LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

Speaker: Farea Al-Muslimi, Chairman and co-founder of Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies. Chair: Michael Mason, LSE Middle East Centre Director. For the last four years, Yemen has been suffering one of the bloodiest wars in the Middle East. In a manner surpassing even Syria, state institutions have collapsed, health and education systems are largely dysfunctional, millions continue to suffer from...

Speaker: Martin Chulov, The Guardian Chair: Ian Black, LSE Senior Visiting Fellow With the battle for Syrian soil near an end, the most brutal conflict of modern times is becoming a fight for who gets to shape what emerges from the ruins. Backed by his allies, Bashar al-Assad has all but won and – abandoned by theirs – the myriad forces who stood against him have lost. The battlefield is now now p...

Apologies for the abrupt ending of the podcast. The recording was cut short. You can watch the full lecture online on our facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/lsemiddleeastcentre/videos/363890584359536/ Speakers: Madawi Al-Rasheed, Ian Black and Steffen Hertog, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Michael Mason, LSE Middle East Centre Saudi Journalist Jamal Khashoggi entered the Saudi embassy in...

Speakers: David McDowall and Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre. David McDowall’s ground-breaking modern history of the Kurds was first published in 1996. It became a foundation text for the subsequent growth of scholarship on the Kurds and, revised and updated three times, remains an essential part of the literature. David is currently updating the book again and will share his thoughts on devel...

Speakers: Salman Sheikh, The Sheikh Group and Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre Salman Shaikh is a negotiations specialist with eight years of experience in running Track II diplomacy with a wide spectrum of Syrian communities and constituencies. With Syria divided into zones of influence dominated by external players, he will address the question of what options remain for a political proces...

Speakers: Hendrik Kraetzschmar, University of Leeds, Paola Rivetti, Dublin City University, Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre, Craig Larkin, King’s College London. Chair: Katerina Dalacoura, LSE What are the consequences of the Arab uprisings for Islamist actors and organisations across the region? Have regime change, revolution, counter-revolution and reform worked to strengthen the power an...

Speakers: Youssef Cherif, Deputy Director of Columbia Global Centers, Tunis, member in Carnegie's Civic Research Network. Youssef Cherif analyses how the Maghreb region is another theatre of the cold war raging between the Gulf Cooperation Council's (GCC) members. By means of fake news, political pressures and transfer of weapons, the three leading protagonists of the GCC are influencing the polit...

Speakers: Courtney Freer, Toby Doge, LSE Middle East Centre; Stéphane Lacroix, Sciences Po, Paris; John Jenkins, Policy Exchange, London. Scholars of Middle Eastern politics have long overlooked the role played by political Islam in domestic politics of the wealthy monarchical states of the Arabian Gulf, so-called 'rentier states'. While rentier state theory assumes that citizens of such states wi...

Speakers: Toby Dodge, Zeynep Kaya and Jessica Watkins, LSE Middle East Centre; Renad Mansour; Chatham House. It has now been over a year since the liberation of Mosul by Iraqi government forces in July 2017. This victory marks a new stage in the violent conflict that has destabilised Iraq since at least regime change in 2003. In some ways, the breakthrough in July 2017 can be compared firstly to t...

Speakers: Deniz Kandiyoti, SOAS; Renad Mansour, Chatham House; Charles Tripp, SOAS Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Director This memorial honoured the late Faleh A. Jabar and his notable contribution to the study of Iraq and the wider Middle East. This event also marked the launch of his MEC paper From Identity Politics to Issue Politics: The Iraqi Protest Movement, which he presented at...

Speaker: Cristina Moreno-Almeida, King's College College Chair: Shakuntala Banaji, LSE This talk launches Cristina Moreno-Almeida’s book, ‘Rap Beyond Resistance: Staging Power in Contemporary Morocco’. In the book, Moreno-Almeida argues for a new way of looking at cultural resistance in the Arabic-speaking world that goes beyond secular liberal ideas of resistance. In doing, so, she provides an in...

Speaker: Nasr al-Hariri, Syrian Negotiation Commission Chair: Ian Black, LSE Middle East Centre The war in Syria has entered its eighth year with a worsening humanitarian crisis and an ever increasing threat to global security. Despite the West’s recent military response to the use of chemical weapons, the Assad regime, backed by Russia and Iran, continues with its military strategy unabated. In a...

Speaker: Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University Discussant: Malu Halasa Chair: Rahaf Aldoughli, University of Manchester This event launches Wendy Pearlman's book, “We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria”. Based on interviews with hundreds of displaced Syrians conducted over four years across the Middle East and Europe, the book features a collection of intimate wartime testimonie...

Speaker: Andrew Noble, former British Ambassador to Algeria Andrew Noble spent more than three years in Algeria, which spanned spanned among other things the start of the oil price crisis, advances in the Libyan and Malian discussions and a significant strengthening of the UK’s bilateral relations with Algeria in many areas. Given the difficulty of access to reliable information about Algeria, thi...

Speakers: Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE Middle East Centre; Steffen Hertog, LSE; Michael Farquhar, King's College London. Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre King Salman of Saudi Arabia began his rule in 2015 confronted with a series of unprecedented challenges. The dilemmas he has faced are new and significant, from leadership shuffles and falling oil prices to regional and international uphea...

Speaker: Güneş Murat Tezcür, University of Central Florida Chair: Zeynep Kaya, LSE Middle East Centre Over the last three decades, tens of thousands of women have joined the ranks of the PKK and its affiliated organisations. What factors explain their violent mobilisation despite life-threatening risks? Building on a unique dataset of more than 9,000 militant bios and in-depth interviews with the...

Speakers: Silvia Quattrini, Minority Rights Group International; Austen Josephs, Alaco Limited; Alexandra Buccianti, BBC Media Action; Jessica Watkins and Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre This talk, jointly hosted by BRISMES and the LSE Middle East Centre, is aimed at students interested in working in or on the Middle East. The panel discussion includes professionals from four different sectors...

* We apologise for the abrupt ending of this podcast. The last few minutes of the recording were corrupted. Speaker: Adel Iskandar, Simon Fraser University Seven years since the popular uprising that shook Egypt, the relationships between state, society, social movements and corporate power have been reconfigured, perhaps even disfigured. On the eve of the anniversary of the January 25 revolution,...

Speaker: Soraya El Kahlaoui, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study In this talk, Soraya El Kahlaoui discusses the ongoing resistance to urban expansion in Rabat, focusing on the Guich Loudaya tribal lands. The Guich lands have today been entirely relinquished to private developers linked to Morocco’s ruling elite who have sought to erect in their place one of the wealthiest neighb...

Speakers: Shereen El-Feki, Chatham House; Joey Ayoub, University of Edinburgh Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Middle East Centre With shifts in the political and economic landscape across the MENA region, the pillars of patriarchy are under increasing pressure. How do men see their lives and the changing world around them, including the roles and rights of women and girls? In this event, Shereen El Fek...

Speaker: Tom Woerner-Powell, University of Manchester Chair: Jonathan Hill, King's College London From his struggle against French colonialism in North Africa to his stand against religious sectarianism in Syria, the actions of Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri have been an inspiration to many. The symbolic father of modern Algeria has frequently been presented as both an exemplary Muslim and a bridge betw...

Speaker: Ian Black, LSE Middle East Centre Discussant: Tom Phillips, Royal College of Defence Studies Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre This talk launches Ian Black’s book Enemies and Neighbours: Enemies and Neighbours: Arabs and Jews in Palestine and Israel, 1917–2017, in which he traces how, half a century after the watershed of the 1967 war, hopes for a two-state solution and an end to...

Speaker: Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE; John Chalcraft, LSE; Ewan Stein, University of Edinburgh Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Three years after the Arab uprisings started in Tunisia, a panel of academics reflect on the causes and drivers behind these seminal events, how they have transformed countries like Egypt; but also why they have had less impact in other countries, such as Saudi Arabia. Recorded on 4 Dec...

Speaker: Christian Emery, University of Plymouth Chair: Roham Alvandi, LSE In this talk, Dr Emery discusses the main findings from his new book: 'US Foreign Policy and the Iranian Revolution: the Cold War Dynamics of Engagement and Strategic Alliance'. He focuses on how US policy objectives in Iran were refashioned in light of three major and converging crises: the Iran hostage crisis, the Soviet...

Speaker: Charles Shamas, MATTIN Group Chair: Federica Bicchi, LSE In July the European Commission published "guidelines on the eligibility of Israeli entities and their activities in the territories occupied by Israel since June 1967 for grants, prizes and financial instruments funded by the EU from 2014 onwards." This step has been variously described as a 'political earthquake', a sanction targe...