LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

يمكنكم الاستماع الى التسجيل الصوتي باللغة العربية للجلسة الأولى في يوم 28 سبتمبر/أيلول من مؤتمر مركز الشرق الأوسط "العراق عشية الإنتحابات:بداية عهد جديد أم استمرار للوضع الراهن؟ إخلاء مسؤولية: هذه التسجيلات للترجمة العربية الفورية المباشرة لذلك من الممكن أن تحتوي على بعض الأخطاء أو على فجوات في الترجمة يدير الجلسة: توبي دودج - مركز الشرق األوسط مارسين الشمري - معهد الدراسات اإلقليمية والدولية سجاد...

This is the English recording of Panel 1 from the 28th September Conflict Research Programme-Iraq Conference 'Iraq on the Eve of Elections: A new era or return to the status quo?'. In October Iraqis will go to the polls for the sixth time since regime change to vote in early elections, held as a key concession to the demands of the Tishreen protest movement. The elections will be the first to be b...

This webinar, co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies, was a launch for Dr. Natalya Vince's latest book 'The Algerian War, The Algerian Revolution'. This book provides a new analysis of the contested history of one of the most violent wars of decolonisation of the twentieth century – the Algerian War/the Algerian Revolution between 1954 and 1962. It brings together an engaging account o...

This webinar, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was a discussion around the new and revised edition of David McDowall's book 'A Modern History of the Kurds'. In this latest edition, McDowall analyses the momentous transformations affecting Kurdish socio-politics in the last 20 years. This fourth edition includes new analysis of the Kurdish experience in Syria; the rol...

Instant Coffee is back! And on season 2, we’re exploring our favourite topic, food. We are going beyond the plate to understand how the complexities of food, farming and cuisine in the region are shaping people’s writing, thinking and organising. We’ll be speaking with inspiring individuals who are grappling with culinary appropriation, access to food and food sovereignty, archiving the region’s r...

This webinar, co-organised with Boston University School of Law's International Human Rights Clinic, explored research outputs from their project on the challenges of statelessness in the region. To find out more about the project click here: https://www.bu.edu/law/current-students/jd-student-resources/experiential-learning/clinics/international-human-rights-clinic/ The understanding and regulatio...

This event was a book launch for 'Civilization and the Making of the State in Lebanon and Syria' by Dr. Andrew Delatolla. The book argues that the modern state, from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period, has consistently been used as a means to measure civilizational engagement and attainment. This volume historicizes this dynamic, examining how it impacted state-making in Lebanon and...

The PowerPoint presentations from the event can be viewed here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2021/kuwaits-urbanisation This Kuwait Programme event was a discussion about two research projects - 'Public Space in Kuwait: From User Behaviour to Policy-making' led by Alexandra Gomes and Asseel Al-Ragam, and 'Towards an Equitable Transport System in Kuwait' led by Adeel Muhammad. Thi...

This webinar was the launch of Omar Sirri's paper 'Destructive Creations: Social-Spatial Transformations in Contemporary Baghdad' published as part of the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series. This working paper examines social-spatial transformations in contemporary Baghdad by zooming in on two of the city’s most frequented consumer districts, Karada and Mansour. By way of ethnographic fieldwork,...

This event was a book launch for 'Israeli Foreign Policy Since the End of the Cold War' by Dr. Amnon Aran. This is the first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the Middle East and selected world powers including China, India, the European Union and the United States since the end of the Cold War. It provides an integrated account of these foreign policy spheres and serves as an essential hist...

This event was co-organised with the Kurdish Studies Programme at the University of Central Florida. It was the book launch of 'Kurds and Yezidis in the Middle East: Shifting Identities, Borders, and the Experience of Minority Communities'. The diversity of Kurdish communities across the Middle East is now recognized as central to understanding both the challenges and opportunities for their repre...

This event was the launch of the publication 'Redefining deprivation in a conflict area: learning from the Palestinian experience using mixed methods' produced as part of the Academic Collaboration with Arab Universities Programme, led by Principal Investigators Tiziana Leone, Rita Giacaman and Weeam Hammoudeh. Conflicts threaten public health, human security, and wellbeing. While their visible im...

This Kuwait Programme event was a discussion about Dr Zeynep Kaya’s recent research on women's political participation in Kuwait. Dr Lubna Al-Kazi acted as a discussant, and Dr Courtney Freer chaired the event. Since the introduction of women’s suffrage in 2005, the number of women elected to parliament in Kuwait has been very small. Despite this, their presence in high political office has change...

This webinar was co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies. Sino-Algerian relations date back to the Afro-Asian Bandung conference in 1955. China’s status as first non-Arab country to recognise Algeria’s pre-independence provisional government in 1958, coupled with Algiers’ support in helping China restore its security council seat at the UN in 1971, represent key moments that consolidate...

غزة مفتوحة: عمران الأمل by LSE Middle East Centre

This webinar launched the book 'Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope' edited by Deen Sharp and the late Michael Sorkin. The Gaza Strip is one of the most beleaguered environments on earth. Crammed into a space of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), 1.8 million people live under an Israeli siege, enforcing conditions that continue to plummet to ever more unimaginable depths of degradation and des...

GCC countries share their national wealth with citizens through public employment and subsidies, policies that are inefficient, inequitable, economically distortive and fiscally unsustainable. This talk discusses how unconditional cash grants for adult nationals could replace government jobs and subsidies, drawing on Dr Steffen Hertog’s recent research on Kuwait. Dr Hertog's PowerPoint presentatio...

This webinar was the launch of Alexander Hamilton's latest report 'Is Demography Destiny? The Economic Implications of Iraq's Demography' published under the LSE Conflict Research Programme–Iraq. In this report, Hamilton examines the fiscal and economic implications of Iraq’s current demographic trajectory and finds that, given Iraq’s almost total dependence on oil for government revenues, slight...

In a recent cabinet meeting in Tehran, President Rouhani stated "Trump is dead but the nuclear deal is still alive". From the Iranian perspective, the ball is now in the United States' court to mend relations after former President Trump's policy of maximum pressure, including the withdrawal from the nuclear deal and the reimposition of sanctions on Iran. This webinar discussed what the short-term...

This webinar will be the launch of Yezid Sayigh's latest report 'Praetorian Spearhead: The Role of the Military in the Evolution of Egypt’s State Capitalism 3.0' published under the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series. In this report, Sayigh explores how military involvement in the Egyptian economy is giving rise to a new version of state capitalism. Driven by Arab socialism in the 1960s and resha...

PLEASE NOTE: We apologise for any Arabic interference you may hear during the recording which was due to technical difficulties. This webinar will be the launch of Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed's latest book The Son King: Reform and Repression in Saudi Arabia. In this book, Madawi Al-Rasheed lays bare the world of repression behind Saudi crown prince Muhammed bin Salman's reforms. She dissects the S...

This webinar was organised as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's 10th anniversary programme of online events. For a decade, the LSE Middle East Centre has been committed to rigorous research of the societies, economies, politics and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa. This event, as part of the Centre’s 10th anniversary campaign, will look at some of the main challenges facing the regi...

Across many developing countries, the delivery of basic social services is not universal, and often skewed along politicised identity cleavages. The Middle East and North Africa region is no exception. Under what conditions are some services provided in a more ‘equitable’ fashion, with less apparent favouritism towards particular groups? Drawing on the cases of health care provision in Lebanon and...

This webinar was organised with the Society for Algerian Studies. In 1990, a year after the creation of the Arab Maghreb Union (UMA), the then-King of Morocco, Hassan II, best summed up pan-Maghreb ambitions stating that: “our aim is to turn the Arab Maghreb into one country with one passport... one identity and a single currency”. Thirty years on, very little has been achieved at the leadership-l...

Held on 8 December 2020, this Kuwait Programme, LSE Middle East Centre event was a discussion about the 2020 parliamentary elections in Kuwait. After Kuwaitis go to the polls on 5 December amidst the Covid-19 pandemic and increasing anxieties about the country’s fiscal positions, top experts in Kuwaiti elections come together to discuss the results and what they mean for Kuwait under the new amir,...