Chaired by Dr Usaama al-Azami (St Antony's College). What do we do when our legal system produces results that seem unjust? If we believe that our legal system is itself just, how do we even understand our perception of its unjust outcomes? These are global questions, but ones that have been particularly vexing for Muslims and their tradition of Shariah law. This talk will discuss how Muslims have tackled this issue, in particular when confronted with the challenges of adapting or reforming God's law.

Panel discussion looking at US, Iranian and Iraqi politics after the Qasim Sulemani assassination. Held in Oxford on Monday, 20th January 2020 Speakers:, Maj Gen Felix Gedney (Academic Visitor at St Antony's College), Emma Sky OBE (Yale Jackson Institution), Lt. Gen. Sir Simon Mayall KBE, CB (Middle East Advisor at the Ministry of Defence), Dr Toby Matthiesen (St Antony's College)

Ambassador Wilks CMG (HM British Ambassador to Iraq), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series. Jon Wilks has just finished a two year posting as UK Ambassador to Iraq, his third posting to Iraq since he reopened the Embassy in Baghdad in 2003. He has served 30 years in the UK diplomatic service with a Middle East focus, including Ambassadorial postings to Yemen (10-11) and Oman (14-17). He was also UK Syria Envoy 2012-2014. He is a fluent Arabist and was the first UK Arabic Spokesperson based in the region 2007-2009. He will be taking up a new Ambassadorial appointment in the region next year. His deep interest in Middle East Politics and International Relations led him to take a sabbatical to complete an MA in Middle East Politics at Durham University (99/00) and an MPhil in International Relations at St Antony’s (00/02). He is a previous speaker at the Middle East Centre having shared his reflections with us on his posting to Yemen in 2011 and his Syria responsibilities in 2014.

Professor Walter Armbrust (St. Antony's College, Oxford) gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre seminar series. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St. Antony's College, Oxford). Dr Walter Armbrust is Hourani Fellow and Associate Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, politics and mass media in Egypt. He is editor of Mass Mediations: New Approaches to Popular Culture in the Middle East and Beyond (2000).

Dr Dorthe Engelcke (Max Planck Institute, Hamburg) gives a discussion Chair: Dr Michael Willis (St Antony's College). Family law – the law regulating marriage, divorce, custody, polygyny and guardianship among others - is one of the most sensitive areas in Muslim-majority countries. Morocco and Jordan both issued new family codes in the 2000s, but there are a number of differences in the ways these two states engaged in reform. These include how the reform was carried out, the content of the new family codes, and the way the new laws are applied. In Morocco, the process of reform became less dominated by actors who had received religious training, whereas in Jordan the da'irat qadi al-qudat, the shariʿa court administration, retook control over family law reform. In Morocco it was King Muhammad VI who took the lead. By contrast, in Jordan King Abdullah II was largely absent from the reform process. The 2004 Moroccan code proclaims international law as one of its sources, whereas the preamble of the Jordanian 2010 law states that the law is based entirely on Islamic sources. Whereas international actors like UN Women were engaged in the implementation of the 2004 family code in Morocco, they did not play a similar role in Jordan. This talk investigates why similar states varied in their engagement with family law reform. It demonstrates that the structure of the legal systems, shaped by colonial policies, had an effect on how reform processes were carried out, and on the content and the application of the law. The talk draws attention to why and how certain inequalities have developed over time and how they impact on women’s and children’s rights today.

Roundtable discussion looking at the Algerian protests. With Michael Willis (St Antony’s College), James McDougall (Trinity College), Hicham Yezza (Ceasefire Magazine) and Latefa Guemar (University of East London). Since late February, millions of Algerians have been taking to the streets of towns and cities across the country in massive, peaceful, weekly demonstrations. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whose projected candidacy for a fifth term of office sparked the protests, has resigned. Two former Prime Ministers have been referred to the Supreme Court on corruption charges, several of the country’s most prominent businessmen close to Bouteflika’s circle have been arrested, and the last two chiefs of the internal security services are in jail. New presidential elections that were to be managed by a caretaker government have been cancelled in the face of popular pressure. This round table will be an opportunity to discuss these extraordinary, ongoing events, their origins and possible outcomes. Speakers: Michael Willis (St Antony’s College), James McDougall (Trinity College), Hicham Yezza (Ceasefire Magazine), Latefa Guemar (University of East London).

Dr Saeb Erekat (Secretary General of the Palestine Liberation Organization) gives the 2019 George Anronius Memorial Lecture. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College).

Armando Salvatore (McGill University) gives a talk as part of the following conference: Neither Near Nor Far: Encounters and Exchanges between Japan and the Middle East. The lecture investigates the contribution to the study of Islam by a non-Muslim, yet non-Western and non-Eurocentric personality, the Japanese linguist and philosopher Toshihiko Izutsu (1914-1993). It traces Izutsu's original trajectory from his early practice of Zen Buddhism, through his discovery of the religious fervour of Greek philosophers, to his exploration of the spiritual and intellectual powerhouse represented by Islam as enacting a historical culmination of prophetic speech. It shows how this powerhouse represented for Izutsu a veritable Middle-Earth bridging Western (Abrahamic) and Eastern cultural and religious traditions and making obsolete the rigid geo-cultural divide on which their mutual radical divergence was premised. The lecture reflects on how the work of Izutsu has become a game changer in a variety of locales thanks to his power to help breaking through an increasingly suffocating short-circuit: the obsessive face-to-face between Western and Islamic views, between Euro-American academia and the Middle East, leading to an inconclusive and circular game of irenic openings and deep-sited conflicts. This unique development underscores the possibility for a scholar of the calibre of Izutsu to redesign the global intellectual map of the study of Islam also by relying on obvious failures and fissures in the Western monopoly of knowledge on the Middle East. By doing so, he contributed to institute vital, direct, and mutually enlivening scholarly connections between Japan and the Middle East.

Yael Zerubavel (Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies and History, Rutgers University) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre, chaired by Professor Yaacov Yadgar (Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, St Anne's). At once an ecological phenomenon and a cultural construction, the desert has varied associations in Zionist and Israeli culture. Yael Zerubavel tells the story of the desert from the early twentieth century to the present, shedding light on romantic-mythical associations, settlement and security concerns, environmental sympathies, and the commodifying tourist gaze. Drawing on literary narratives, educational texts, newspaper articles, tourist materials, films, popular songs, posters, photographs, and cartoons, Zerubavel reveals the complexities and contradictions that mark Israeli society’s semiotics of space in relation to the Middle East, and the central role of the “besieged island” trope in Israeli culture and politics. The talk draws on the new book published by Stanford University Press (2019).

The seminar will consider the Iraq Inquiry’s origins, terms of reference, mode of operation, and issues which arose in the course of its work, in framing its conclusions, and on its publication and reception.

Professor Benny Morris and Professor Dror Ze'evi give a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre seminar series. Chaired by Dr Laurent Mignon (St Antony's College). Morris and Ze'evi will talk about the destruction of the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian communities of Asia Minor - some 4-5 million people - during the reigns of Abdulhamid II, the Young Turks and Ataturk, 1894-1924. Most were dispossessed and exiled and some 2 million were murdered in three massive bouts of violence. The mass murder, in each bout, was accompanied by mass rape and abduction of girls, women and children into Muslim households, and mass conversion. They will describe the process and its causes and results. Professor Benny Morris was born in Kibbutz Ein Hahoresh in 1948 and brought up in Israel and New York. After IDF service, he did a BA at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a PhD - both in modern European history - at Cambridge University. Thereafter, he worked as a journalist at The Jerusalem Post and subsequently, between 1997 and 2017, as a professor of history at Ben-Gurion University, Israel. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard University, Dartmouth College, LMU in Munich, and the University of Maryland and among his books are The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949 (1988); Israel's Border Wars, 1949-1956 (1993); Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict 1882-1999 (1999); 1948, A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008); and, impending, jointly authored with Dror Ze'evi, The Thirty-Year Genocide, Turkey's Destruction of its Christian Minorities 1894-1924 (2019). He has published articles in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Telegraph, Corriere della Sera, Die Welt, Haaretz, etc. Professor Dror Ze'evi received his Ph.D. from Tel Aviv University in 1992, and after Post-doctoral studies at Princeton joined the faculty at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, where he teaches Middle Eastern Studies, with an emphasis on modern and early modern cultural history. His book, An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s, (Ithaca, SUNY Press 1996) is a portrait of a Palestinian society in the early modern period, which was soon translated into Hebrew and Turkish. Producing Desire: Changing Sexual Discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900 (University of California Press, 2006), is a study of the shifts in sexual outlook in the region, on the eve of modernity. A Turkish Translation was published subsequently. An edited volume (with Ehud Toledano), Society, Law and Culture in the Middle East: “Modernities” in the Making, was published in 2015 by De Gruyter, and his current research (with Benny Morris) has resulted in the volume The Thirty Years of Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of its Christian Minorities, (Harvard University Press, with an Italian translation by Rizzoli). Zeevi founded the Department of Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University and served as its first chair until 1998 (and once again from 2002 to 2004). He was among the founders of the Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy in 1997, and it's first chair, until 2002. In 2009 he was elected President of The Middle East and Islamic Studies Association of Israel (MEISAI), and in 2015 appointed Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Studies. During his career he was invited to work and lecture at many universities and research centers abroad. Among others, he was senior visiting fellow at Brandeis University and Skidmore College in the U.S. and at Koc and Sabanci Universities in Turkey. From the mid 1990s to this day Zeevi participates in a series of "track-2" meetings with Palestinian delegations, and at the end of a recent round of talks hosted by Sweden, participated in writing One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States (Mossberg and Levine eds. Berkeley, 2015). He is among the founders of the Forum for Regional Thinking, engaged in presenting deeper and more accurate portrayal of the Middle East to the Israeli public, and publishes regularly in Israeli journals and websites, including Haaretz, Yediot, Ynet, and Wallah.

Panel discussion on the Republic of Sudan. Joint event with The Sudanese Programme, held in St Antony's College on May 3rd 2019. Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi (Research Fellow, St Antony's College, Trustee of the Sudanese Programme), Dr Sara Abdelgalil (Paediatric Consultant, President of Sudan Doctors' Union UK), Dr Richard Barltrop (Consultant and researcher on the two Sudans, Trustee of the Sudanese Programme) About the speakers: Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi is a Research Fellow and, since 2002 co-Founder of The Sudanese Programme. He is a social anthropologist whose research interests are economic and social development, sectarian politics, social differentiations, popular culture and oral tradition. He has undertaken extensive anthropological research in northern Sudan. Selected Publications: Among his publications are: Wisdom from the Nile (with F.C.T. Moore), The Oxford Library of African Literature, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978; La Republique du Soudan, Berger- Levrault, Paris, 1979; Islam in the Modern World (co-editor with D. MacEoin), Croom Helm, 1983; Themes from Northern Sudan, Ithaca Press, 1986; The Arab House (co-editor with A. D. C. Hyland), University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1986; The Diversity of the Muslim Community: Anthropological Essays in Memory of Peter Lienhardt (editor), Ithaca Press, 1987; Disorientations: A society in Flux. Kuwait in the 1950s by Peter Lienhardt (editor), Ithaca Press, 1991; A Special Issue:Al-Tayyib Salih, Seventy Candles, Edebiyart: The Journal of Middle Eastern Literature, (co-editor with Ami Elad-Bouskila) 1991; Shaikhdoms of Eastern Arabia by Peter Lienhardt (editor), Palgrave/St. Antony's College Series, 2001; Middle East and North African Immigrants in Europe (co-editor with Richard Lawless), Routledge, 2005; Sudan: A Long Transition into Two States (editors: Ahmed Al-Shahi and Bona Malwal), published (in collaboration with the Sudanese Programme, St Antony’s College) by M.O. Beshir Centre for Sudanese Studies, Omdurman Ahlia University, Omdurman, Sudan, 2013; and Hikma min Al-Nil (Wisdom from the Nile) (editor with F.C.T.Moore), Abdel Karim Mirghani Centre, Omdurman, Sudan, 2017. His most recent publication are: Women Writers of the Two Sudans (2019, co-edited with Laurent Mignon) and Wisdom from the Desert (2019) in collaboration with FCT Moore. Sara Ibrahim Abdelgalil is a consultant paediatrician who is interested in international child health and development. She graduated from university of Khartoum in 1998 with Kitchener’ and Albagdadi’s prizes - best academic performance. While in Sudan she worked alongside other colleagues to establish an organisation that supports children with disadvantaged backgrounds e.g. orphans and street children. Sara moved to the United Kingdom to achieve her dreams in better training and medical practice. She campaigned for women and children rights as well as for human rights violations in particular in relation to health services. She obtained her masters and diploma degrees at Liverpool school of tropical medicine in tropical child health with an award and distinction - John Hey prize. Sara completed her paediatric training in the U.K. and has the fellowship of the royal college of Paediatrics and child health. Working among Sudanese diaspora in different societies and groups she promoted the activation and return of legitimate professionals unions back home. This campaign included Sudanese university graduates. Her role in the Sudan Doctors’ Union U.K. extended from establishing links with other Sudanese professionals in U.K. to working in epidemic campaigns in Sudan. As the president of SDU U.K. she is leading her organisation to support democratic change in Sudan and contribute to rebuilding of new Sudan. SDU U.K. raised concerns in regards to human rights violations against peaceful protestors in Sudan. Richard Barltrop is a consultant specialising in work on conflict, development and peace in the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa. Since 2001 he has worked for the United Nations Development Programme in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan and Yemen. He has worked for the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, and for the UK Stabilisation Unit in Iraq and on Syria peace talks. He has also worked as a consultant on conflict resolution and peacebuilding for the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, International Alert, and the EU. Richard has a DPhil in International Relations, an MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies, and a BA in Classics from the University of Oxford. He is the author of Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan (IB Tauris, 2011), and was a visiting fellow at Durham University in 2015.

Andrew Arsan (University of Cambridge) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre. Chaired by Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College).

Zep Kalb (UCLA) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre. Chaired by Yassamine Mather.

Dr Imane Chaara (QEH Oxford), Dr Doris Gray (Al Akhawayn University), Dr Nadia Sonneveld (Radboud University) take part in a discussion at the Middle East Studies centre. Chair by Michael Willis (St Antony's College). About the speakers: Dr. Imane Chaara (QEH Oxford) Title: Moroccan Mothers' Religiosity. Impact on Daughters' Education Abstract: The participation of mothers in decisions within their household has non-neutral effects and in many instances positive impacts, especially on children’s health and education. In this chapter, I focus on the participation of women in decisions concerning girls’ education, and I investigate whether mothers’ religiosity could be related to their involvement in education decisions. By analysing data I collected in Morocco in 2008, I found a positive and significant correlation between the intensity of religious practice of the mothers and their participation in decisions concerning their daughters’ education. This result is driven by women with limited or no formal education, which suggests that religion acts as a factor that compensates for the lack of education. I use qualitative information to explore one potential mechanism and question whether religion could play the same role as education regarding consciousness-raising about the importance of children’s education and self-valuation of women with respect to their capacity to play a key role within their household. I argue that, in the context of Morocco, the existence of a religious movement that is socially influential may drive the empirical results. Dr Imane Chaara is a micro-economist and Research Associate at the Oxford Department of International Development, where she was Departmental Lecturer in Development Economics between October 2012 and September 2017. Her research focuses on institutional transformations in developing countries, legal reforms and the change of social norms, access to justice and rule of law, gender issues and women’s rights, as well as intra-household decision-making. Her research investigates, among others, the role of legal reforms in confronting unfair customs and social norms, the impact of religious identity on people’s behaviour, and the interplay between justice systems (state formal and customary institutions). More recently, she contributed to the Refugee Studies Centre project “Refugee Economies” and she did research on the economic strategies developed by refugees in Eastern Africa. Her work is both theoretical and empirical, mostly using first-hand original data. Dr. Doris H. Gray Title: Women and Social Change in North Africa: What Counts as Revolutionary? Abstract: This presentation asks what social change – in women’s rights, religion, migration, and law – is, and when it counts as revolutionary. We argue that a highly contextual approach is needed to capture changes that are not always immediately visible, but which nevertheless contribute to human development. We discuss the cross-cultural collaboration that resulted in this book and present one chapter that illustrates the point of social change where least expected: “Moroccan Mother's Religiosity: Impact on Daughter's Education.” Dr. Doris H. Gray directs the Hillary Clinton Center for Women’s Empowerment at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco where she also serves as Associate Professor of Gender Studies. Her latest publication with the International Center of Transitional Justice in New York is entitled “Who hears my voice today? Indirect Women Victims in Tunisia.” She has published three books: “Women and Social Change in North Africa: What counts as Revolutionary?”, “Beyond Feminism and Islamism: Gender and Equality in North Africa” and “Muslim Women on the Move: Moroccan Women and French Women of Moroccan Origin Speak Out”. Before becoming an Academic, she worked as a journalist, 12 years as foreign correspondent first in South Africa and then Kenya. Dr. Nadia Sonneveld Title: Women and Social Change in North Africa: What is Social Change? Abstract: This presentation asks what social change – in women’s rights, religion, migration, and law – is, and when it counts as revolutionary. We argue that a highly contextual approach is needed to capture changes that are not always immediately visible, but which nevertheless contribute to human development. Dr. Nadia Sonneveld has an academic background in anthropology, Arabic, and law. She is affiliated to the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Society, Leiden University, the Netherlands. The common factor in all her research activities is the focus on gender and law in Muslim-majority countries, particularly in Egypt and Morocco. In her new research project (“Living on the Other Side: A Multidisciplinary Analysis of Migration and Family Law”) she focuses on the rights of migrants in Morocco, and North Africa, both in the books and in practice. Previously, she was a guest scholar at the School of Oriental Studies (SOAS) in London, and Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. She authored Khul‘ Divorce in Egypt: Public Debates, Judicial Practices, and Everyday Life (2012), and has co-authored Women Judges in the Muslim World: A Comparative Study of Discourse and Practice, with Monika Lindbekk (2017) and Women and Social Change in North Africa: What Counts as Revolutionary?, with Doris Gray (2018).

Middle East Centre seminar with Touraj Atabaki (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam), Stephanie Cronin (Oxford University, Siavush Randjbar Daemi (University of St Andrews). Chaired by Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi (University of Oxford) Paper titles and abstracts: Stephanie Cronin (University of Oxford) - The Global 1970s and the Iranian Revolution. The Iranian revolution of 1977-79 has usually been analysed within the confines of national history. This talk rather places both the revolution itself, and the new regime which eventually emerged from it, in their global contexts and historical periods. Beginning with some comments on the nature of revolutions in general, the talk then locates the Iranian revolution in the context of the 'Red Decade' of the 1970s, and the formation of the Islamic republic in the succeeding global period - one of neo-liberalism, authoritarianism and social conservatism. Siavush Randjbar​ Daemi (University of St Andrews) - Bystanders or Participants? The Non-Clerical opposition to the Shah in 1977-1979​ ​ Most scholarly accounts of the Iranian Revolution have focused on the role and agency of the clergy led by Ayatollah Khomeini and its close lay allies. This talk will provide an overview instead of the initiatives and agency of the non-clerical opposition to the Shah from the start of Jimmy-Kerasi in 1977 to the victory of the Revolution. It will note the non-clerical opposition’s role in the initial stages of the revolt against the monarchical regime, as well as the unfruitful attempts by the Shah to bring one of its main components, the National Front, into government. Touraj Atabaki (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam) - Was the Iranian Revolution (1978-1979) Inevitable?

Rory McCarthy (Magdalen College, Oxford) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series, chaired by Michael Willis (St Antony's College). In the wake of the Arab uprisings, the Tunisian Islamist movement al-Nahda voted to transform itself into a political party that would for the first time withdraw from a preaching project built around religious, social, and cultural activism. This turn to the political was not a Tunisian exception but reflects an urgent debate within Islamist movements as they struggle to adjust to a rapidly changing political environment. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, Rory McCarthy explores the lived experience of Islamist activism to offer a challenging new perspective on one of the Middle East's most successful Islamist projects. Original evidence explains how al-Nahda survived two decades of brutal repression in prison and in social exclusion, and reveals what price the movement paid for a new strategy of pragmatism and reform during the transition away from authoritarianism.

Dr Ozlem Belcim Galip (Marie Sklodowska Curie Fellow, The School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series, chaired by Marilyn Booth (Magdalen College). A movement is observable that sees Kurdish migrant women moving from oppression within a traditional, patriarchal society; ethnic oppression; and being stuck between secularism and Islam, to exhibiting a liberated agency that challenges the monolithic perspectives of social power. The aesthetic and intellectual production of Kurdish migrant women, which leads to the empowerment of women and advancement of gender equality in the Kurdish diaspora, has not been the subject of any notable research yet. By going beyond stereotypical portrayals of Kurdish women either reflected as a victim of honour-based violence or someone who suffers war or violent conflict in any Kurdish region, my presentation titled 'From Kurdistan to Europe: Kurdish Literary, Artistic and Cultural Activism by Kurdish Women Intellectuals' examines the activism of Kurdish migrant women in selected host European countries (France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and the UK) in terms of artistic, literary and cultural practices in both the language(s) of the host countries and women's native Kurdish languages. The goal of this presentation is first to reveal the changing dynamics within Kurdish migrant women's mobilization along with their cultural engagements in the selected European states, secondly to examine the integration policies of the selected European countries within a comparative approach, and thirdly to investigate transnational networking and dynamics between Kurdish migrant women (labour migrants/refugees) in Europe, the agents of cultural production in their home countries (Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey) and other European countries.

Dr Abbas Kadhim (Atlantic Council) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series, charied by Toby Matthiesen (St Antony's College). Dr. Abbas Kadhim leads the Atlantic Council Iraq Initiative. He is an Iraq expert and author of Reclaiming Iraq: The 1920 Revolution and the Founding of the Modern State. He earned a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. The subject of his dissertation was Shia political theology in Baghdad in the 5th A.H./11th C.E. century. Most recently, he was a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. He was formerly an assistant professor of Islamic and Middle East studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California and a visiting assistant professor at Stanford University. He also previously held a senior government affairs position at the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, DC. His books include Governance in the Middle East and North Africa and The Hawza Under Siege: Studies in the Ba’th Party Archive.

Relli Shechter (St Antony’s College) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre, on 29th January 2019. During the 1970s and early 1980s, Egypt experienced swift economic growth-the result of a regional oil boom. Oddly, this economic growth hardly registered in Egyptian public discourse, which continuously claimed that the country was experiencing multiple economic crises that became social and cultural crises, as well. In my lecture, and based on a recently published book, I investigate this discrepancy. I document the massive socio-economic mobility in Egypt by analysing relevant statistical data and ethnographic evidence, indicating the changes in the employment structure and the spread of mass consumption. I later examine a wide array of cultural resources, such as Egyptian academic writing, the press, the cinema and the literature, in which critics lamented 'what went wrong' in Egypt. The narrative suggested here offers a local version of a wider, Middle Eastern and international story-the global formation of middle-class societies, whose members strive for respectable lives with only partial success.

Nick Westcott (Director Royal African Society and Associate at SOAS) gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre on 1st February 2019. Chaired by Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College). Since the Lisbon Treaty came into force in 2011 and the European Union pledged to reinforce its foreign policy cooperation, it has struggled to articulate and implement a policy on the Middle East which effectively protects and furthers its interests in the region. It responded swiftly but not very successfully to the Arab Spring; it played a supporting role in the fight against Islamic terrorism, and championed the Iran nuclear deal; but otherwise became a bystander in the growing conflicts in the region; it tried hard to maintain stability and add some momentum in the Israel-Palestine peace process; but it became increasingly obsessed after 2015 with the challenge of migration from and through the region. The paper assesses why it has struggled to formulate a policy, what it has managed to achieve nonetheless, how national and European policies have interacted, why it is increasingly important for the EU to have a coherent policy on the region, and makes proposals for what that policy should be and how it could be made effective. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Joost Hiltermann (International Crisis Group), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre Friday Seminar Series on 25th January 2019. Professor Eugene Rogan chairs. In many places in the Middle East, and in various ways, the region’s people continue to thrive: in business, art, music and other fields. Yet Middle Eastern states are undergoing a profound social and political transformation in the aftermath of the Arab uprisings and the civil wars these sprouted. The region has seen the collapse of state systems and, in some cases, the return of inherently brittle 'fierce' states, while others are merely trying to stay afloat. Never coherent as a cultural, much less a political, entity, the region is coming apart at the seams. External actors, in Europe and elsewhere, are substantially affected by what is happening. But is there a role for these actors in halting and even reversing the downward slide, given the enormity of the challenge and a history of destructive external intervention? And if so, how should they go about doing so?

Karl Sharro (architect, satirist and Middle East commentator), gives a seminar for the Middle East Studies Centre. Chaired by Walter Armbrust (St Antony's College). The Middle East is the mysterious land of veils, minarets and Orientalist cliches. Karl Sharro, aka Karl reMarks, talks about his seven 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. The talk is titled after his recent book which was published in July by Saqi Books in London. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Panel discussion with Harith Hasan (Central European University), Hayder al-Khoei (University of Exeter), Renad Mansour (Chatham House) and chaired by Toby Matthiesen (St Antony's College). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Dr Kamiar Alaei (Co-president, Institute for International Health and Education), gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre. Chaired by Dr Nazila Ghanea (Associate Professor in International Human Rights Law, Department for Continuing Education). Dr Kamiar Alaei's academic, medical and international public health project work has all navigated the art of advancing health (and later, also educational) concerns in conservative settings. When patients are condemned for having certain conditions in societies in which they are stigmatised, how can a step-by-step medical and humanitarian approach help in advancing responses and conditions? The record of Kamiar and Arash’s research and practice illustrates dramatic official u-turns in the provision of services for patients living with HIV/AIDS, STIs and IDUs in Iran and beyond. They broke down intransigent resistance in acknowledging the existence of such patients from government authorities, religious authorities and the wider public. This pioneering methodology that they have utilised is one that crafts a pragmatic way forward from the conservative realities on the ground towards internationally agreed human rights standards. As such, its implications go beyond the experience they themselves have gained and documented in Iran, the Middle East and Central Asia, and can be applied in relation to other cultural obstacles to the advancement of health for disadvantaged populations in different contexts. This paper will both outline that record and share academic work in progress regarding the provision of related health services for women in a number of Middle Eastern contexts. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Professor Edmund Burke III (UC Santa Cruz) gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre. Who was Marshall Hodgson and should he have a claim on our attention today? In a moment of populist nationalisms and deepening Islamophobia, Hodgson’s humanistic vision is once again of interest. Primarily known as the author of the innovative three volume textbook, The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization (Chicago, 1974), Hodgson proposes a vision of the unfolding of Islam that seeks to elude civilizationist essentialisms by inserting Islamic history into the larger history of humanity. Essays in Islam and World History: The Ventures of Marshall Hodgson (Chicago 2018) provide the first critical reassessment of his life and work, while grounding it in the post-World War II efforts by global scholars to devise a new framework for a new post-colonial world. Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Dr Christian C Sahner (Associate Professor of Islamic History, Faculty of Oriental Studies), talks about his new book, the discussants are Phil Booth (Faculty of Theology) and Professor Julia Bray (Oriental Institute). Chaired by Professor Bryan Ward-Perkins (Faculty History, Oxford). How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity, high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet, and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. Sahner argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. Christian Martyrs under Islam examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim-Christian relations in the centuries to come (Princeton University Press). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

Dr Seth Anziska (Mohamed S. Farsi-Polonsky Lecturer in Jewish-Muslim Relations, University College London), gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre. Based on newly declassified international sources, Preventing Palestine charts the emergence of the Middle East peace process, including the establishment of a separate track to deal with the issue of Palestine. At the very start of this process, Anziska argues, Egyptian-Israeli peace came at the expense of the sovereignty of the Palestinians, whose aspirations for a homeland alongside Israel faced crippling challenges. With the introduction of the idea of restrictive autonomy, Israeli settlement expansion, and Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, the chances for Palestinian statehood narrowed even further. The first Intifada in 1987 and the end of the Cold War brought new opportunities for a Palestinian state, but many players, refusing to see Palestinians as a nation or a people, continued to steer international diplomacy away from their cause (Princeton University Press). Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/