POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast

Jessica Watkins of the London School of Economics joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Creating Consent in an Illiberal Order: Policing Disputes in Jordan. The book focuses on the development of the Jordanian police institution to demonstrate that rather than being primarily concerned with law enforcement, the police are first and foremost concerned with order. (Starts...

Marc Owen Jones Hamad bin Khalifa University  joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media. The book analyzes how social media has been weaponised by states and commercial entities in the Middle East. (Starts at 0:45). Andre Bank of the German Institute for Global and Area Studies and Sean Y...

Hesham Sallam of Stanford University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Classless Politics: Islamist Movements, the Left, and Authoritarian Legacies in Egypt. The book offers an account of the relationship between neoliberal economics and Islamist politics in Egypt that sheds new light on the worldwide trend of “more identity, less class.” (Starts at 0:59). You can re...

Nazanin Shahrokni of the London School of Economics joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran. The book offers a gripping inquiry into gender segregation policies and women’s rights in contemporary Iran. (Starts at 1:07). Tarek Masoud of Harvard University discusses his chapter in The Political Science of the Middle...

Michael Christopher Low of the University of Utah joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj. The book analyzes the late Ottoman hajj and Hijaz region as transimperial spaces, reshaped by the competing forces of Istanbul’s project of frontier modernization and the extraterritorial reach of British India’s steamship empi...

In this week's podcast, Marc Lynch begins the episode by announcing the winners of the American Political Science Association MENA Politics Section Awards. (Starts at 0:56) Maya Mikdashi of the Rutgers University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Sectarianism: Sovereignty, Secularism, and the State in Lebanon. The book analyzes how sex, sexuality, and sect shape and...

On the first episode of Season 12 of the POMEPS Middle East Political Science Podcast, Marc Lynch speaks with Jillian Schwedler of City University of New York, and Sean Yom of Temple University about their co-edited volume, The Political Science of the Middle East: Theory and Research Since the Arab Uprisings. The volume is a definitive overview of what political scientists are working on within t...

José Ciro Martínez of the University of Cambridge joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, States of Subsistence: The Politics of Bread in Contemporary Jordan. The book argues that the state is best understood as the product of routine practices and actions, through which it becomes a stable truth in the lives of citizens. (Starts at 0:57). Jessica Barnes of the University...

Megan Brown of Swarthmore College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, The Seventh Member State: Algeria, France, and the European Community. The book combats understandings of Europe’s “natural” borders by emphasizing the extracontinental contours of the early union. The unification vision was never spatially limited, suggesting that contemporary arguments for geograph...

On this week's episode of the podcast, Jeannie Sowers of University of New Hampshire joins Marc Lynch to discuss POMEPS's newest publication, POMEPS Studies 46:Environmental Politics in the Middle East and North Africa. (Starts at 0:36). Mariam Salehi of Freie University Berlin discusses her new book, Transitional justice in process: Plans and politics in Tunisia. The book discusses the developmen...

Jannis Julien Grimm of the Freie University of Berlin joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Contested Legitimacies: Repression and Revolt in Post-Revolutionary Egypt. The book explores this resilience of contentious politics through a multimethod approach that is attuned to the physical and discursive interactions among key players in Egypt’s protest arena. (Starts at 0:...

Jillian Schwedler of Hunter College joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent. In the book, Schwedler examines protests as they are situated in the built environment, bringing together considerations of networks, spatial imaginaries, space and place-making, and political geographies at local, national, regional, and global...

Michael Provence of University of California San Diego joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, The Last Ottoman Generation and the Making of the Modern Middle East. In the book, Provence examines the collapse of the Ottoman empire through popular political movements and the experience of colonial rule. (Starts at 0:39). Gamze Cavdar of Colorado State University discusses h...

Erin Snider of Texas A&M University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Marketing Democracy: The Political Economy of Democracy Aid In the Middle East. In the book, Snider examines the construction and practice of democracy aid in Washington DC and in Egypt and Morocco and the limited impact of international aid. (Starts at 0:42). Steven Brooke of the University of Wis...

Ora Szekely of Clark University and Peter Krause of Boston College join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science. In the book, political scientists from a diverse range of biographical and academic backgrounds describe research in North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. The...

Andrea Wright of the college of William and Mary joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Between Dreams and Ghosts: Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil. In the book, Wright analyzes how migration is deeply informed both by workers' dreams for the future and the ghosts of history, including the enduring legacies of colonial capitalism. (Starts at 0:42). Basileus Zeno of...

Hatim El-Hibri of George Mason University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure. In the book, El-Hibri analyzes how the creation and circulation of images have shaped the urban spaces and cultural imaginaries of Beirut. (Starts at 0:44). Kevin Koehler of Leiden University discusses his latest article, "Who fakes s...

Pouya Alimagham of Massachusetts Institute of Technology joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Contesting the Iranian Revolution: The Green Uprising. In the book, Alimagham analyzes the history of Iran and the Middle East to highlight how activists contested the Islamic Republic's legitimacy. (Starts at 0:35). Valeria Resta of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study o...

James Shires of Leiden University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, The Politics of Cybersecurity in the Middle East. In the book, Shires analyzes how the label of cybersecurity is repurposed by states, companies and other organizations to encompass a variety of concepts. Cinzia Bianco of the European Council on Foreign Relations discusses the responses of Saudi Arab...

Jill Jarvis of Yale University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss her new book, Decolonizing Memory: Algeria and Politics of Testimony. In the book, Jarvis analyzes the magnitude of the legal violence exercised by the French to colonize and occupy Algeria. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl of Leiden University and Kevin Koehler of Leiden University discuss their latest article, "Governing the...

Michael Hoffman of the University of Notre Dame joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Faith in Numbers: Religion, Sectarianism, and Democracy. In the book, Hoffman discusses how religious identities and sectarian interests play a major part in determining regime preferences. (Starts at 0:44). Devorah Manekin of Hebrew University discusses her latest article, "Effective f...

Jeff Colgan of Brown University joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Partial Hegemony: Oil Politics and International Order. In the book, Colgan offers lessons for leaders and analysts seeking to design new international governing arrangements to manage an array of pressing concerns. (Starts at 0:38). Safa Al-Saeedi of Northwestern University discusses her latest articl...

John Nagle of Queens University Belfast and Tamirace Fakhoury of Aalborg University join Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss their new book, "Resisting Sectarianism: Queer Activism in Postwar Lebanon." In the book, Nagle and Fakhoury examine feminist and LGBTQ social movements in the context of Lebanon's postwar sectarian system. Reva Dhingra of Harvard University discusses her latest art...

Eskandar Sadeghi of the University of London joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, "Revolution and its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran." In the book, Sadeghi examines the rise and evolution of reformist political thought in Iran and analyses the complex network of publications in the 1990s. (Starts at 0:44). Adélie Chevée of the European University Inst...

Asef Bayat of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign joins Marc Lynch on this week's podcast to discuss his new book, Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring. In the book, Bayat seamlessly blends field research, on-the-ground interviews, and social theory to show how the practice of everyday life in Egypt and Tunisia was fundamentally altered by revolutionary activity. (Starts...