Middle East Centre Booktalk

Professor Marilyn Booth (Magdalen College) discusses her new translation of ‘Sa'iba’ by Alis al-Bustani (1891) with Samir al-Boustany and Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). ABOUT THE BOOK Alis al-Bustani's 'Sa'iba' (1891) is one of the earliest known novels authored in Arabic by a female writer. Written when the Arabic novel was only in its third or fourth decade, it takes up the l...

Author, Dr Orçun Can Okan (St Antony’s College) introduces his new book 'Needs That Bind: Materializing Nationality in Post-Ottoman Regimes', chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). ‘Needs That Bind’ reconsiders the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the construction of new regimes in the decade after World War I, to understand the consequential connections that remained a...

Author, Joost Hiltermann discusses his debut novel 'The Resurrected' with Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). They were meant to be dead, buried under the sand. But they survived. Two young Kurds manage to miraculously escape Saddam Hussein’s killing grounds to eventually find their way to America. A story of luck, nerve and perseverance, with many setbacks along the way. Partially based...

Dr Chihab El Khachab (Wolfson College) discusses his new book ‘Constructing the Achievement State: Cultural Administration in Postrevolutionary Egypt’. Chaired by Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College). After the 1952 revolution, the Egyptian state became an ideological project promoted by national cultural and media institutions. Focusing particularly on the years under the leadership of...

In this joint Refugee Studies Centre and Middle East Centre seminar, Dr Houman Oliaei discusses his new book. Chaired by Professor Pascal Menoret (Magdalen College). After ISIS's 2014 genocide, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis fled Sinjar, their ancestral homeland in northern Iraq. Most stayed within Iraq's borders, settling in camps and informal settlements in the Kurdistan Region. While global a...

Dr Katharina Galor (Brown University) discusses her new book 'Out of Gaza: A Tale of Love, Exile, and Friendship'. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). Out of Gaza tells the story of Dima Mansour, a young Palestinian who suffers hardship growing up in Jordan and Gaza during the Gaza War of 2014, later escaping to be with the man she loves in Belgium, where she is held in a dete...

In this lecture, Saeb Eigner offers a journey through more than a century of modern and contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa, as documented in ‘Artists of the Middle East: 1900 to Now’. Spanning from 1900 to the present, the book brings together over 250 major artists — from early modernists to today’s leading contemporary voices — across a vast geographic area stretching from Mo...

This seminar was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Tuesday 3 March 2026 by Dr Alfonso Casani (Complutense University of Madrid) and was chaired by Professor Michael Willis (St Antony’s College). Alfonso Casani is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). He is Research associate of the Group of Studies...

This book talk was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Tuesday 10 February 2026 by author, Dr Daniel Neep (Brandeis University), and chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). A Modern History of Syria (2026) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/213366/a-history-of-modern-syria-by-neep-daniel/9780241003299 Few countries have had as vexed a political history as Syria. Carved out of the...

This book talk was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Thursday 24 February 2026 by Tareq Baconi (author) in conversation with Dr Ammar Azzouz (Somerville College). Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He is the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa and grew up between Amman and Beirut. His work has appeared in, among others, The New York Times and The Baffler, a...

This seminar was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Thursday 19 February 2026 by Professor Simon Mabon (Lancaster University), and was chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail (St Antony’s College).

This book talk was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Thursday 12 February 2026 by Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (Rice University) and was chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail (St Antony’s College). Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaking of World Soccer (Hurst & Co, 2025) www.hurstpublishers.com/book/kingdom-of-football This talk explores how and why Saudi Arabia burst onto the la...

In this seminar, Ambassador Nabeela Al Mulla, author, is in conversation with Professor Eugene Rogan, MEC Director, about her new book ‘Breaking New Ground on the Global Stage: Memoirs of Kuwait’s First Woman Ambassador’. In this Gender and Sexuality Series seminar, Ambassador Nabeela Al Mulla, author, is in conversation with Professor Eugene Rogan, MEC Director, about her new book ‘Brea...

Seminar in English and Arabic. Professor Said Laouadi, winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025, discusses his book ‘Food and Language: Rhetorical-Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), with Professor Eugene Rogan. Seminar in English and Arabic. Professor Said Laouadi, winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025 for Literary and Art Criticism, discusses his book ‘الطعام والكلام: حفريات بل...

This seminar discusses the inaugural Bait AlGhasham DarArab International Translation Prize winner, ‘Safe Corridor’; a bold, unforgettable novel of war, imagination, and survival. Kurdish-Syrian novelist, Jan Dost; translator, Professor Marilyn Booth; Director of the Bait AlGhasham DarArab International Translation Prize, Ali Al Mujaini; and Founder and Director of DarArab for Publishing & Tra...

In this Contemporary Islamic Studies seminar, Dr Haroon Bashir discusses his new book ‘Slavery, Abolition and Islam: Debating Freedom in the Islamic Tradition’ published in January 2025 by Oxford University Press Bio: Dr Haroon Bashir is Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. He also serves as the Director of the Markfield Centre for Contemporary Islam....

In this joint seminar with the Asian Studies Centre, Dr Erin MB O’Halloran, University of Cambridge, presents her new book 'East of Empire' (2025 Stanford University Press). Chaired by Professor Faisal Devji (St Antony’s College). For many years, scholars, politicians and activists have drawn comparisons between the partitions of India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine, two seismic events which took p...

In this joint seminar with Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, Wendy Pearlman, Professor at Northwestern University, shares personal testimonies collected from displaced Syrians around the world. Abstract: Over 13 years, Northwestern University Professor Wendy Pearlman has interviewed more than 500 displaced Syrians around the world about their lives under a brutal authoritarian regime, th...

In this Friday seminar, Jérôme Drevon discusses his book ‘From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics’ (OUP 2024). Bio Jérôme Drevon is senior analyst on Jihad and Modern Conflict at the International Crisis Group (ICG). Jerome studies the evolution of non-state armed groups with a special emphasis on Jihadis, especially how they can become more pragmatic overtime. For the past fe...

On Tuesday 18 February 2025, the Middle East Centre hosted the launch for St Antony’s Emeritus Fellow, Professor Avi Shlaim’s, new book ‘Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine’ (Irish Pages Press, 2025). On Tuesday 18 February 2025, the Middle East Centre hosted the launch for St Antony’s Emeritus Fellow, Professor Avi Shlaim’s, new book ‘Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine’...

A launch event for ‘The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey’ (OUP), jointly convened by the MEC and SEESOX, with panellists Caroline Tee, Fabio Vicini, Sertaç Sehlikoğlu, and Stefan Williamson Fa. A launch event for ‘The Oxford Handbook of Religion in Turkey’ (OUP), jointly convened by the Middle East Centre and South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX), with a panel from the Handbook’s edi...

Sonja Mejcher-Atassi, author of ‘An Impossible Friendship’, Marilyn Booth, author of ‘The Career and Communities of Zaynab Fawwaz’, and Peter Hill, author of ‘Prophet of Reason’, discuss the writing of biography in modern Middle Eastern history. Book abstracts: ‘An Impossible Friendship: Group Portrait, Jerusalem Before and After 1948’ – In Jerusalem, as World War II was coming to an end, an extra...

In this talk, Dr Elham Fakhro, a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, launches her new book ‘The Abraham Accords: The Gulf States, Israel, and the Limits of Normalization’ Elham Fakhro is a Research Fellow at the Middle East Initiative, Belfer Center, at the Harvard Kennedy School. She previously acted as Senior Analyst with the International Crisis Group and held teaching and research r...

In this talk, Iraqi political analyst, Sajad Jiyad, discusses his new book ‘God’s Man in Iraq: The Life and Leadership of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’. In his new book, ‘God’s Man in Iraq: The Life and Leadership of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’, Century International fellow Sajad Jiyad draws on original sources and hundreds of interviews during decades of fieldwork inside Iraq to show how Si...

Researcher and writer, Rusha Latif, gives a talk based on her new book ‘Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution’ Abstract: In this talk based on her new book ‘Tahrir’s Youth: Leaders of a Leaderless Revolution’, Rusha Latif will challenge the commonly held belief that the 2011 Egyptian revolution was spontaneous and leaderless, through a provocative new account of the revolutionaries—on...