Afleveringen
-
The LSE Middle East Centre hosted the launch of Shabnam Holliday's new book, Sovereignty in Iran: Challenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic. This multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary collaborative project examines sovereignty as a plural concept through the case of Iran, challenging Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The discussion explored the book's examination of sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic, including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
-
The LSE Middle East Centre hosted a Kuwait Programme panel discussion highlighting recent education policy issues and trajectories in Kuwait and globally, with a focus on the role of policy in shaping current and future priorities of education. The panel discussed Kuwait’s policy challenges and changes in the broader context of global education policies and the neoliberal order. The panel also focused on the recent geopolitical crisis in the Gulf and the response of Kuwait’s education system.
Meet our speakers
Dr. Fatimah Alhashem is an assistant professor at the Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST). and chair for the Center of Teaching, Learning, and Research (CTLR) from 2018 till 2021. She received a doctoral degree in curriculum and instruction in science education from Arizona State University. She worked as general manager for the teacher development department at the National Center for Education Development (NCED) from 2015 until 2018. She is a strong advocate for supporting teachers in general and supporting women in science education in specific. She is involved in different projects that serve the education system mainly clustered around teachers’ development. She led many educational projects as a consultant in (UNDP, UNESCO & KFAS).
Ibrahim Alhouti (PhD) is an Assistant Professor of the comparative politics of education at Kuwait University and a non-resident fellow at Gulf International Forum in Washington, DC. He obtained his PhD from University College London's Institute of Education, where his thesis explored the politics of reforming the education system in the Arab Gulf region, and holds two master’s degrees on Leadership and Comparative Education, both from University College London's Institute of Education. He also serves as a consultant for a number of educational institutions in the Gulf. Alhouti has published several research studies about education and education reforms in the region. His research interest encompasses the politics of education, education reforms, comparative education, and education policies.
Dr. Sonia Exley is an Associate Professor in the LSE Department of Social Policy. She is Programme Director for the MSc in International Social and Public Policy, and teaches on a range of postgraduate and undergraduate courses. Sonia’s specialist area of research is education policy. She has a particular interest in the marketisation and privatisation of education systems across the world. Sonia has published in a wide range of education and social policy journals. She holds a DPhil in Social Policy from Oxford University (Nuffield College). Prior to joining LSE, she was a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the (now UCL) Institute of Education in London.
Meet our chair
Dr Nidal Al Haj Sleiman is the Kuwait Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre. She is a sociologist of education policy, leadership and international education. Her work generally draws on theories of policy sociology, social and cultural justice, critical pedagogy and transformative learning, particularly in West Asia: Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Lebanon and Palestine. Her publications broadly address interconnection of policy, leadership and society, the sociology of international education, the political economy of education, post-colonial and settler-colonial theory in education. Nidal is also a co-founder of the SWANA Forum for Social Justice, a UCL alumni- and student-led community. Prior to her research career, Nidal worked as teacher and a school leader in Lebanon and Qatar, in public and international education settings. -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
-
The LSE Middle East Centre hosted the launch of 'Turkey and the Liberal International Order', a new book examining Turkey’s complex and evolving relationship with the liberal international order from the end of the First World War to the present day.
The book explores how Turkey, as a middle power, responded to major global transformations following the First World War, the Second World War and the Cold War by appealing to the dominant principles of liberal internationalism. At the same time, it shows how Turkish political movements and foreign policy actors reinterpreted and challenged these principles, shaping how the liberal international order was understood and implemented in the Turkish context. Drawing on parliamentary records and the writings of key political figures, the book offers a rich historical account of how successive generations of policymakers understood Turkey’s national interest, its place in the international order and its role on the global stage.
Meet our speakers
Marc Sinan Winrow is a Teaching Fellow at SOAS, teaching the International Relations of the Middle East and Risk and Policy Analysis, and he is also a Research Assistant at LSE. He completed his PhD in the Department of International Relations of the LSE. The topic of this talk is based on his first published book, Turkey and the Liberal International Order, published by Agenda in 2025. His research continues to be concentrated on different (post-) liberal conceptions of international order, geopolitics and the history and theory of sovereignty in International Relations, with a focus on Turkey and the southeast European, Eastern Mediterranean and the MENA region.
Ayla Göl is Course Lead in Politics and International Relations, and a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the School of Humanities, York St John University, UK. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where she had an early career position at the Department of International Relations. She is the author of Turkey Facing East: Islam, Modernity and Foreign Policy (Manchester University Press) and numerous articles in journals such as Nations and Nationalism, Third World Quarterly, Information and Education Technologies, the Global Discourse and International Affairs, as well as book chapters on Turkey, the Middle East and international relations.
Senem Aydın-Düzgit is a Professor of International Relations at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabancı University and the Director of the Istanbul Policy Center. She is also a non-resident fellow at the Institute for European Policymaking at Bocconi University. In 2024-2025, she was based at the Harvard Kennedy School as the Pierre Keller Visiting Professor of Public Policy, and in 2023-2024, she was a Richard von Weizsacker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Her main research interests include identity, history, and discourse in the study of international politics, with an empirical focus on European and Turkish foreign policies; and more recently, the nexus between domestic and foreign policies of middle powers in the changing international order.
Meet our Chair
Katerina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. She held a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust between 2021 and 2024. The project findings will shortly be published as a book monograph by Cambridge University Press, under the title Islamic International Thought in Turkey: History, Civilisation and Nation. -
As part of the British Academy Conference 'Algeria: Historical Struggles and Imagined Utopias' organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Centre for Peace and Security, Coventry University.
A fascinating conversation between Abderrahmane Hadj Nacer, former Governor of the Bank of Algeria, and Francis Ghiles, former journalist with the Financial Times and BBC World Service, on the historical challenges and reforms from the 1980s to contemporary Algeria.
Une riche conversation entre Abderrahmane Hadj Nacer, ancien gouverneur de la Banque d'Algérie, et Francis Ghiles, ancien journaliste du Financial Times et de la BBC World Service, sur les défis historiques et les réformes de l'Algérie des années 1980 à nos jours. -
Professor Zahia Smail Salhi is Chair of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Manchester since 2013 and Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Science at Sharjah University for the last three years. She specialises in Arabic literature, culture as well as women and gender in the Middle East and North Africa.
Her Keynote talk “Algeria and the Anxiety of Decolonisation: Case Studies in Language and Gender” takes us from the traumas of colonialism and the War of Independence to the challenges of decolonisation of both colonised and colonizer. She focuses in on questions of language and culture in newly independent Algeria, before moving on to her recent research into the role of women. Drawing on their historical legacy as resistance fighters, and Fanon’s work on the malleability of the veil, Zahia explores contemporary roles where women contest and affirm their place in the constantly shifting social environment of Algeria, via processes of ‘a quiet’ and ‘soft altering’ of social reality that subverts patriarchal power. -
This plenary session, delivered as part of the 2026 Kurdish Studies Conference by Marlene Schäfers, University of Utrecht and Kurdish Studies Journal and Welat Zeydanlıoğlu, Kurdish Studies Network, was a conversation about the state of Kurdish Studies as a scholarly field. The session was moderated by Veli Yadirgi.
Marlene Schäfers is associate professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the impact of state violence on intimate and gendered lives, voice and memory, and the politics of death and the afterlife.
She specializes in the anthropology of the Kurdish regions and modern Turkey. Her first monograph, Voices that Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey (University of Chicago Press, 2022), is based on long-term ethnographic research with Kurdish female singers and poets and sets out to theorise the voice as an object of aspiration, resistance, and cooptation. It was awarded the annual Book Prize of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association in 2024.
Welat Zeydanlıoğlu is the founder and coordinator of the Kurdish Studies Network(KSN), a global academic research network. He is also the founder of Kurdish Studies, an international, peer-reviewed academic journal. He was the managing editor of the journal between 2013-2022. He is known for his work in the field of Kurdish studies, particularly regarding the Kurdish question in Turkey.
For more information about the Kurdish Studies Conference, follow this link: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middleeastcentre/news/kurdish-studies-conference-2026 -
The LSE Middle East Centre hosted the launch of Richard Barltrop’s paper, 'Sudan’s Current War: A Longer View on Peacemaking and Prospects'.
This hybrid event launched a new paper examining the ongoing war in Sudan, which broke out in 2023. Drawing on lessons from the history of peacemaking in Sudan and comparative insights from other civil wars, the paper reflects on pathways toward ending the conflict, including the urgency of de-escalation, the need for sustained, long-term peacebuilding efforts, and the importance of Sudanese leadership and ownership in shaping a durable peace process. Richard will be joined by discussants Raga Makawi and Abdel Salam Sidahmad, and the event will be chaired by LSE's Laura Mann.
Meet our speakers
Richard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre researching contemporary approaches to peacemaking and peace processes. He has worked for the UN in the Middle East, North Africa and the Horn of Africa and is the author of Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan (IB Tauris, 2011).
Abdel Salam Sidahmed is Chairperson of the Sudanese HR Monitor (SHRM) and an academic and human rights specialist with a PhD in Political Science. He previously served as Senior Human Rights Advisor to the Sudanese Prime Minister and Minister of Justice during the transitional government (2020–2021). Dr. Sidahmed brings over two decades of international human rights experience, including nine years with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, where he served as Regional Representative for the Middle East (2013–2021). Prior to that, he spent ten years at Amnesty International (1995–2005) as a Researcher and later Program Director for the Middle East and North Africa. In academia, he served as Associate Professor of International Relations at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada (2005–2011).
Raga Makawi is a Sudanese British researcher on Sudan's civic politics and social movements at the London School of Economics. She is the ex Editor at African Arguments curating topical themes on the Sudan's, the larger Horn and the general political and social affairs of the continent at large. She is co-author of the book Sudan's Unfinished Democracy: The Promise and Betrayal of a People's Revolution and is currently working on a number of publications in edited volumes including; the sudanese revolution and authoritarianism, the sudanese social movement contribution to security sector reform and new civic formations and the future of peace politics and political settlements in Sudan.
Meet our chair
Laura Mann is a sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda) but she has also worked on collaborative research on ICTs and BPO in Asia and has conducted fieldwork in North America as part of a project on digitisation within global agriculture. -
This webinar examines perceptions of social protection and conflict prevention in Lebanon and Jordan among policymakers and household recipients of state-provided cash transfers.
Drawing on extensive qualitative fieldwork conducted between October 2022 and March 2024, Rana Jawad explores how global policy frameworks such as the Grand Bargain and the Humanitarian-Development-Peace (Triple Nexus) intersect with domestic social policy systems in conflict-affected low- and middle-income countries in the Middle East. The talk will highlight two key arguments: first, the narrowing of social policy towards targeted cash transfers and employment-based social insurance in contexts marked by high unemployment, informality, and reliance on foreign aid; and second, a mismatch between the preventive ambitions of the Triple Nexus framework and the actual scope of social policy in Lebanon and Jordan. The discussion will reflect on what meaningful ‘prevention’ might look like when social policy addresses the structural drivers of poverty, inequality, and limited employment opportunities.
Meet our speaker and chair
Rana Jawad is a Professor of Global Social Policy in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at the University of Birmingham. She specialises in the social policies and welfare systems of the Middle East and North Africa region, focusing on broad questions about institutional and political change, programme design and the impact of these on poverty and inequality. She is especially interested in the policy and political dynamics (including policy transfer issues) among international actors and the donor community, government officials and civil society organisations.
Reza Omidi is a Visting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His research focuses on social inequalities, welfare regime, political economy, and social policy developments. He is currently focused on the politics of social policy reforms, their institutional dynamics of advance and retrenchment, and their interrelationship with broader social and political transformations. -
The LSE Middle East Centre hosted a Kuwait Programme workshop, presenting research on the influence of social media on food-consumption behaviours in Kuwait.
Kuwait is experiencing public health challenges driven by rising rates of non-communicable nutrition-related diseases such as diabetes and obesity. According to the World Bank, the prevalence of diabetes in Kuwait increased tenfold between 2000 and 2021, with approximately 25% of Kuwaiti adults now affected. Adding to this issue is the widespread social media culture in Kuwait surrounding food photography. There is a significant trend among individuals, as well as social media influencers, to share food-related content on platforms. The extensive use of digital platforms, combined with Kuwait's unique social media culture, offer new and unique avenues for studying how online content and interactions might shape food-consumption behaviours. This research addresses the influence of social media on food-consumption behaviours in Kuwait.
Meet our speakers
Fabrício M. Fialho is Assistant Professor of Sociology at HSE University and Research Fellow at the LSE International Inequalities Institute. His current work has focused on public opinion research and quantitative research methods.
Abrar Al Hasan is an Associate Professor of Information Systems and Operations Management at the College of Business Administration, Kuwait University. Her research interests include Social Media and Social Networks, Health IT, Online Markets, Digital Innovations, Crowdsourcing, and the Economics of Information Systems.
Meet our chair
Dr Aygen Kurt-Dickson is Senior Innovation Development Manager in the LSE Innovation & Impact team focuses on enhancing LSE’s I&I ecosystem through improved connections between LSE research and innovation and by building internal and external relationships to facilitate innovation. -
In the final episode of this season, Ahmad Abu Hussien, an urban sociologist from Jordan, brings together academics and practitioners to explore theories of urban planning and design through case studies of Jordan and Dubai.
This episode explores the concept of infrastructural citizenship, a framework that helps us understand infrastructure not simply as roads, public spaces, water or sewage networks, but as a political and social system that shapes belonging in the city. In this way, Ahmad and his guests look at how certain communities are excluded from the city, and how theory can inform practice in building apps, policies and physical spaces for the better.
Ahmad Abu Hussien is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a sociologist specialising in urban inequalities. He is also the co-founder of AZHJ, a research consultancy focused on reducing disparities in cities and between cities, which works at the intersection of urban policy, governance, and research, with a focus on the Global South.
Deyala Tarawneh is Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Jordan, and Deputy Dean of Training and Alumni Affairs. She is deeply engaged in professional and institutional planning practice, including in roles with the Jordanian Engineering Institution, as well as supporting women in engineering and urban development.
Harun Jweinat is Co-Founder and Director of Design and Logistics at AZHJ. His work bridges art and spatial justice with a strong focus on translating complex urban ideas through practice and community facing work.
Huda Shaka is a chartered urban planner and a chartered environmentalist. Her work involves advising on city and regional plans, master plans and mega infrastructure projects as well as strategic policy frameworks for future-ready cities.
https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/fellows/2023/ahmad-zeyad-abu-hussien -
In this penultimate episode, Yara Shawky Shahin has a frank discussion with her colleague Yasmine D’Alessandro about how to create programmes of real economic empowerment for women in the Middle East and North Africa based on their decades long experience working with international and grassroots organisations in the region.
Yara Shawky Shahin is an Senior Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a researcher and civil society professional with more than 20 years of experience in the fields of development, human rights, policy analysis, and not-for-profit management. Yara has worked with different organisations including UNHCR, Save the Children, and UNDP in programs supporting youth participation, inclusion, and integration. With the Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute, and recently Ford Foundation, her work focused on programs supporting media reform, freedom of expression, digital rights, and the impact of technology on society as well as advocating for inclusive social protections across countries of the MENA region.
Yasmine D’Alessandro is a senior development expert with over two decades of experience in the gender, economic empowerment, skills development and civil society fields. Yasmine has a solid grounding in program design, strategic planning, and program management across a wide spectrum of organisations, ranging from consultancy firms and international NGOs to independent grant-making institutions. Over the course of her career, she has successfully led initiatives that address complex social and economic challenges, in communities such as rural Upper Egypt, remote communities in Yemen, refugee camps in Jordan and pockets of poverty in urban centres in various countries, always with a focus on building sustainable and locally grounded impact. She has been consistently committed to bridging the gap between policy and practice, ensuring that programs are not only well-designed but also contextually relevant and responsive to community needs.
Find out more about Yara's work here: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/fellows/2023/yara-shawky-shahin -
In this episode, Diana Magdy, a gender equality specialist, feminist researcher and oral historian has a conversation with Professor Hoda Elsadda unpacking the politics of archiving, revealing archives as spaces of power and resistance rather than neutral repositories.
Diana Magdy is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and a feminist researcher and gender equality specialist from Cairo, Egypt. She has 12 years of experience in gender and development. As a feminist oral historian, she has worked on documenting the Egyptian feminist movement, producing feminist knowledge in Arabic, and archive building. In this area, she published a paper titled ‘Narrating Gender in Egypt's Public Sphere: The Archive of Women’s Oral History’.
Professor Hoda Elsadda is a feminist activist, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cairo University, and Co-founder of the Women and Memory Forum. She previously held a Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University, and was Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World in the UK. Her research interests are in the areas of gender studies, comparative literature and oral history. She is author of Gender, Nation and the Arabic Novel: Egypt: 1892-2008 (Edinburgh UP and Syracuse UP, 2012); and co-editor of Oral History in Times of Change: Gender, Documentation and the Making of Archives (Cairo Papers, 35:1, 2018).
Find out more about Diana's work: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/fellows/2023/diana-magdy
Find out more about Hoda's work: https://wmf.org.eg/en/member/hoda-elsadda/ -
Return of Tyranny explains why counterrevolutions both emerge and succeed, marshalling original data on counterrevolutions worldwide since 1900. It also offers a fresh perspective and new evidence on the reversal of Egypt’s 2011 revolution, one of the most prominent recent episodes of counterrevolution. The book forwards a movement-centric argument that emphasizes the strategies revolutionary leaders embrace, both during their opposition campaigns and after they seize power. Movements that wage violent resistance and espouse radical ideologies establish regimes that are very difficult to overthrow. By contrast, democratic revolutions like Egypt’s are much more vulnerable – though the book also identifies a path by which they too can avoid counterrevolution. By preserving their elite coalitions and broad popular support, these movements can return to mass mobilization to thwart counterrevolutionary threats. In an era of resurgent authoritarianism worldwide, Return of Tyranny sheds light on one particularly violent form of reactionary politics.
Meet our speakers
Killian Clarke is an Assistant Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, affiliated with the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. His research focuses on revolution, protest, democratization, and authoritarianism with a regional focus on the Middle East. He is the author of Return of Tyranny: Why Counterrevolutions Emerge and Succeed (Cambridge University Press, 2025), as well as peer-reviewed articles in the American Political Science Review, Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, and World Politics.
Hazem Kandil is the Cambridge University Professor of Historical and Political Sociology, Fellow of St Catharine’s College and Head of Department. He studies power relations and social interactions, focusing on war, regime change, intellectuals and ideology in America, Europe, and the Middle East. He holds a PhD in Sociology from UCLA, and MA degrees in Political Theory and International Relations. His publications include Power Triangle: Military, Security, and Politics in Regime Change (Oxford University Press 2016), Inside the Brotherhood (Polity 2014), and Soldiers, Spies, and Statesmen (Verso 2012). Kandil received the Philip Leverhulme Prize (2014) and a ProFutura Scientia Fellowship (2016). After finishing a book project on US military campaigns from 1960 to the present, he started a new one on encounters with Critical Theory.
Meet our chair
Katerina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. She held a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust between 2021 and 2024. The project findings will shortly be published as a book monograph by Cambridge University Press, under the title Islamic International Thought in Turkey: History, Civilisation and Nation. -
By bringing together academics and journalists that utilise gender and media studies, as well as history and international relations, this interdisciplinary panel will speak to the relationship between the family and nation-building, the role of media and advertising in representing the mother figure, and through real life stories explore how people in the Middle East and the diaspora have redefined what family looks like.
Meet our speakers
Dr Polly Withers is a feminist cultural studies researcher, currently leading the Leverhulme Early Career Project ‘Neoliberal Visions: Gendering Consumer Advertising and its Resistances in the Levant’, which considers how commercial advertising mediates shifts in gender and sexuality in post-Oslo Palestine and current-day Jordan. Prior to this, Polly’s work focused on the gender and sexuality politics of 'alternative' music and subcultural participation in contemporary Palestine and its diaspora. Her work has appeared in Feminist Media Studies, the British Journal of Middle East Studies, and related gender and cultural studies outlets. She is currently working on a single-author monograph based on her Leverhulme research.
Dr Andrew Delatolla is Associate Professor in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Leeds. His research interests centre on the intersections of race and sexuality in relation to statehood and state formation. He has recently concluded a funded project examining the politics of LGBTIQ+ rights in the Spanish overseas territories of Ceuta and Melilla and is currently part of an AHRC-DFG funded project examining transformations in gender and sexual governance in post-Soviet Muslim majority republics. His recent publications include a co-authored chapter, with Karim Chedid, in the anthology This Queer Arab Family edited by Elias Jahshan and a co-authored article with Hossein Cheaito in the European Journal of Politics and Gender on LGBTIQ+ activism in Lebanon.
Elias Jahshan (he/him) is a Lebanese-Palestinian journalist and writer, and the editor of groundbreaking anthologies THIS ARAB IS QUEER (2022) and THIS QUEER ARAB FAMILY (2025), both published by Saqi Books. This Arab Is Queer was a 2023 Lambda Literary Awards finalist in the USA and shortlisted for the 2023 Bread & Roses Award in the UK, and has been translated into Italian and soon in French. His short memoirs have been published in several anthologies, and he has written for The Guardian, The New Arab, Raseef22, My Kali, and more.
Meet our chair
Hakan Sandal-Wilson is Assistant Professor of Gender, Peace and Security at the Department of Gender Studies. He is a political sociologist whose teaching and research explore how gender and sexuality intersect with democracy, conflict, and ethnic and religious difference. -
The lecture examines the various economic, institutional, and political factors that are driving these approaches to health system reform drawing on work by the Partnership for Health System Sustainability and Resilience (www.phssr.org) of which the LSE is a founding partner, and will consider what these mean for health outcomes. The lecture will also reflect on what these developments can reveal about the future direction of health policy in other parts of the Middle East.
Meet our speakers
Professor Alistair McGuire is the Kuwait Chair of Health Economics at the Department of Health Policy and at the LSE Middle East Centre. Prior to this he was Professor of Economics at City University, London after being a tutor in Economics at the University of Oxford. Professor McGuire has also been a Visiting Professor at Harvard University, the University of Sydney, the University of York, the Universitat of Barcelona and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona.
George Wharton is Deputy Head of Department (Teaching) Department of Health Policy, with an academic background in International Relations (BSc, LSE) and Health Policy (MSc, Imperial). George’s work focuses on a broad range of themes in comparative international health policy.
Meet our chair
Katerina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. She held a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust between 2021 and 2024. The project findings will shortly be published as a book monograph by Cambridge University Press, under the title Islamic International Thought in Turkey: History, Civilisation and Nation. -
Manar Alzraiy, a Palestinian education professional dedicated to resilience and equity in crisis-affected schools, brings together her colleagues from Gaza to talk about education since October 7 2023, how Israel's war on Gaza and forced displacement has destroyed the education sector, and what is needed to rebuild it both physically and intellectually. These interviews took place in the summer of 2025.
Manar Alzraiy is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity and an education professional from Gaza, where she worked for ten years with UNRWA. At LSE, Manar conducted research on embedded inequalities in how United Nations humanitarian principles are applied in UN schools in Palestine. She is currently a fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Dr Alaa Ali Aladini is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum and Instruction (TEFL). He has over 23 years of experience with UNRWA-Gaza, serving as an English teacher, educational supervisor and education specialist. Dr Aladini brings extensive expertise in language education, teacher training and inclusive education.
Asma Mustafa is an English language teacher who received the title ‘Global Teacher of the Year 2020’ from the AKS Education Award in India, and the title ‘Palestine’s Innovative Teacher of the Year 2022’ for her applied eTwinning approach in English language teaching.
Dr Mohammed Awad Shbeir holds a PhD in Educational Administration. He is also an education supervisor as well as an academic and educational researcher specialising in education and social issues.
To find out more about Manar's work: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/en-gb/fellows/2023/manar-alzraiy. -
Modern Syria has seen violence, repression, and autocracy, suffering through tragedy after tragedy over the past century. Yet the history of Syria is not just a tale of dictators and generals. From the 1800s to the 2020s, the Syrian people have engaged in a passionate struggle for justice, equality, and a better future. Whether fighting for national independence from French colonial rule, battling local landowning elites to share the country's wealth, or rising up against the Assad regime, the Syrian people have fiercely clung to their right to live with respect and dignity. Theirs is a story of protest and perseverance in the long fight to reshape the political destiny of their nation. Daniel Neep’s new book, A History of Modern Syria, offers a gripping narrative of how Syrians have navigated the events of the last two centuries. Never losing sight of the fates of ordinary people, it provides a comprehensive account of how a nation born in conflict sustained a rich, complex, and diverse society that after the fall of Assad will chart a new path into the uncertain future.
Daniel Neep is Non-Resident Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, and Senior Editor at Arab Center Washington DC. He has taught Middle East politics at George Washington University, Georgetown University, and the University of Exeter. He was previously Research Director (Syria) at the Council for British Research in the Levant and spent several years living in Syria and Jordan. He is also the author of Occupying Syria under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space, and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and articles in journals including International Affairs, Journal of Democracy, New Political Economy, and the Journal of Historical Sociology.
Meet our discussant and chair
Charles Tripp FBA is Professor Emeritus of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research interests include the nature of autocracy, state and resistance in the Middle East, the politics of Islamic identities, and the role of art in the constitution of the political. He is currently working on a project on the politics of memory in Tunisia.
Jasmine Gani is Assistant Professor in International Relations Theory at LSE. She specialises in anti-colonial theory and history, and the politics of empire, race and knowledge production. She is author of 'The Role of Ideology in Syria-US Relations: Conflict and Cooperation' (2014), and co-editor of 'Actors and Dynamics in the Syrian Conflict's Middle Phase' (2022). -
'Governance of Resistance in North and East Syria' examines the momentous development of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration since 2012. The creation of this unprecedented, ideologically radical entity is of immense significance in Kurdish, Syrian and Middle Eastern history and for discourses of nationalism and identity. This book presents new research from the expanding scholarship to interrogate Rojava as a political and social idea and explain the resistance narrative that underpins the ideology and governance structures. The contributions examine key aspects of the condition of the autonomous government, its successes, failures and impact, including the theory and nature of the political structures, their application in Arab areas, identity, education, gender and foreign relations. The findings demonstrate that North and East Syria has been revolutionary, that resistance there is resilient, and that there are constant and dynamic tensions between ideology and pragmatism in the evolution of this remarkable political and social project. The speakers at this event will also discuss fast-moving developments in north and east Syria.
Meet our speakers
Stephen Knight is a doctoral student at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. His ethnographic research explores the application of international humanitarian law by the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Outside of the field of law Stephen's research also looks at the interaction between mythology and political movements. Stephen also practises as a barrister, specialising in the interactions between criminal law, protest law, immigration law, and public law. He has forthcoming works in the fields of trafficking law and Kurdish mythology.
Thomas McGee is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of legal and social studies of the Middle East, with particular emphasis on Kurdish dynamics in the Syrian context. He is a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, and completed his PhD on “Syria’s Changing Statelessness Landscape: 2011 as Critical Juncture” at Melbourne Law School’s Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Thomas has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre and Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He has previously published on a wide variety of topics in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration Review, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Genocide Studies International and the Kurdish Studies journal. Currently, Thomas is developing his PhD for publication as a monograph.
Dastan Jasim is a Research Engineer at the Dauphine University in Paris and an Associate Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. Her research focuses on political culture, democratization and security studies.
William Smith is an analyst and researcher whose work has focused on Syria since 2013. He was worked as an independent adviser on a number of U.K.-government and EU funded peacebuilding and stabilisation projects, including as the lead for a ‘Track 2’ initiative in northeastern Syria in 2021-22 that brought representatives of the SDF and Autonomous Administration together in dialogue with local civil society. He currently provides conflict analysis for a Syria humanitarian project. -
In this first episode of season 4, Hamidreza Vasheghanifarahani speaks with Azadeh Sobout and Rindala about how transnational solidarity networks can strengthen efforts towards social change. While both Azadeh and Rindala focus their discussion on Syria and the 2011 Revolution, the conversation explores broader approaches and challenges to political organising and revolutionary politics that can be applied globally.
Hamidreza Vasheghanifarahani an Iranian researcher, activist and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. Currently, he works at the LSE International Inequalities Institute as a researcher. He has worked with and for civil society organisations and communities as a researcher, project manager and trainer, with a focus on civil society and community mobilisation, children’s rights, and disability.
Azadeh Sobout is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. She is an Iranian activist, writer, and educator rooted in refugee justice, indigenous solidarity, Palestinian liberation, anti-racist, feminist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist movements for over a decade.
Rindala is a Syrian member of the People’s Want transnational network and a co-founder of the cooperative space Darna in Montreuil, France.
To learn more about the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/
The Peoples Want: https://thepeopleswant.org/en/about_us
Hamidreza Vasheghanifarahani: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/fellows/2022/hamidreza-vasheghanifarahani -
In September, a wave of protests emerged in Morocco led by the country's youth, known as GenZ 212. Since September, 3 people have been killed and 400 arrested according to Amnesty International. Triggered by the deaths of women in an Agadir hospital, the protest movement’s demands come against the background of widespread unemployment and a lack of funding in health and education sectors.With King Mohammed VI's latest speech announcing budgetary increases and promises of reform, will this be enough to meet the movement’s demands, and does the movement have enough momentum to continue? This panel of experts will take a look at the current protests, how they have been organised and their capacity to gather widespread support. Panellists will also provide broader political and historical analysis on the country, analysing how capacity for reform can be understood in light of the Kingdom's governance systems and political institutions.Meet our speakers and chair:Miriyam Aouragh is Professor of Digital Anthropology at the University of Westminster with a specific focus on West Asia and North Africa. She studies the contradictions of capitalism shape the modes and meanings of resistance in the era of revolution and digital transformations. Her analyses is grounded in the complex revolutionary dynamics in the Arab world. In what she calls "techno-social politics" she studies a political temporality marked by revolution and counter-revolution. She wrote about the paradoxical context of online-revolution and cyber-imperialism. Throughout her academic projects she conducts extended fieldwork (Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco), in order to relate participant observation and interviews to media analyses. Miriyam is author of Palestine Online (IB Tauris 2011); (with Hamza Hamouchene) The Arab Spring a decade on (TNI 2022); Mediating the Makhzan about the (r)evolutionary dynamics in Morocco (forthcoming CUP) and (with Paula Chakravartty) Infrastructures of Empire (forthcoming).Mohamed Daadaoui is professor and chair of Political Science, History, and Philosophy & Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. He is the author of Moroccan Monarchy and the Islamist Challenge: Maintaining Makhzen Power and The Historical Dictionary of the Arab Uprisings. He is a specialist of North African Politics. Mohamed’s articles have appeared in Middle East Critique, The Journal of North African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, The British Journal of Middle East Studies, the Journal of Middle East Law and Governance, the Hudson Institute, the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, the Huffington Post, SADA of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Middle East Institute, Jadaliyya and Muftah. Mohamed has provided commentary to local and international media outlets such as: C-Span, al-Jazeera English, the BBC, El Pais, and The Irish Times.Michael J. Willis is King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). Before joining St Antony’s in 2004, he taught politics at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco for seven years. He is the author of Algeria: Politics and Society from the Dark Decade to the Hirak (Hurst, 2022); Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015).Richard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His research is on contemporary international approaches to peacemaking, and why peace processes fail or succeed, with a particular focus on Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan, and considering Libya, Syria and other examples.
- Laat meer zien
