LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

This event was a book launch for 'Civilization and the Making of the State in Lebanon and Syria' by Dr. Andrew Delatolla. The book argues that the modern state, from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period, has consistently been used as a means to measure civilizational engagement and attainment. This volume historicizes this dynamic, examining how it impacted state-making in Lebanon and Syria. By putting social, political, and economic pressure on the Ottoman Empire to replicate the modern state in Europe, the book examines processes of racialization, nationalist development, continued imperial expansion, and resistance that became embedded in the state as it was assembled. By historicizing post-imperial and post-colonial state formation in Lebanon and Syria, it is possible to engage in a conceptual separation from the modern state, abandoning the ongoing reproduction of the state as a standard, or benchmark, of civilization and progress. Andrew Delatolla is a Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Leeds, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. His research interests centre on issues of race, gender, and sexuality in relation to statehood and state formation. His research tends to focus on issues of violence and exclusion from an international historical political sociological lens, examining the international relations of the Middle East and North Africa (Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, and the Ottoman Empire). Shourideh C. Molavi is a writer and scholar specializing in critical state theory, migration and border studies, and trained with a background in International Humanitarian Law. She has over 15 years of academic and fieldwork experience in the Middle East—focusing on Israel/Palestine—on the topics of border practices, citizenship and statelessness, and human and minority rights, with an emphasis on the relationship between the law, violence and power. Since 2014, she has worked as a Lead Researcher on Israel-Palestine and fieldworker with Forensic Architecture, an interdisciplinary research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Mai Taha is a Lecturer in Law at Goldsmiths, University of London. Grounded in anti-racist socialist-feminism, her research focuses on how the organization of race, class and gender is a fundamental way of forming social hierarchies through law. She has written on international law and empire, labour movements, gender relations, care work and social reproduction in the interwar and postcolonial Middle East. She is also interested in the areas of law and literature, and law and film, exploring alternative archives, artefacts and literary narratives. She is currently working on the legal politics of refusal in Mandate Palestine, focusing on labour and gender relations during the 1936-1939 Arab Revolt.

The PowerPoint presentations from the event can be viewed here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2021/kuwaits-urbanisation This Kuwait Programme event was a discussion about two research projects - 'Public Space in Kuwait: From User Behaviour to Policy-making' led by Alexandra Gomes and Asseel Al-Ragam, and 'Towards an Equitable Transport System in Kuwait' led by Adeel Muhammad. This webinar will explore how Kuwait’s urbanisation trends and car-centric development have shaped planning, urban design, and individual behaviour with consequences for public health and the environment. The webinar included two presentations. The first from Alexandra Gomes and Asseel Al-Ragam on ‘Public space in Kuwait’ looked at some of the challenges and opportunities facing Kuwait’s residential neighbourhoods and everyday use of public space. The second from Reem Alfahad on ‘Social justice, transport and accessibility’ explored transport spatial inequalities at the city scale. Alexandra Gomes is a Research Officer at LSE Cities, where she is responsible for coordinating the Centre’s socio-spatial analysis across a range of projects. Focusing on urban studies, comparative analysis, urban inequalities, public space and urban walkability. She also teaches at UCL’s The Bartlett School of Planning, where she is finishing her PhD. Asseel Al-Ragam is Associate Professor of Architecture, Vice Dean for Academic Affairs, Research, and Graduate Studies and Director of the Architecture Graduate Program at Kuwait University’s College of Architecture. She is an award-winning author with published research on Kuwait’s built environment. She was a research fellow and lecturer at École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture, Paris. She works as an architecture and planning consultant and is a member of the Technical Advisory Committee at Kuwait’s Private University Council. Sharifa Alshalfan is an architect, urban researcher and educator. She is part of a team of experts developing housing and urban policy recommendations at the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences. She also works as a consultant on urban development at the World Bank and teaches periodically at Kuwait University at the College of Architecture. Her work has been published by CITY, LSE Kuwait Programme, LSE Cities and the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs. Adeel Muhammad is a visiting post doctoral researcher at the Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds. Previously, Adeel worked as a Research Officer at LSE Cities, on projects related to mapping and analysing the spatial and temporal dynamics of urban expansion and transport mobility across Asia and Africa. Reem Alfahad holds an MSc in City Design and Social Science from the London School of Economics, and a BA in Public Policy Studies from Duke University. She is most interested in the cultural and social dynamics of inclusion, particularly as they relate to urban spaces. Most recently, through the LSE Kuwait Programme, she has focused on mobility access in Kuwait and the different sociocultural dimensions that include or exclude different groups from being able to move freely. Previously, she worked with Kantar Public in London, UK, and the Cultural Secretariat of Medellin, Colombia, among others. Outside of academic research, she is working on an audio documentary series focusing on globalized gentrification. Dr Courtney Freer is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE.

This webinar was the launch of Omar Sirri's paper 'Destructive Creations: Social-Spatial Transformations in Contemporary Baghdad' published as part of the LSE Middle East Centre Paper Series. This working paper examines social-spatial transformations in contemporary Baghdad by zooming in on two of the city’s most frequented consumer districts, Karada and Mansour. By way of ethnographic fieldwork, Sirri foregrounds the entanglements between violence, property and consumption. Baghdad’s transformations over nearly two decades are not simply a product of urban violence; nor are they only a result of the privatisation of formerly public property; nor are they merely a consequence of changes in everyday consumer patterns. Rather, the city’s transformations stem from the co-constitution of all three forces. In Baghdad, violence, property and consumption are inextricably linked. Their enmeshment has in turn spawned social-spatial transformations benefitting the political-economic interests of an elite few at the expense of the urban commons. Omar Sirri is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. His doctoral dissertation, Scarecrows of the State: Security Checkpoints in Contemporary Baghdad, is an ethnography of urban checkpoint practices in Iraq’s capital city. He is currently an Affiliated Scholar at the Issam Fares Institute for International Affairs and Public Policy at the American University of Beirut. Toby Dodge is a Professor in the Department of International Relations, where he is Deputy Head of the Department (PhD and Research). He is also Kuwait Professor and Director of the Kuwait Programme, Middle East Centre. Toby currently serves as Iraq Research Director for the DFID-funded Conflict Research Programme (CRP). From 2013–18, Toby was Director of the Middle East Centre. Toby's research concentrates on the evolution of the post-colonial state in the international system. The main focus of this work on the developing world is the state in the Middle East, specifically Iraq.

This event was a book launch for 'Israeli Foreign Policy Since the End of the Cold War' by Dr. Amnon Aran. This is the first study of Israeli foreign policy towards the Middle East and selected world powers including China, India, the European Union and the United States since the end of the Cold War. It provides an integrated account of these foreign policy spheres and serves as an essential historical context for the domestic political scene during these pivotal decades. The book demonstrates how foreign policy is shaped by domestic factors, which are represented as three concentric circles of decision-makers, the security network and Israeli national identity. Told from this perspective, Amnon Aran highlights the contributions of the central individuals, societal actors, domestic institutions, and political parties that have informed and shaped Israeli foreign policy decisions, implementation, and outcomes. Aran demonstrates that Israel has pursued three foreign policy stances since the end of the Cold War - entrenchment, engagement and unilateralism - and explains why.

This event was co-organised with the Kurdish Studies Programme at the University of Central Florida. It was the book launch of 'Kurds and Yezidis in the Middle East: Shifting Identities, Borders, and the Experience of Minority Communities'. The diversity of Kurdish communities across the Middle East is now recognized as central to understanding both the challenges and opportunities for their representation and politics. Yet little scholarship has focused on the complexities within these different groups and the range of their experiences. This book diversifies the literature on Kurdish Studies by offering close analyses of subjects which have not been adequately researched, and in particular, by highlighting the Kurds' relationship to the Yazidis. Case studies include: the political ideas of Ehmede Xani, “the father of Kurdish nationalism”; Kurdish refugees in camps in Iraq; the perception of the Kurds by Armenians in the late Ottoman Empire and the Turks in modern Western Turkey; and the important connections and shared heritage of the Kurds and the Yazidis, especially in the aftermath of the 2014 ISIS attacks. The book comprises the leading voices in Kurdish Studies and combines in-depth empirical work with theoretical and conceptual discussions to take the debates in the field in new directions. The study is divided into three thematic sections to capture new insights into the heterogeneous aspects of Kurdish history and identity. In doing so, contributors explain why we need to pay close attention to the shifting identities and the diversity of the Kurds, and what implications this has for Middle East Studies and Minority Studies more generally. Majid Hassan Ali completed his doctoral research with a focus on religious minorities in Iraq, at the Institute of Oriental Studies, University of Bamberg, Germany. He is an associate member of the Department of Yezidi Studies at the Giorgi Tsereteli Institute of Oriental Studies, Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia. His research interest includes the difficulties and challenges the ethnic and religious minorities are facing in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East. Ohannes Kılıçdağı researches the history of non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and Turkey. He was Kazan Visiting Professor in Armenian Studies at California State University in Autumn 2020. In Spring 2020 he was appointed as Nikit and Eleanora Ordjanian Visiting Professor in the department for Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. Güneş Murat Tezcür is the Jalal Talabani Chair and Professor at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida (UCF). He also directs UCF's Kurdish Political Studies Program. Most recently, he has edited Kurds and Yezidis in the Middle East: Shifting Identities, Borders, and the Experience of Minority Communities, and The Oxford Handbook of Turkish Politics. He is currently writing a book on liminal minorities in the Middle East. Arzu Yilmaz is a visiting scholar at the University of Hamburg. She moved to Berlin in 2018 as Istanbul Policy Centre (IPC)- Mercator Fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). She spent seven years in the Kurdish Region of Iraq (KRI) as a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Duhok and as the Chair of the Department of International Relations at the American University of Kurdistan. Zeynep Kaya is a Lecturer in International Development in the Department of Social and Policy Studies, University of Bath, and a Visiting Fellow with the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously she was a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. Her research looks at the relationship between gender, violence and development in conflict and post-conflict contexts.

This event was the launch of the publication 'Redefining deprivation in a conflict area: learning from the Palestinian experience using mixed methods' produced as part of the Academic Collaboration with Arab Universities Programme, led by Principal Investigators Tiziana Leone, Rita Giacaman and Weeam Hammoudeh. Conflicts threaten public health, human security, and wellbeing. While their visible impacts garner considerable attention (such as physical disability, injury, and death), they affect populations in other important ways. This paper reviews findings from a two-year collaboration project to understand how people make sense of, and cope with, various forms of deprivation and trauma resulting from experiences of conflict and military occupation in the occupied Palestinian territories (oPt). Using mixed methods, the paper explores mental health and wellbeing outcomes associated with deprivation in a conflict setting. Weeam Hammoudeh is currently an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University and formerly ACSS (Arab Council for the Social Sciences) Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Researcher at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Birzeit University. She is interested in understanding how political and social transformations impact health, psychosocial wellbeing, and population processes, particularly in conflict areas; as well as how health systems and social institutions develop and shift in relation to political, economic, and structural factors, particularly in developing countries and post-colonial settings. Tracy Kuo Lin is an Assistant Professor of Health Economics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her research examines health policy and health system resource allocation and their impact on public health and healthcare processes. She received her PhD from the University of California, Davis and held a fellowship at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Her work has been published in journals such as Cancer, Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy, Globalization and Health, and Implementation Science Communication. She is a researcher on the project 'Re-Conceptualising Health in Wars and Conflicts: A New Focus on Deprivation and Suffering'. Suzan Mitwalli is an academic researcher at the Institute of Community and Public Health - Birzeit University, and assistant coordinator of the Masters in Public Health program. Her main research interest is mental health, and she has worked for many years on intervention research with the Community Based Rehabilitation organization (CBR). She has also been involved in several research projects at the Institute relating to women’s health, population health, child health, and occupational health using quantitative and qualitative research methods. Tiziana Leone is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics. Tiziana’s research agenda is focused around maternal and reproductive health, including a lifecourse approach to women’s health. She is currently analysing secondary data on the linkages that menarche, menopause and mid-life age have on fertility outcomes and health in later life. She has collaborated in expert roles with international organisations (eg: WHO, UNFPA and UNICEF) in tracking the progress of the MDGs and SDGs in LMICs in maternal and child health.

This Kuwait Programme event was a discussion about Dr Zeynep Kaya’s recent research on women's political participation in Kuwait. Dr Lubna Al-Kazi acted as a discussant, and Dr Courtney Freer chaired the event. Since the introduction of women’s suffrage in 2005, the number of women elected to parliament in Kuwait has been very small. Despite this, their presence in high political office has changed the discourse around women’s political and public roles, while also generating a misogynistic backlash against women. The paper Dr Kaya will present at this event provides an overview of the discussions about women’s electoral participation in Kuwait building on 27 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 with politicians, public officers, academics and activists and the academic literature on women’s political participation. The paper captures the state of the discussions on women’s electoral participation and provides an account of what issues are emphasised and omitted in these discussions in 2019. The interviews provided important insights on the dynamics that influence women’s electoral participation in Kuwait and the strategies they used to get elected. Dr Zeynep Kaya is a Lecturer in International Development in the Department of Social and Policy Studies, University of Bath, and a Visiting Fellow with the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously she was a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Development Studies at SOAS and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. She is interested in understanding how communities and political groups perceive, interact with and challenge international processes and dominant norms. Her research looks at the relationship between gender, violence and development in conflict and post-conflict contexts. Zeynep has a PhD in International Relations from the LSE, where she conducted research on the transformation of Kurdish nationalism and territorial identity in an international context. Her book Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. Dr Lubna Ahmed Al-Kazi is Director of the Women’s Research and Studies Center at Kuwait University. Lubna has been a professor in the Sociology Department at Kuwait University since 1984, after graduating from the University of Texas in 1983 with a PhD in Demography and Sociology. She was a consultant with the Population Division at the United Nations for one year from 1986-87, and in 2009 a consultant for the United Nation Development Programme, when she prepared the section on Gender and Development for the Kuwait National five-year plan 2010 – 2015. Lubna is on the editorial board of Arabic Journal Al-Thaqafa Al-Alamiah and the Journal of Arabian Studies. She is a member of the ‘Women’s Cultural and Social Society’ and ‘the Sociologists Association’ in Kuwait. She is also a member of Advisory Board of Vital Voices, an women‘s organization established by Hillary Clinton when she was the First Lady in the United States. Her areas of interest and research are gender, population change and family. Dr Courtney Freer is an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre. Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Gulf states, particularly the roles played by Islamism and tribalism. Her book Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies, based on her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford and published by Oxford University Press in 2018, examines the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEKuwait

This webinar was co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies. Sino-Algerian relations date back to the Afro-Asian Bandung conference in 1955. China’s status as first non-Arab country to recognise Algeria’s pre-independence provisional government in 1958, coupled with Algiers’ support in helping China restore its security council seat at the UN in 1971, represent key moments that consolidated the historic bilateral relationship. Despite this early political and diplomatic alliance, economic relations did not take off until the early 2000s, propelled by Algeria’s accumulation of hydrocarbon revenues. Chinese companies obtained major billion dollar contracts in construction and infrastructure works. Despite many challenges, Algeria found in China a reliable partner supporting its development. The two countries continue to cooperate not only bilaterally, their preferred framework for economic and commercial exchange, but also through multilateral fora such as FOCAC and CASCF. In 2014, China elevated the relationship to a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, the highest level of diplomatic-cum-economic relations which Beijing extends to key partners. Algeria is also a signatory to Beijing’s flagship Belt and Road initiative. For Beijing, the North African state has a geostrategic location with proximity to Europe and to the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa. The scope and strength of relations in the post-pandemic era will likely continue to strengthen. This webinar explored the historical background and the evolution of the political and economic relations between the two countries, highlighting opportunities and challenges going forward. Francesco Saverio Leopardi is Research Fellow at the Marco Polo Centre for Global Europe-Asia Connections, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and teaches Global Asian Studies at Ca’ Foscari International College. His research interests currently focus on the Sino-Algerian economic relations and the history of economic transformation in Algeria. He also has a long-time interest in the history of the Palestinian national movement and in 2020 he published with Palgrave Macmillan his first monograph The Palestinian Left and its Decline. Loyal Opposition. Chuchu Zhang is Associate Professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Fudan University, China. She received her PhD in Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her research focuses on Middle Eastern Politics, China-Middle Eastern relations and China’s foreign policy. She is author of Islamist Party Mobilization: Tunisia’s Ennahda and Algeria’s HMS Compared, 1989-2014 (Palgrave, 2020). She has published in a number of peer reviewed journals including Middle East Policy, Environment and Planning: Economy and Space, Globalizations, Pacific Focus, and Chinese Political Science Review, Asian Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Yahia H. Zoubir is Professor of International Relations and International Management, and Director of Research in Geopolitics at KEDGE Business School, France. He taught at multiple universities in the United States and was a visiting faculty member at various universities in China, Europe, the United States, India, Indonesia, South Korea, and the Middle East and North Africa. His recent book is Algerian Politics: Domestic Issues & International Relations (Routledge, 2020). He has published in academic journals, such as Journal of Contemporary China, Foreign Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Mediterranean Politics, International Affairs, Africa Spectrum, Journal of North African Studies, Democratization, Middle East Journal, Arab Studies Quarterly, Africa Today, Middle East Policy, etc. He has also contributed many book chapters and written various articles in encyclopedias. In 2020, he was Visiting Fellow at Brookings Doha Center.

غزة مفتوحة: عمران الأمل by LSE Middle East Centre

This webinar launched the book 'Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope' edited by Deen Sharp and the late Michael Sorkin. The Gaza Strip is one of the most beleaguered environments on earth. Crammed into a space of 139 square miles (360 square kilometers), 1.8 million people live under an Israeli siege, enforcing conditions that continue to plummet to ever more unimaginable depths of degradation and despair. Gaza, however, is more than an endless encyclopedia of depressing statistics. It is also a place of fortitude, resistance, and imagination; a context in which inhabitants go to remarkable lengths to create the ordinary conditions of the everyday and to reject their exceptional status. Inspired by Gaza’s inhabitants, this book builds on the positive capabilities of Gazans. It brings together designers, environmentalists, planners, activists, and scholars from Palestine and Israel, the US, the UK, India, and elsewhere to create hopeful interventions that imagine a better place for Gazans and Palestinians. Open Gaza engages with the Gaza Strip within and beyond the logics of siege and warfare, it considers how life can be improved inside the limitations imposed by the Israeli blockade and outside the idiocy of violence and warfare.