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This event was a student careers panel, providing an opportunity to hear insights from panellists covering diverse fields of academia and research, journalism and consultancy in/around the Middle East.
Meet the speakers
Richard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Since 2001 he has worked for the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in Iraq, Libya, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Yemen and regionally, and for the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan and the UN political mission in Yemen. He is the author of Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2011/2015).
Nada Bashir is an award-winning International Correspondent based at CNN’s London bureau. From reporting on the war in Gaza, to devastating natural disasters, Bashir has delivered distinctive coverage of some of the most consequential stories impacting our world, with a particular focus on the Middle East and Europe.
Alexandra Gomes is a Research Fellow responsible for coordinating spatial analysis across a range of projects at LSE Cities. Committed to shaping the future of cities through innovative research and education, her focus spans socio-spatial comparative analysis, urban policy, inequalities, health, sustainable mobility, public space, urban sensescapes, and visual communication.
Mina Toksoz is an International Economist having worked at the Economist Intelligence Unit variously as Editorial Director of the Middle East, Europe, and the Country Risk Service. She was Senior Equity Strategist EMEA at AbnAmro, Senior Manager of Country Risk at Standard Bank and later Lloyds’ Bank.Toksoz is author of The Economist Guide to Country Risk published by Profile Books in 2014, and co-author of Industrial Policy in Turkey, published by Edinburgh University Press in 2023.
This event was chaired by Professor Michael Mason, LSE Middle East Centre.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty -
In this lecture, Professor Amnon Aran will explore the interplay between domestic politics and strategy in Israeli foreign policy, from the end of the Cold War to the 2023-24 Israel-Hamas war. Reflecting upon this tumultuous period in Israel’s history, he shall examine key events and foreign policies shaping this era.
Meet the speaker
Amnon Aran is a Visiting Professor at the LSE Middle East Centre and Professor of International Relations at City, University of London, where he served as Head of the Department of International Politics (2020-2023). His research interests lie in the International Relations of the Middle East and Foreign Policy Analysis. His publications include three monographs, 'Israel's Foreign Policy towards the PLO: The Impact of Globalization' (Sussex Academic Press, 2009); 'Foreign Policy Analysis: New Approaches' (Routledge, 2016), with Chris Alden; and 'Israeli Foreign Policy since the End of the Cold War' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). -
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This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was the launch of Mustafa Kemal Topal's latest book 'Women Fighters in the Kurdish National Movement: Transforming Gender Politics and the PKK' published by I.B. Tauris.
This book examines how the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has become a platform for shifts in gender politics through its women fighters. Based on fieldwork undertaken in Iraq, Syria and Europe - including in-depth interviews and participant observation within women's camps - the book examines Kurdish women fighters' motivations to join the PKK, as well as their personal life stories and views on gender, patriarchy, and ethnic minority experiences.
This is the largest ethnographic study on the PKK to date and the book argues that in addition to seeking their nation's struggle for survival and a democratic society, Kurdish women fighters are driven by the prospect of improving conditions for themselves and for women across the entire region.
Meet the speaker
Mustafa Kemal Topal is Assistant Professor at the Roskilde University in Denmark, where he also received his PhD. He is a fellow at the Bergen University in Norway, having been awarded the Independent Research Fund Denmark International’s Postdoctoral Grant for his new project ‘Kurdish Women’s Democratic Experiment in Post-Conflict Northern Syria’.
This event was moderated by Robert Lowe.
Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Center and Co-Editor of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series published by I.B. Tauris. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria. -
This event was a launch of Professor Christopher Phillips' latest book 'Battleground: 10 Conflicts that Explain the New Middle East' published by Yale University Press.
The Middle East is in crisis. The shocking events of the war in Gaza have rocked the entire region. More than a decade ago, the Arab Spring had raised hopes of a new beginning but instead ushered in a series of civil wars, coups, and even harsher autocracies. Tensions were exacerbated by the meddling of outsiders, as regional and global powers sought to further their interests. The United States, for so long the dominant actor, had stepped back, leaving a vacuum behind it to be fought over.
Christopher Phillips explores geopolitical rivalries in the region, and the major external powers vying for influence: Russia, China, the EU, and the US. Moving through ten key flashpoints, from Syria to Palestine, Phillips argues that the United States’ overextension after the Cold War, and retreat in the 2010s, has imbalanced the region. Today, the Middle East remains blighted by conflicts of unprecedented violence and a post-American scramble for power – leaving its fate in the balance.
Meet the speakers
Christopher Phillips is Professor in International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. Phillips joined the School in January 2012, having previously worked as deputy editor for Syria and Jordan at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He is currently an associate fellow at the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House, working primarily on the Syria conflict and its impact on neighbouring states and the wider Middle East. He is co-curator of ‘Syria: story of a conflict’ a public exhibition at the Imperial War Museum and the Imperial War Museum North. He was a Visiting Scholar at the Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University in 2014 & 2015. Chris lived in Syria for two years, in Aleppo, Damascus and Latakia, and much of his research focuses on that country. Phillips is also author of The Battle for Syria: International Rivalry in the New Middle East published by Yale University Press in 2016.
Faisal Al Yafai is International Editor at New Lines Magazine. He is a journalist, playwright, and partner at Hildebrand Nord. He was previously an investigative journalist for The Guardian in London and a documentary journalist for the BBC, and has reported from across the Middle East, from Eastern Europe, Russia and Indonesia.
This event was moderated by Rim Turkmani.
Rim Turkmani is a Senior Research Fellow in LSE IDEAS and the Research Director for Conflict Research Programme work in Syria. Rim is also the Principal Investigator of the Legitimacy and Civicness in the Arab World research project at the LSE Middle East Centre. Rim's research focuses on legitimate governance in the Middle East with an emphasis on constitutional legitimacy and local conflict and peace drivers. -
How did the radio, a major technological development in the history of sound and music, change the social, cultural and political landscape of the region?
In this last episode of the season, we speak to audio curator Hazem Jamjoum, and Elias Anastas and Saeed Abu Jaber, two of the co-founders of the Palestinian radio station Radio Al Hara. We find out more about the history of the radio in the region and also it's present – specifically looking at how this new technology was used by imperialists, technocrats, intellectuals and liberation groups to broadcast and connect groups. Through Radio Al Hara's activity, we learn how radio works in similar ways to this day.
Hazem Jamjoum is an audio curator and researcher with an interest in history of audio and music recording in the Arab world
Elias Anastas is a co-founder of Radio Al Hara. He is an architect based in Bethlehem, Palestine and runs an architectural studio with his brother Yousef called AAU ANASTAS. They also run Wonder Cabinet, a not-for-profit cultural platform.
Saeed Abu Jaber is one of the founders of radio al hara. He is a graphic designer and runs a studio called Turbo in Amman, Jordan.
https://www.radioalhara.net/ -
As of April 2024, according to UN experts, over 80% of schools have been damaged or destroyed by the Israeli assault on Gaza, with 5479 students, 261 teachers and 95 university professors killed and many thousands injured. Every university in Gaza is partially or wholly destroyed, whether by bombing or demolition. Amidst the systematic destruction of lives, communities and environments what possibility, if any, is left for education? What does learning mean under conditions of 'scholasticide'?
Meet the speakers
Ahmed Abu Shaban is the Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine at Al-Azhar University — Gaza and an Associate Professor of Agricultural Economics. Abu Shaban spent two years as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Environmental Sociology at the University of Wisconsin. In addition to his academic experience, Abu Shaban has conducted several consultancy studies on the socioeconomic assessment of national water and environmental infrastructure programs. He has extensive research and consultancy experience in analysing economic development in the Gaza Strip and designing intervention strategies for humanitarian, early recovery, and development programs.
Esmat Elhalaby is an Assistant Professor of Transnational History at the University of Toronto. He works principally on the intellectual history of West and South Asia, particularly colonial and anti-colonial thought. His writing has appeared in Modern Intellectual History, American Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Boston Review, The Baffler and elsewhere. -
This webinar was a launch of 'Industrial Policy in Turkey: Rise, Retreat and Return' by William Hale, Mustafa Kutlay and Mina Toksoz published by Edinburgh University Press.
At a time when many advanced and emerging economies are adopting more active industrial policies, this book provides an in-depth historical–empirical account of industrial policy in Turkey – its rise, retreat and return.
This study adopts a multidisciplinary approach and covers the role of the state in Turkey’s initial industrialisation to the current period of restructuring and potential technological upgrading of its manufacturing base. The analysis traces how industrial policy has been shaped by state capacity, the waves of reforms following economic crises, the dearth of long-term finance for industrialisation and, more recently, the need to address issues such as low-tech industrial structure and pre-mature de-industrialisation.
The book aims to answer questions of what worked and what went wrong with previous policies. It asks how current policies could be shaped to overcome the problems of cronyism and corruption, and also achieve new objectives of technological upgrading and socio-environmental sustainability.
William Hale is an Emeritus Professor at SOAS, having retired as Professor of Politics with Special Reference to Turkey in 2006. His main interests are the modern politics and international relations of Turkey.
Mustafa Kutlay is a senior lecturer in the Department of International Politics at City, University of London. His current research focuses on the comparative politics and political economy of developing countries (with particular reference to Turkey, Turkish politics and foreign policy), institutions and development in the global South, and political risk analysis.
Mina Toksoz is an International Economist having worked at the Economist Intelligence Unit variously as Editorial Director of the Middle East, Europe, and the Country Risk Service.
Arda Bilgen is a Research Officer at the LSE Middle East Centre, where he works on the PeaceRep project ‘Surface Water Changes in the Euphrates-Tigris Basin since 1984 and their Governance Implications for Iraq’, led by Dr Michael Mason. His work mainly focuses on water politics, transboundary water resources management, and hydraulic infrastructure development. -
This episode explores the link between technology, warfare and nationalism. Turkey and Israel are two countries in the region who have developed their technological capabilities for both domestic and international conflict. We speak to two researchers who have been tracing the use of military technologies and the effect they have had on a sense of nationalism amongst their populations.
Digdem Solaytin Colella speaks to the regime-boosting effects of drone production in Turkey whilst Sophia Goodfriend provides a more granular analysis of how military technology has transformed a new generation of Israeli soldiers’ views of Palestinians and Israeli occupation.
Digdem is Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Aberdeen. Her research concentrates on the politics of corruption, mechanisms of state capture and regime survival, autocratic bureaucracies & illiberal governance, and Southeast European and Turkish politics.
Sophia is a PhD candidate at Duke University’s Department of Cultural Anthropology and Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Fellow. Her academic work examines the ethics and impact of new surveillance technologies in Israel and Palestine. -
What does the era of ‘big data’ mean for development technologies in MENA? How can data be used for good, to ensure projects working with vulnerable communities such as informal workers and women are seen and supported? What kind of repercussions does poor data collection have on emerging technologies? How can data-driven research and technology improve prospects for the next generation in the region seeking work, and what does it mean for the future of labour in the region?
These are some of the questions we posed to Nagla Rizk, Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo in episode 8.
Nagla is Professor of Economics and Founding Director of the Access to Knowledge for Development Center (A2K4D) at the American University in Cairo’s School of Business. Nagla’s area of research, teaching and advocacy is the economics of knowledge, technology and development, with focus on governance of responsible data and Artificial Intelligence, fair work in the platform economy, innovation, gender and inclusion in Egypt, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). -
Writer and art critic, Rahel Aima, who grew up and currently lives in Dubai, talks to us about living in the Gulf, a region rapidly developing itself as the place to be for smart cities and high-tech living.
Rahel explores a concept she has been thinking about for some time, the Khaleeji Ideology, which meets at the intersection of technology, economy, the environment and nation building, as a way of understanding developments in the contemporary Gulf.
This episode also features comment from Michael Mason, Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Professor of Environmental Geography at LSE, who explores the rise of “progressive” urban development projects in the Gulf, and whether technology can be the solution to pressing environmental challenges of our time.
Rahel Aima is a writer, critic, and editor from Dubai. She writes about art, technology and the Gulf. Her work has been published in Artforum, Artnews, ArtReview, The Atlantic, Bookforum, frieze, Mousse and Vogue Arabia, amongst others.
Read Rahel’s ‘The Khaleeji Ideology’ here: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/horizons/498319/the-khaleeji-ideology/. -
This event, co-organised with LSE IDEAS, was the launch of the special issue ‘Arab Constitutional Responses to the Revolutions and Transformations in the Region’ published in the Journal of Constitutional Law in the Middle East and North Africa.
The special issue is the result of a two year collaboration between the Carnegie Corporation, the Arab Association of Constitutional Law, and LSE.
In the issue, 22 Arab scholars and experts have worked together to investigate the constitutional responses to the Arab Spring in ten different Arab countries including Bahrain, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt and many more. The case studies examined in this special issue explore both the opportunities that were raised by the prospect of a constitutional change in the wake of the Arab Spring, as well as the many challenges they faced.
Meet the Speakers
Rim Turkmani is a Senior Policy Fellow at the LSE, based at the LSE Middle East Centre and LSE IDEAS. She is the Principal Investigator of the 'Legitimacy and Civicness in the Arab World' research project. Her research focuses on legitimate governance in the Middle East with an emphasis on constitutional legitimacy and local conflict and peace drivers.
Nathan J. Brown is a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, and Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Among his works are The Rule of Law in the Arab World and Constitutions in a Non Constitutional World.
Tamara El Khoury is the Executive Director of the Arab Association of Constitutional Law, Editor of the Journal of Constitutional Law in the Middle East and North Africa, and a constitutional expert at the Max Planck Foundation for International Peace and the Rule of Law. She has been involved in constitutional and institutional reform processes in Libya, Jordan, Mali, Somalia, and South Sudan, working extensively with both institutional actors and civil society organizations. Tamara teaches Constitutional Law at IE University in Madrid.
Azza Kamel Maghur is a Libyan lawyer, human rights activist, and constitutional law expert. Azza is known for defending political prisoners, advocating for human rights , including women’s rights, NGOs, and openly calling for a constitution in Libya. She spearheaded a legal committee to draft the law concerning NGOs and worked on further legislations, including the election law of 2012. Azza has published numerous legal articles in both Arabic and English. -
Nearly ten years since the onset of the crisis in Yemen this discussion provided an in-depth assessment of the conflict over the past decade. Panellists examined the local origins of the war, the humanitarian catastrophe that has ensued, and the challenges for sustainable development given the prolonged violence. Regional dynamics fueling the crisis were also analysed, including factors related to the war in Gaza. With the March 2024 milestone approaching, speakers assessed stalled peace efforts and policy options for international stakeholders moving forward.
Ahmed Al Khameri is the Team Leader for the FCDO-funded programme, The Yemen Support Fund at Chemonics UK. Most recently, he was the governance advisor under the DFID Yemen team leading DFID’s stabilization and governance efforts.
Marwa Baabbad is Director of the Yemen Policy Centre. She is a researcher and development consultant with over ten years of experience working in the fields of community engagement, gender, peace and security, and youth political inclusion.
Andreas Krieg is Associate Professor at the School of Security Studies at King’s College London and a Fellow at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies. Andreas is the Director of MENA analytica – a political risk firm – that works on Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
Greg Shapland is an independent researcher, writer and consultant on politics, security, resources and environment (including water) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Greg is also a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. From 1979 until 2015, he served in the MENA Research Group in the FCO. -
How can art complicate claims of progress, innovation and the use of rapidly developing emerging technologies in MENA? In this episode, Cima Chehab speaks to visual artist Nadim Choufi about how he incorporates technology into his artwork both as subject matter and as medium.
In the conversation, they discuss Nadim’s own artistic practice, his use of “lecture performances” and the question of whether life is truly enhanced by progress and technology, which is one of the main questions that underpins his work. Nadim also explores emerging art in the Middle East and how technology has transformed a new generation of artists – from digital illustrations to meme accounts.
Nadim is a visual artist living in Beirut. He primarily focuses on the material histories and futures of innovation and desire, their social and political driving forces, and the visual and literary practices that surround them. He is a 2024 resident at the Jan van Eyck Academy. Currently he is the curator of the film programme of the 2024 festival edition of transmediale and a researcher at Haven For Artists. Previously he was co-Programs Director at Beirut Art Center.
https://nadimchoufi.com/ -
Majd Al-Shihabi of 'Palestine Open Maps' and Sana Yazigi of the 'Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution' talk to us about how they have centered their archiving processes around maps, and what digital archiving can do for Palestinian and Syrian community-building.
This episode also features comment from Dr Sara Salem and Dr Mai Taha of LSE, who explore the importance of creative archiving through their project 'Archive Stories'.
Note: this episode was recorded before October 7, 2023.
Majd Al-Shihabi is a technologist turned urban planner, turned technologisturbanplanner. Majd is co-founder of Palestine Open Maps, a platform for searching, navigating, downloading and digitizing historical maps of Palestine. Majd was the inaugural Bassel Khartabil Free Culture Fellow which enabled him to start Palestine Open Maps.
https://palopenmaps.org/en
Sana Yazigi is a graphic designer and cultural activist. She is the founder of Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution, a project that documents all types of creative expressions produced since the Syrian Revolution in 2011 until the present day. She is also the founder of The Cultural Diary, Syria's first bilingual monthly cultural agenda (2007-2012).
https://creativememory.org/
https://archive-stories.com/ -
This event was the launch Zoe Hurley's new book 'Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition'.
Evaluating the cases of multiple influencers, from local to transnational content creators, Hurley reveals how residents, non-citizens and migrant workers survive as influencers in the city of ‘likes.’ Providing de-Westernising perspectives of Dubai’s social media influencing industry within the broader context of global platform capitalism, the book offers an important contribution to the field of social media through illustrating visible economies in a city circuited by social media influencing.
Zoe Hurley is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Assistant Professor in the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Her research focuses on postdigital cultures, feminist-semiotics and social media in the Arabian Gulf. She has published articles in leading academic journals, including Feminist Media Studies, Visual Communication, New Media + Society, Social Media & Society, Information Communication & Society, Postdigital Science and Education. Her monograph, 'Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition', advances decolonial semiotic theorising.
Sarah Hopkyns is an Assistant Professor/Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, UK. She has previously worked in higher education in the United Arab Emirates, Canada, and Japan. Her research interests include world Englishes, language and identity, language policy, translingual practice, linguistic ethnography, linguistic landscapes and English-medium instruction (EMI).
Polly Withers is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre, where she leads the project “Neoliberal Visions: Gendering Consumer Culture and its Resistances in the Levant”. Polly’s interdisciplinary work questions and explores how gender, sexuality, race, and class intersect in popular culture and commercial media in the global south. -
This event was co-organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa.
This panel explored the crisis in Sudan through the prism of ‘disconnection’, exploring the various disconnects and discordances that have formed between Sudanese popular groups, state institutions and international institutions. Stopping the violence and addressing Sudan’s trauma will ultimately require domestic and international actors to align formal policy-making processes with popular realities on the ground. Speakers explored this notion of disconnection and consider how the sudden displacement of the Sudanese elite from its capital city might re-orient Sudanese politics in future. The panel finally discussed how such disconnections might be repaired.
Mai Hassan is Associate Professor in the Political Science Department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Her work examines topics that span across authoritarian regimes, bureaucracy and public administration, and contentious politics.
Kholood Khair is a Sudanese political analyst and the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a "think-and-do" tank based in Khartoum. She is also a radio broadcaster, hosting and co-producing a weekly radio program, Spotlight 249, that is Sudan's first English-language political discussion and debate show aimed at Sudanese youth.
Laura Mann is Associate Professor in International Development in the Department of International Development, LSE and a research affiliate of the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. Laura is a sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda). -
Iraq’s engagement with fintech is new but rapidly developing, amidst a contemporary economic history that has struggled with foreign intervention and internal corruption, while Iranians have been engaging with a form of fintech - alternative digital currencies - for some time, to evade and work around sanctions and a crippled economy.
In this episode we speak to Ali Al-Hilli and Shayan Eskandari, who are working at the intersection of technology and finance, to improve the livelihoods and prosperity in their home countries.
Ali Al-Hilli is a tech entrepeneur from Iraq with over 14 years of experience in business development, telecommunications, and fintech. He is currently Marketing and Communications Director at Miswag, the largest and oldest homegrown e-commerce startup in Iraq.
Shayan Eskandari is a PhD candidate at Concordia University. Originally from Iran, he has a background in blockchain engineering. Shayan is actively involved in creating and supporting open-source projects related to cryptocurrencies. He has been working on nonprofit educational content in Farsi on the topic of blockchain and cryptocurrencies for over a decade.
Find out more about their work here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alihilli?originalSubdomain=jo
https://shayan.es/ -
This event was the launch Eylaf Bader Eddin's new book 'Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution' published by De Gruyter Press.
For activists, researchers, and journalists, the Syrian Revolution was primarily a revolution in language; a break with the linguistic oppression and rigidity of old regimes. This break was accompanied by the emergence of new languages, which made it possible to inform, tell, and translate ongoing events and transformations. This language of the revolution was carried out into the world by competing voices from Syria, by local and foreign researchers, activists, and journalists.
While the Arab revolutions have triggered extensive social and political changes, the far-reaching consequences of their cultural and discursive changes have yet to be adequately considered. Bader Eddin's book analyses the various translations of the language of the Syrian Revolution (2011–2012) from Arabic to English. By doing so, exploring the discursive and non-discursive dimensions of the revolution as another act of translation, tracing the language of the banners, slogans, graffiti, songs, and their representation in English.
This event will launch Eylaf Bader Eddin's new book Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution published by De Gruyter Press.
For activists, researchers, and journalists, the Syrian Revolution was primarily a revolution in language; a break with the linguistic oppression and rigidity of old regimes. This break was accompanied by the emergence of new languages, which made it possible to inform, tell, and translate ongoing events and transformations. This language of the revolution was carried out into the world by competing voices from Syria, by local and foreign researchers, activists, and journalists.
While the Arab revolutions have triggered extensive social and political changes, the far-reaching consequences of their cultural and discursive changes have yet to be adequately considered. Bader Eddin's book analyses the various translations of the language of the Syrian Revolution (2011–2012) from Arabic to English. By doing so, exploring the discursive and non-discursive dimensions of the revolution as another act of translation, tracing the language of the banners, slogans, graffiti, songs, and their representation in English.
Meet the speakers
Eylaf Bader Eddin is a Research Fellow on the project 'The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics' (SYRASP) and a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien. Bader Eddin is also a Researcher in the Department of Arabic Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Harmoon Center for Contemporary Studies, Qatar. His current post-doc research explores Syrian prison musical performances. He has studied Arabic, English and comparative literature in Aix-en-Provence, Beirut, Damascus, Marburg and Paris. Bader Eddin's research has been published in Arabic, English and French, including the Arabic book, ‘When They Cried ‘Forever’: The Language of the Syrian Revolution in 2018’, for which he received the Sadiq Jalal al-Azm Award by Etijahat.
Nesrin Alrefaai is a Visiting Fellow and Arabic Content Editor at the LSE Middle East Centre. She holds a Doctorate degree in Drama and Theatre Education from the University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests are language, arts, and politics in the Middle East with a special focus on Syria. -
What kind of advancements have we seen in artificial intelligence in the Middle East and North Africa in the contemporary period, how has this technology been used for good and where has it maintained structures of inequality?
In this talk by Nagla Rizk, Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo, the potential opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence were explored, with an emphasis on the future of work and questions of knowledge production in relation to development.
This webinar was also the launch of the latest season of the LSE Middle East Centre's podcast series 'Instant Coffee'. This latest season will explore technology and its developments in the region, with the first episode being released on Tuesday 30 January.
For further details about this event: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2024/artificial-intelligence-development-nagla-rizk -
Smartphones, food-only debit cards, biometric data checks at border crossings, these are some of the ways refugees and migrants interact with technology in their daily lives both in the region and the diaspora.
This episode unpacks the benefits, ambivalences and concerns surrounding these technologies. Our guests, Dr Reem Talhouk and Dr Yener Bayramoğlu discuss refugee-centered design technologies for humanitarian aid as well as smartphone usage amongst refugees and migrants and how it has given them control over their own lives and narratives as they cross borders.
Reem Talhouk is an Assistant Professor in Design and Global Develpment at Northumbria University where she co-leads the Design Feminisms Research Group. Reem also leads the Global Development Futures Hub. Her work sits within design, and human and computer interaction. Reem works with communities considered to be ‘on the margins’ to design technologies and counter-narratives with a focus on humanitarianism, activism and social movements.
Yener Bayramoglu is Assistant Professor in Digital Media at York University. His current research explores the role of digital media in everyday practices of belonging. Yener is particularly interested in the ambivalent meaning and function of digital media for social groups whose lives are marginalised and shaped by intersectional inequalities. Yener has previously explored how digital media technologies turn into self-empowering tools for migrants, refugees and LGBTIQ+ people. - Visa fler
