LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

Erbil-based Radio Al-Salam (https://soundcloud.com/radio-al-salam) interviewed LSE Middle East Centre Leverhulme Research Fellow Dr Filippo Dionigi about his current research project, which looks at host states' policies towards Syrian refugees. In this interview, he talks about his findings in Iraq, focusing on how the Kurdish Regional Government in particular is dealing with the presence of refu...

Speaker: Rached Ghannouchi, Ennahdha Party On Thursday 20 April 2017, the MEC hosted a talk by Ennahdha (Renaissance) Party founder Sheikh Rached Ghannouchi, in which he reflected on the achievements of the 2011 Tunisian uprising, the challenges facing the region, as well as the evolution of his Party.

Speaker: Siavush Randjbar-Daemi, University of Manchester Chair: Ali Ansari, University of St Andrews Siavush Randjbar-Daemi discusses the origins and development of the presidential institution in the Islamic Republic from the 1979 Iranian Revolution to the present day. He provides an overview of both the possibilities and limitations that each president has faced whilst in power and reflects on...

Speakers: Nick Alton, FCO; Dania Akkad, Middle East Eye; Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre; Mina Toksoz, University of Manchester and Chatham House; Representative of Oxfam UK Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre BRISMES and LSE Middle East Centre jointly hosted this careers event for students interested in working in or with the Middle East. This panel discussion involves professionals...

Speaker: Ambassador Lukman Faily, Senior Advisor to Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi Chair: Professor Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Lukman Faily argues that the lack of social harmony in Iraqi society represents a key factor of instability and that it is necessary to identify and mediate this problem by encouraging increased cooperation between citizens though state-supported social and religious pro...

Speakers: Yoav Peled, Tel Aviv University; Horit Herman Peled, Tel Aviv University Chair: Amnon Aran, City, University of London Yoav Peled and Horit Herman Peled examine the growing saliency of the religious outlook in Jewish Israeli society, in order to test the argument that Israeli society is undergoing a process of religionisation. They also analyse the counter-argument, that secular–religiou...

Speaker: Ali Ansari, University of St Andrews Chair: Pejman Abdolmohammadi, LSE Middle East Centre The election of Hassan Rouhani to the Presidency of the Islamic Republic in 2013 for many signalled a popular rejection of the politics of confrontation endorsed by his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and support for greater liberalism at home and internationalism abroad. With his first term coming...

Speakers: Ginny Hill, LSE Middle East Centre; Baraa Shiban, Reprieve Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre Yemen is embroiled in multiple civil wars, triggered by a long-term decline in oil production, the failure of state-building, strong sub-national identities and internal competition between rival elite networks that comprised the regime of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Ginny Hill...

Speaker: John Chalcraft, LSE Chair: Aitemad Muhanna-Matar, LSE Middle East Centre John Chalcraft launches his book Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East, which gives an account of popular protest that emphasizes the revolutionary modern history of the region. Challenging top-down views of Middle Eastern politics, Chalcraft looks at how commoners, subjects and citizens have long...

Speaker: Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi Chair: Professor Toby Dodge, LSE In his lecture, UAE based writer and art collector Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi will be discussing the political undertones of iconic artworks of the 20th century in the Arab world. From the Baathist regimes of Syria and Iraq to Egypt’s pan-Arabism under Gamal Abdel Nasser, paintings and sculptures in addition to film and performance hav...

Speaker: Amina Boubia, Sciences Po Centre for International Studies Discussant: Cristina Moreno Almeida, LSE Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE Amina Boubia presents her paper which studies the role new music genres such as rock and rap have played in the Middle East and North Africa during the Arab Spring. She argues that music is a powerful form of collective action and should therefore be taken serious...

Speaker: Lahur Talabany, Zanyari Agency Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Since ISIS' occupation of Iraqi territory in June 2014, the Kurdish security forces have been on the frontline as one of the most effective forces in the international coalitions’ efforts to reclaim territory in both Iraq and Syria. Zanyari Intelligence Agency and Counter Terrorism Group Special Forces, under the lea...

Speaker: Nelida Fuccaro, SOAS; Ulrike Freitag, ZMO; Rasmus Christian Elling, University of Copenhagen Chair: Fran Tonkiss, LSE Nelida Fuccaro launches her edited book 'Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East', with two of the contributors to the volume, exploring violence in the public lives of modern Middle Eastern cities, approaching violence as an individual and collective experience, a...

Lebanon hosts the highest number of Syrian refugees relative to its local population. This poses many challenges to a state known for its fragility and instability. UNHCR Representative to Lebanon Mireille Girard discusses the impact of the Syrian crisis on Lebanon and the responses of international and local institutions. This event launches an MEC workshop on the long-term challenges of forced m...

Speaker: Rebecca Steinfeld, Goldsmiths, University of London Chair: Avi Shlaim, University of Oxford Rebecca Steinfeld looks at the historical and contemporary struggles that have led to the gap between the restrictions on, and availability of, abortion in Israel. She attributes this gap to the compromise necessitated by conflicts amongst competing policymakers, motivated by opposing viewpoints an...

Speakers: Cengiz Çandar, Radikal; Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Turkey has traditionally favoured a policy of maintaining the status quo in its foreign relations in the Middle East and has placed limits on its own engagement with the region. Today however, it finds itself more deeply involved in Middle East politics than ever before. This event marks...

Speaker: Filippo Dionigi, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre In this event, Filippo Dionigi discusses how states such as Lebanon and Jordan have coped with the challenges of mass displacement within their borders. He poses questions and advances hypotheses on the current and future implications of forced mass displacement in the Middle East for states in the region. R...

Speakers: Mandy Turner, Kenyon Institute (CBRL); Florian P. Kühn, Otto von Guericke University; Michael Pugh, University of Bradford; Caroline Hughes, University of Bradford; Christopher Phillips, QMUL; Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre In this book launch, the authors of ‘The Politics of International Intervention: the Tyranny of Peace’ critically explore the practices of peacebuilding, and the...

Speaker: David Roberts, King's College London Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme Qatar’s reputation as an uncontroversial, peaceable, quasi-neutral state was undermined as its leadership systematically chose sides during the Arab Spring. Without the capacity, resources, or experience to effectively involve itself in the intractable conflicts that emerged from the Spring, Qatar gained a re...

Speaker: Katerina Dalacoura, LSE Chair: Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre Building on a long intellectual tradition going back to the late Ottoman period, debates in present-day Turkey on the role of culture and civilisation in world politics, and the relationship between modernity and Islam, are vibrant and ongoing. These debates are inevitably linked to power. In this talk Katerina Dalacoura a...

Speaker: Filippo Dionigi, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre In this event, Filippo Dionigi discusses how states such as Lebanon and Jordan have coped with the challenges of mass displacement within their borders. He will pose questions and advance hypotheses on the current and future implications of forced mass displacement in the Middle East for states in the region...

Speaker: Katerina Dalacoura, LSE Chair: Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre Building on a long intellectual tradition going back to the late Ottoman period, debates in present-day Turkey on the role of culture and civilisation in world politics, and the relationship between modernity and Islam, are vibrant and ongoing. This lecture discusses whether there exist, within this body of thought, new po...

Speaker: Andrew Hammond, University of Oxford Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme Despite the large presence of Salafism in Arabic political and religious discourse today, the term remains in fact highly contested and its history unclear. Yet Salafism, with its semantic confusions, is finding its way from Arabic and the Saudi sphere into Turkey and the Turkish language, which had been as a...

Speaker: Benedetta Voltolini, Sciences Po Paris & LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Dr Federica Bicchi, LSE Benedetta Voltolini presents her paper investigating lobbying and framing in EU foreign policy towards the Middle East and North Africa. By relying on social network analysis and the literature on policy entrepreneurship, Benedetta will show how non-state actors are involved in processes of fram...

Speaker: Jonathan Hill, King's College London Chair: William Sinton, Society for Algerian Studies The Arab Spring’s influence on the Maghreb has been piecemeal and partial. What explains these varied experiences? Why did Ben Ali’s regime fall and Bouteflika’s survive? Why has Morocco not gone the same way as Tunisia? And what of Mauritania, the oft forgotten and frequently ignored other Maghreb co...