

LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts
LSE Middle East Centre
Welcome to the LSE Middle East Centre's podcast feed.
The MEC builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE.
Follow us and keep up to date with our latest event podcasts and interviews!
The MEC builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and North Africa and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE.
Follow us and keep up to date with our latest event podcasts and interviews!
Episodes
Mentioned books

May 20, 2019 • 1h 7min
Satellite Sectarianisation or Plain Old Partisanship? Inciting Violence in the Arab Mainstream Media
This report assesses widespread claims that pan-Arab satellite news channels have been responsible for inciting sectarian violence during the Arab uprisings. Based on an empirical study of how three of the most popular channels – Al-Jazeera Arabic, Al-Arabiya and Al-Mayadeen - have framed seminal events involving violence between sects in Syria and Iraq, the report finds that while often geo-politically charged, some of these claims are valid. While abusive language or direct promotion of violence is rare in a mainstream context, incitement to sectarian violence has primarily been invoked through linguistic, stylistic and thematic tropes that forge legitimacy claims and narratives of victimhood. The paper draws on these findings to make recommendations for UK policymaker engagement with the Arab media. Recorded on 1 May 2019.
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Jessica Watkins is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre, currently working on a DFID-funded project looking at regional drivers of conflict in Iraq and Syria. The project ties in with Jessica’s previous research at the Rand Corporation into Iraqi and regional security issues. Her PhD at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, was on policing and dispute management in Jordan.
Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Image: Microphones set out for a Tehran press conference with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Commander Mohammad Ali Jafari, 16 September 2012. © Stringer/EPA/Shutterstock

Apr 12, 2019 • 59min
Middle East Careers Panel
BRISMES and LSE Middle East Centre are delighted to host this panel event on Middle East Careers where speakers will talk briefly about their current role and career path and give advice to students. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions. Followed by networking reception. Recorded on 7 March 2019.
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Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi (@omar_alghazzi), Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Communications, LSE
Sophie Rudland (@EditorSophie ), Editor Middle East and Islamic Studies, IB Tauris
Dr Priscilla Toffano, Visiting Fellow, LSE Middle East Centre (on sabbatical from the Middle East and Central Asia Department, International Monetary Fund)
Dr Angeline Turner, Research Analyst, Iraq, Middle East & North Africa Directorate, Foreign and Commonwealth Office
Sinéad Murphy is responsible for the organisation of the BRISMES Annual Conference and deals with all aspects of administration. Sinéad is a PhD candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature in King’s College, London. Her research is an AHRC LAHP-funded project on contemporary Arab speculative fiction in English.
Image: Brismes Careers Event 2017. Source: LSE Middle East Centre

Mar 4, 2019 • 1h 16min
Transitional Justice in Israel-Palestine: Lessons from Colombia
One of the most prominent sticking points in Israeli–Palestinian negotiations is the right of return for Palestinian refugees. Yoav Kapshuk investigates how the concept of ‘transitional justice’, often used in post-conflict political bargaining, could be utilised in future peace talks to reach a settlement. In addition to analysing previous rounds of negotiations that sought to resolve the refugee issue, he also looks to the negotiations between the Colombian government and the FARC (which successfully concluded with a peace agreement in 2016) and asks what lessons can be learned from the transitional justice measures used in this process. Recorded on 28 February 2019.
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Yoav Kapshuk is Lecturer at Kinneret College on the Sea of Galilee, Israel, and a former Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt. His research focuses on peace processes, transitional justice, conflict resolution and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Image: Bill Clinton, Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat at the White House 1993-09-13. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Mar 4, 2019 • 1h 26min
Sexualities & LGTB Activism in the Middle East and North Africa
Apologies for the abrupt start of the podcast. The first two minutes of the recording were corrupted.
A panel of academics and activists will make critical interventions on sexualities and approaches to LGBT activism in and across the MENA. Specifically, by foregrounding voices from the region and its diaspora, this lecture pushes to challenge debates and discussions that sometimes look in on the region from the outside. Recorded on 26 February 2019.
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Mehammed Mack is Associate Professor of French Studies at Smith College. He earned his doctorate in French and comparative literature from Columbia University, where he completed a dissertation titled "Immigration and Sexual Citizenship: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnicity in Contemporary France." His first book, Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture, was released from Fordham University Press in January 2017.
Cenk Özbay is Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Sociology at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey. He holds a PhD from University of Southern California. His first book 'Queering Sexualities in Turkey. Gay Men, Male Prostitutes and the City' was released from I.B. Tauris in July 2017.
Roula Seghaier is a queer feminist writer, novelist, and translator. She is the managing editor of Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research based in Beirut and a co-founder of Intersectional Knowledge Publishers.
Silvia Quattrini has been a member of the organising team of Chouftouhonna, the International Art Festival of Tunis, since 2016. Silvia is also the Middle East and North Africa Programmes Coordinator for Minority Rights Group International and a professional translator.
Hakan Seckinelgin is Associate Professor (Reader) in the Department of Social Policy at LSE. His work focuses on both the epistemology and politics of international social policy by engaging with people’s lives in different contexts. He is the editor in Chief of Journal of Civil Society.
Image: Women's March, Beirut 2018. Source: Patrick Abi Salloum

Feb 15, 2019 • 1h 35min
The Return of the Military: Hybridity, Duality, and Political Activism
The national armed forces of Arab states have been undergoing a radical transformation. New fluid coalitions of armed state and non-state actors engage in complex patterns of coexistence and contestation, set within a wider context of geopolitical rivalry between their external backers. Renowned Middle East scholar Yezid Sayigh examines the re-emergence of militaries as central political actors. Recorded on 13 February 2019.
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Yezid Sayigh is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he leads the program on Civil-Military Relations in Arab States (CMRAS). His work focuses on the comparative political and economic roles of Arab armed forces and nonstate actors, the impact of war on states and societies, and the politics of post-conflict reconstruction and security sector transformation in Arab transitions, and authoritarian resurgence.
Jessica Watkins is Research Officer at the Middle East Centre, currently working on a DFID-funded project looking at regional drivers of conflict in Iraq and Syria. The project ties in with Jessica’s previous research at the Rand Corporation into Iraqi and regional security issues. Her PhD at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London, was on policing and dispute management in Jordan.
Image: Tunisian Army. Source: World Armies, Flickr.

Feb 15, 2019 • 47min
Israel's Basic Law: Motivations and Ramifications
On 19 July 2018, the Israeli parliament passed the controversial Basic Law, which defines the nature of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. This talk analyses the different clauses of the law, reflects on their meaning with the help of the discussions that took place in the Knesset during the legislation period, and ties them with broader political and social processes taking place in Israeli society and politics. Recorded on 30 January 2019.
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Amal Jamal is Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University, where he heads the International Graduate Program in Political Science and Political. He is also Chair of the Walter Lebach Institute for Jewish-Arab Coexistence. He is Co-Editor in Chief of the journal The Public Sphere published in Hebrew.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security.
Image: Israel. Purim in Bnei Brak Source: Hemo Kerem / Flickr.

Feb 1, 2019 • 1h 22min
Israeli-Gulf Relations and Changing Middle Eastern Geopolitics
In recent years Israel has forged closer links with Arab Gulf states with which it has no diplomatic relations, unlike Egypt and Jordan. The main factors in their converging interests are shared alarm about Iran’s rise as a regional power, opposition to Barack Obama’s Middle East policies and the marginalization of the divided Palestinians. Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain all have business, security and intelligence ties with Israel, though since they are largely “below the horizon” it is hard to judge their extent. Qatar and Oman have links too – illustrated by Binyamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to Muscat and Doha’s role mediating with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. But these connections are more visible than ever before. Donald Trump’s wooing of the Saudis briefly promoted hopes for a role for Riyadh in the president’s long-trailed “deal of the century.” The US decision to abandon the international nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions was greeted by Israel and the Gulf states, raising the possibility of some kind of operational alliance between them, likely with US coordination, against Tehran. Netanyahu now talks openly of working to achieve normalization with the Saudis. The Gulf states, however, all remain committed to the 2002 Arab League peace initiative, which promises recognition of Israel in return for a solution of the Palestinian issue. That goal is unlikely to be either abandoned or achieved, but clandestine links look set to continue growing. Recorded on 22 January 2019.
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Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security
Image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with Sultan of Oman Qaboos bin Said. Source: Office of the Prime Minister / Flickr

Jan 21, 2019 • 1h 29min
Four Decades of Reporting Change in the Middle East
Speaker: Jim Muir, BBC News and LSE Middle East Centre Visiting Senior Fellow
Chair: Ian Black, LSE Middle East Centre Visiting Senior Fellow
Jim Muir has lived in and reported on the Middle East since he arrived in Beirut in January 1975, armed with a Cambridge degree in Arabic. Expecting Lebanon to be a stable base from which to cover a turbulent region, he spent the next 15 years reporting on the tortuous conflict which engulfed the country itself. He was in northern Iraq during the Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein in 1991 and covered the dramatic flight of the Kurds to the mountains. After a spell reporting the Bosnia conflict, he moved to Cairo as BBC Middle East correspondent in 1995, followed by five years in Tehran, where he chronicled the doomed hopes raised by the election of the reformist President Khatami. In 2004, he returned to Beirut, covered the 2006 Israel–Hezbollah war, and spent much time in Iraq until the Arab Spring diverted attention to Egypt, Tunisia and especially Syria, on whose protracted crisis he provided a large amount of the BBC's coverage. His recent work includes an in-depth look at the factors behind the rise and fall of the ‘Islamic State’. In this talk he examines, the major themes of change that have transformed the region in his time. Recorded on 16 January 2019.
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Jim Muir (@MuirJim) is a journalist serving as Middle East Correspondent for BBC News, based in Beirut and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. He has over 40 years' experience covering Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iran and Iraq.
Ian Black (@ian_black) is Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre and a former Middle East editor, diplomatic editor and European editor for the Guardian newspaper.
Image: Jim Muir in Qana, South Lebanon, 2006. Image Courtesy of the Speaker.

Dec 19, 2018 • 1h 25min
Islam and Ethnicity in the Kurdish Political Sphere in Turkey
Speaker: Mehmet Kurt, LSE and Yale University
Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Deputy Director
Islam has returned to the Turkish and Kurdish public and political spheres, becoming an effective means to mobilise voters and recruit supporters during the AKP era.
In this talk, Mehmet Kurt highlights two distinctive approaches to the Kurdish issue adopted by Kurdish Hizbullah (Huda-Par) and the wider Kurdish movement. While the former relies on an explicitly Islamist political agenda to subsume Kurdish society into part of a pan-Islamist entity, the latter pursues a secular but increasingly pluralist agenda to expand its base among religious Kurds.
This in turn determines both groups’ connection to Kurdish political identity. While Hizbullah embraces a form of ‘Kurdishness’ that mainly makes reference to Islam, the wider Kurdish movement incorporates Islam into its pluralist notion of ‘the people of Turkey’. Recorded on 17 December 2018.
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Dr Mehmet Kurt is a Marie Curie Global Fellow at the London School of Economics and Yale University. His research lies at the intersection of political science, sociology, and political ethnography with a specific focus on political Islam and civil society in Kurdish Turkey and among the Turkish diaspora in Europe.
Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre. He joined the Centre when it opened in 2010. Robert is responsible for running the Centre's operations, research activities, fundraising and development.
This event is part of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre. Convened by Zeynep Kaya and Robert Lowe, the series will encourage dissemination and discussion of new research on Kurdish politics and society and provide a network for scholars and students with shared research interests. Public lectures and research seminars will be held regularly during term-time. If you wish to join the mailing list for the series, please contact Robert Lowe: r.lowe@lse.ac.uk
Image: 2016, Diyarbakır. The Blessed Birth of Muhammed celebration (Kutlu Doğum) organized by the Hizbullah affiliated organizations each year in April in Diyarbakır. Image courtesy of Mehmet Kurt

Dec 19, 2018 • 1h 20min
Why has Diplomacy Failed in Yemen so far?
Speaker: Farea Al-Muslimi, Chairman and co-founder of Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies.
Chair: Michael Mason, LSE Middle East Centre Director.
For the last four years, Yemen has been suffering one of the bloodiest wars in the Middle East. In a manner surpassing even Syria, state institutions have collapsed, health and education systems are largely dysfunctional, millions continue to suffer from malnutrition, and over one million civil servants have not been paid their salaries for two years.
In the meantime, local alliances are dramatically shifting and evolving, while regional actors are increasingly involved to varying degrees. In particular, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the UAE exercise control militarily, either directly or through proxies, while Qatar, Oman and Western countries remain indirectly involved.
How have the diplomatic efforts to solve the conflict in Yemen failed since 2011, and what lessons have been learned? What challenges face the current UN-lead peace process, and what are its prospects for success? What similarities and differences exist between the peace processes for Syria and Yemen? And most importantly, what can the UK do to de-escalate Yemen’s current brutal conflict?
Farea Al-Muslimi tackles the current situation in Yemen and the complexities international diplomatic efforts to end the war are facing. Recorded on 4 December 2018.
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Farea Al-Muslimi (@almuslimi) is chairman and co-founder of Sana'a Center for Strategic Studies. He is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.