Middle East Centre

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 sec...

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 Sociolo...

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 conten...

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 lac...

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"...

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...

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, Oxf...

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...

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...

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...

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 lo...

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...

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 l...

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 re...

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 anthropologis...

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 a...

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 c...

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 i...

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 liberal...

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...

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 Rep...

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) establis...

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 t...

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 pol...

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...