Middle East Monitor Conversations

Christiana Parreira is an Assistant Professor in the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on the role of local political institutions and actors in governance, looking primarily at post-conflict contexts in the Middle East and North Africa. Her forthcoming book project examines how local governments and elections facilitated predatory state-building practices in Lebanon. In other research, she examines determinants of governance quality and distributive outcomes in Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere in the Global South. She received her PhD from Stanford University in 2020. Before joining the Graduate Institute, she served as a postdoctoral associate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and a pre-doctoral associate at the Harvard Kennedy School's Middle East Initiative.

Join us for a conversation with Ayse Zarakol as we discuss her latest book on politics and world order before the rise of the West, the Mongol Empire and how Turkey adjusted to the International political system in the 20th and 21st centuries. Ayşe Zarakol is Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow at Emmanuel College. Her research is at the intersection of IR and historical sociology, focusing on East-West relations in the international system, history and future of world order(s), conceptualisations of modernity and sovereignty, rising and declining powers, and Turkish politics in a comparative perspective. She is the author of After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West (Cambridge University Press, 2011), which deals with international stigmatisation and the integration of defeated non-Western powers (Turkey after WWI, Japan after WWII and Russia after the Cold War) into the international system, and the editor of the prize winning Hierarchies in World Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Her articles have appeared in journals such as International Organization, International Theory, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, among others. Her new book, Before the West: the Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders, which advances an alternative global history of world orders for IR, was published in March 2022 by Cambridge University Press. 

MEMO's conversation with senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an assistant research professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary, Dr Shadi Hamid to discuss democracy in the Middle East and the US' policy in the region. Hamid has authored a number of books including The Problem of Democracy: America, the Middle East and the Rise and Fall of an Idea and Islamic Exceptionalism: How the Struggle Over Islam is Reshaping the World which was shortlisted for the 2017 Lionel Gelber Prize for best book on foreign affairs. Hamid is also a contributing writer at the Atlantic, where he writes a monthly essay on culture and politics. In 2019, he was named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine.

MEMO speaks with history instructor and cultural heritage consultant Charles Al Hayek to discuss Lebanese history and culture and the ways he has been working to reconnect citizens to it.Al Hayek was a resident writer at the Centre of Arts and Humanities, American University of Beirut (AUB) (2020-2021) where he worked on writing and producing a series of short documentaries, Lebanon's centennial: a hundred years of fact and fiction. Al Hayek is currently completing an MA in Arab and Middle Eastern History at the Centre for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies, AUB.

MEMO speaks with British Palestinian academic and political activist Dr Azzam Tamimi on the life and legacy of Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi who died at the age of 96 on 26 September 2022. Tamimi is currently the Chairman of Alhiwar TV and is its Editor-in-Chief. He is also the author of Hamas: Unwritten Chapters and Rachid Ghannouchi: A Democrat Within Islamism.

MEMO speaks with international human rights lawyer Yasmin Omar as we discuss the COP27 United Nations Climate Change Conference due to be held in Sharm El-Sheikh in November and Egypt's human rights obligations.Yasmin Omar is the UN and Regional Communication Manager at the Geneva-based Committee for Justice. Omar specialises in international law, UN mechanisms and global sanctions. She holds an LLM from Syracuse University College of Law, focusing on international Refugee and Asylum Law and Counterterrorism. Her work is focused on action-oriented legal advocacy towards accountability and utilising UN and other regional legal mechanisms to further protect and promote human rights in the MENA region. She was the former Legal Associate at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy and a member of the Steering Committee of the US Committee to End Political Repression in Egypt.

MEMO speaks with Vice-Chair of the Institute of Race Relations Frances Webber about her new report on racism within the UK citizenship system which has reduced Muslims to 'second-class' status.Webber is a former barrister who specialised in immigration, refugee and human rights law until her retirement in 2008. She is an honorary vice-president of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers. She speaks on migration and human rights issues and has written extensively on the subjects.

MEMO speaks with Giovanni Fassina, Programme Director of the European Legal Support Centre (ELSC), about the dismissal of Palestinian journalist Farah Maraqa by German newspaper Deutsche Welle (DW) on charges of anti-Semitism and her subsequent legal victory, in the context of a world-wide crackdown on pro-Palestine activism.As Programme Director, Fassina oversees the legal team and the strategic litigation cases at the ELSC. Previously, he trained as a lawyer in Italy, specialising in cases related to mass torts litigation, Business & Human Rights and civil liability before domestic courts and the European Court of Human Rights. He also worked for many years in the development sector in the occupied Palestinian territories.

MEMO speaks with political analyst Sami Hamdi about the possibility of Turkish reconciliation with Syria's Bashar Al-Assad and the consequences of such a move.Hamdi is the managing director of the global risk and intelligence company International Interest. He is a geopolitical risk consultant who advises governments on the geopolitical dynamics of Europe and the MENA region, as well as advising companies on commercial issues and aspects.

MEMO speaks with British anti-Semitism specialist Antony Lerman about his latest book Whatever Happened to Antisemitism?: Redefinition and the Myth of the 'Collective Jew'.Lerman is the former founding director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) and has written widely on anti-Semitism, Middle East politics and multiculturalism for such periodicals as the Guardian, London Review of Books, Prospect, the New York Times, the Nation, Haaretz and the Jewish Chronicle.