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Middle East Centre

Oxford Universitywww.sant.ox.ac.uk
The Middle East Centre, founded in 1957 at St Antony’s College is the centre for the interdisciplinary study of the modern Middle East in the University of Oxford. Centre Fellows teach and conduct research in the humanities and social sciences with direct reference to the Arab world, Iran, Israel and Turkey, with particular emphasis on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, during our regular Friday seminar series, attracting a wide audience, our distinguished speakers bring topics to light that touch on contemporary issues.

Episodes

Tunisia: Unfinished Revolutions (Held jointly with the British-Tunisian Society)

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 for the establishment of democratic institutions. However, like all such events, it is part of a pr...

Mar 12, 202151 min

Libya: Past, Present and Future

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 the killing of Gaddafi in October 2011 marked the beginning of a challenging transition that has be...

Mar 09, 202157 min

The Place of Religion After the Uprisings

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 long-standing grassroots presence and their ability to effectively organise for elections. Yet ten yea...

Feb 26, 202157 min

Iraq and Lebanon – Revolt Against Sectarianism?

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 popular demonstrations would demand the fall of the regime in both countries. With their electoral ...

Feb 23, 202156 min

The logic of chaos: The pattern of dictatorships

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 leaders using authoritarian tools. Although in each country this attack is perceived as an independen...

Dec 09, 202054 min

Why Syria Still Matters and Why Assad is Still There

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 remains a central state in the Middle East. Regional stability cannot be restored while Syria’s confli...

Dec 03, 202057 min

Apocalymbo: Trickster Politics in the Age of the Pandemic (and Other Crises)

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 anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography ...

Nov 25, 202058 min

‘God Does not Discriminate’: Inclusive Mosques Politics in France and the United Kingdom

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 and sexuality have been established in France and the United Kingdom. Known as ‘inclusive mosques’, t...

Nov 24, 202045 min

The Trajectory of the Tunisian Revolution: between Continuities and Disjunctures

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 crisis, social instability and political paralysis while nostalgia for authoritarian rule seems on th...

Nov 18, 202058 min

The New Populist nationalism in Saudi Arabia

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 in Saudi Arabia under Crown Prince Muhammad ibn Salman. In recent years, Saudi Arabia has seen swift ...

Nov 17, 202058 min

Illiberal Liberals and the Future of Dictatorship in Egypt

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 liberalism, despite at face value being wholly opposed to dictatorship, ultimately proved susceptible to th...

Nov 10, 20201 hr

Challenging the Limited View - The Case of the Women in Mosques Movement

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 also aroused genuine discussion about the deeply held beliefs underlying the place given to women a...

Nov 06, 202030 min

Authoritarian or Revolutionary? Reflections on the Nature of the State in the Islamic Republic of Iran

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 Republic: although the authoritarian office of supreme leadership and the security apparatuses strictly...

Nov 04, 202052 min

The Dictatorship Syndrome

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) established Al Aswany as a global literary figure. This was followed by Chicago (2007), The Automobile Club ...

Oct 23, 202053 min

Refugee Studies Centre: Book launch - Palestinian Refugees in International Law

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 the creation of the state of Israel over seventy years ago, remains one of the largest, most protract...

Apr 02, 202057 min

The Saudi Arabia of Muhammad bin Salman: How Much Change?

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 policy, since 2017 as crown prince. While it is incontestable that the young prince has made substantia...

Feb 25, 202048 min

Book Launch - Utopia and Civilisation in the Arab Nahda

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 Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and was previously a Junior Research Fellow at Christ ...

Feb 12, 202047 min

The struggle for Iraq's political field after the assassination of Qasim Sulimani, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis; the protest movement, Iraq's militias and the ruling elite

Professor Toby Dodge, LSE, gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre seminar series. Chaired by Dr Toby Matthiesen (St. Antony's College, Oxford). The assassination, on 2 January 2020, of Qasim Sulimani, the Commander of the Quds Force of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the senior commander of Al-Hashd Al-Sha'abi and the founder of Kata'ib Hezbollah militia, has thrown Iraqi and wider regional politics into turmoil. However, Iraqi politics were already in a sta...

Feb 07, 202036 min

Justice and Islamic Law: Mazalim Courts and Legal Reform

Professor Jonathan Brown, Georgetown University, gives a talk for the Middle East seminar series. Chaired by Dr Usaama al-Azami (St Antony's College). What do we do when our legal system produces results that seem unjust? If we believe that our legal system is itself just, how do we even understand our perception of its unjust outcomes? These are global questions, but ones that have been particularly vexing for Muslims and their tradition of Shariah law. This talk will discuss how Muslims have t...

Jan 29, 202047 min

Iran, Iraq and the US after the Qasim Sulemani assassination

Panel discussion looking at US, Iranian and Iraqi politics after the Qasim Sulemani assassination. Held in Oxford on Monday, 20th January 2020 Speakers:, Maj Gen Felix Gedney (Academic Visitor at St Antony's College), Emma Sky OBE (Yale Jackson Institution), Lt. Gen. Sir Simon Mayall KBE, CB (Middle East Advisor at the Ministry of Defence), Dr Toby Matthiesen (St Antony's College)

Jan 28, 202046 min

Iraq and Iran: old foes, ambivalent allies

Ambassador Wilks CMG (HM British Ambassador to Iraq), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series. Jon Wilks has just finished a two year posting as UK Ambassador to Iraq, his third posting to Iraq since he reopened the Embassy in Baghdad in 2003. He has served 30 years in the UK diplomatic service with a Middle East focus, including Ambassadorial postings to Yemen (10-11) and Oman (14-17). He was also UK Syria Envoy 2012-2014. He is a fluent Arabist and was the first UK Arabic Spokes...

Nov 15, 201934 min

Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution

Professor Walter Armbrust (St. Antony's College, Oxford) gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre seminar series. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St. Antony's College, Oxford). Dr Walter Armbrust is Hourani Fellow and Associate Professor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies. He is a cultural anthropologist, and author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (1996); Martyrs and Tricksters: An Ethnography of the Egyptian Revolution (2019); and various other works focusing on popular culture, ...

Oct 22, 20191 hr 7 min

Hirak: A roundtable on the Algerian protests

Roundtable discussion looking at the Algerian protests. With Michael Willis (St Antony’s College), James McDougall (Trinity College), Hicham Yezza (Ceasefire Magazine) and Latefa Guemar (University of East London). Since late February, millions of Algerians have been taking to the streets of towns and cities across the country in massive, peaceful, weekly demonstrations. President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, whose projected candidacy for a fifth term of office sparked the protests, has resigned. Two f...

Jun 20, 201957 min

Lecture and Book Launch- The politics of family law reform in Jordan and Morocco: Two seemingly similar monarchies, two different approaches

Dr Dorthe Engelcke (Max Planck Institute, Hamburg) gives a discussion Chair: Dr Michael Willis (St Antony's College). Family law – the law regulating marriage, divorce, custody, polygyny and guardianship among others - is one of the most sensitive areas in Muslim-majority countries. Morocco and Jordan both issued new family codes in the 2000s, but there are a number of differences in the ways these two states engaged in reform. These include how the reform was carried out, the content of the new...

Jun 14, 201939 min

The Thirty Year Genocide - Turkey's destruction of its Christian minorities, 1894-1924

Professor Benny Morris and Professor Dror Ze'evi give a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre seminar series. Chaired by Dr Laurent Mignon (St Antony's College). Morris and Ze'evi will talk about the destruction of the Armenian, Greek and Assyrian communities of Asia Minor - some 4-5 million people - during the reigns of Abdulhamid II, the Young Turks and Ataturk, 1894-1924. Most were dispossessed and exiled and some 2 million were murdered in three massive bouts of violence. The mass murder, ...

Jun 03, 201946 min

Situating the Study of Islam in Global Intellectual History: Toshihiko Izutsu's Middle-Earth

Armando Salvatore (McGill University) gives a talk as part of the following conference: Neither Near Nor Far: Encounters and Exchanges between Japan and the Middle East. The lecture investigates the contribution to the study of Islam by a non-Muslim, yet non-Western and non-Eurocentric personality, the Japanese linguist and philosopher Toshihiko Izutsu (1914-1993). It traces Izutsu's original trajectory from his early practice of Zen Buddhism, through his discovery of the religious fervour of Gr...

May 29, 201951 min

Reflections on Recent Events in the Republic of Sudan

Panel discussion on the Republic of Sudan. Joint event with The Sudanese Programme, held in St Antony's College on May 3rd 2019. Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi (Research Fellow, St Antony's College, Trustee of the Sudanese Programme), Dr Sara Abdelgalil (Paediatric Consultant, President of Sudan Doctors' Union UK), Dr Richard Barltrop (Consultant and researcher on the two Sudans, Trustee of the Sudanese Programme) About the speakers: Dr Ahmed Al-Shahi is a Research Fellow and, since 2002 co-Founder of The Su...

May 10, 201947 min

Desert in the Promised Land: The Politics and Semiotics of Space in Israeli Culture

Yael Zerubavel (Professor Emerita of Jewish Studies and History, Rutgers University) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre, chaired by Professor Yaacov Yadgar (Stanley Lewis Professor of Israel Studies, St Anne's). At once an ecological phenomenon and a cultural construction, the desert has varied associations in Zionist and Israeli culture. Yael Zerubavel tells the story of the desert from the early twentieth century to the present, shedding light on romantic-mythical associations, settlement...

May 10, 201939 min

Revolution in Iran 1978-1979: Assessments and Reassessments upon the Fortieth Anniversary

Middle East Centre seminar with Touraj Atabaki (International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam), Stephanie Cronin (Oxford University, Siavush Randjbar Daemi (University of St Andrews). Chaired by Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi (University of Oxford) Paper titles and abstracts: Stephanie Cronin (University of Oxford) - The Global 1970s and the Iranian Revolution. The Iranian revolution of 1977-79 has usually been analysed within the confines of national history. This talk rather places both th...

May 01, 20191 hr 5 min