LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

Kuwait Programme Seminar Speaker: Lolwah Alkhater, University of Oxford Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme Since the turn of the century, many GCC states have undertaken ambitious economic and social reforms, informed by international think tanks and consultancies. Lolwah Alkhater explores the role played by consultancies and think tanks in the GCC through the lens of "policy borrowing", looking specifically at Qatar's education reforms - the most ambitious of any Middle Eastern country - which were designed and led by American think tank RAND Corporation. Recorded on Monday 13 November. Image credit: Northwestern University in Qatar, Wikimedia Commons.

Speaker: Karl Sharro aka Karl reMarks Chair: Dina Matar, SOAS The Middle East is the mysterious land of veils, minarets and Orientalist clichés. Karl Sharro, aka Karl reMarks, talks about his six year journey of satirising how his enchanted native land is represented in Western media and punditry. From the Arab Spring to the rise and decline of ISIS, Sharro discusses how his online alter ego tackled those delicate topics in tweets, blog posts, memes, animations and badly-drawn cartoons. From a more realistic James Bond movie that depicts him delivering a shipment of tear gas to a repressive regime to his 'one sentence explanation of the rise of ISIS', the talk will cover an eclectic range of subject matter. It closes with Sharro's Occidentalist work, as he returns the favour to the West in the aftermath of Brexit and Trump. Recorded on 6 November 2017. Video podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXQdzoAlPU

Speaker: Michael Willis, University of Oxford Chair: William Sinton, Society for Algerian Studies Algerian history has received a significant amount of scholarly attention but almost exclusively focused on its time under French colonial rule and especially the struggle to end this rule. Comparatively little attention has been drawn to Algeria’s independent postcolonial history despite its richness. Michael Willis looks at how, and possibly why, this is the case and discusses the controversies, challenges and rewards of researching and writing Algeria’s modern history, focusing in particular on the civil conflict of the 1990s. Recorded on 18 October 2017. Image credit: OMAR-DZ, Flickr.

Speaker: Joost Jongerden, Wageningen University Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre In its 1978 manifesto, the PKK declared the establishment of an independent state to be the most important political goal of any national liberation movement. Twenty years on, the party’s leader Abdullah Öcalan changed this when he developed an ideological framework based on the idea of self-governing, stateless societies as the best way of addressing socio-economic and socio-cultural injustices. Joost Jongerden explains this paradigm shift, which reoriented the PKK as well as other Kurdish movements in the Middle East. Recorded on 12 October 2017. Image credit: Nora Miralles, Flickr.

Speaker: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Richard Saull, QMUL In this lecture, Toby Dodge examines the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East, specifically its policy towards Iraq, the fight against the Islamic State, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. He also looks at the ideological and organisational divisions within the White House that have exacerbated President Trump’s own very distinctive style of leadership to deliver a set of contradictory and destabilising policies in one of the world’s most unstable regions. Recorded on 11 October 2017. Image credit: Shealah Craighead / Official White House, Wikimedia Commons.

Speakers: Toby Dodge, LSE; Nussaibah Younis, Chatham House; Christine van den Toorn, IRIS In this event, Toby Dodge, Nussaibah Younis and Christine van den Toorn discuss the final report of the Task Force on the Future of Iraq. The Task Force gathered the world's leading Iraq scholars under the chairmanship of Ambassador Ryan Crocker to develop a strategy for stabilizing Iraq in the long-term, beyond the immediate liberation of Iraq's territory from ISIS. The Task Force traveled to Iraq, Europe, and the US and met with dozens of Iraqi political leaders and Western policy-makers to determine the challenges that Iraq will continue to face and to propose ways in which the international community can continue to support the country. Recorded on 27 June 2017.

Speaker: Professor Hugh Roberts, Tufts University Discussant: Dr Aula Hariri, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Professor John Chalcraft, LSE The Socialist Forces Front (FFS) is routinely referred to as Algeria’s oldest opposition party. Finally legalised in 1989, the FFS from its foundation in 1963 provided the main template of ‘opposition’ in Algeria, but its achievements have been meagre at best. Hugh Roberts examines the FFS’s origins in the rebellion of 1963-5, arguing that its achievements as an opposition movement have been limited because it has not been engaged in opposition properly so called, merely dissidence. Recorded on 30 May 2017. This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Speaker: Mark Fitzpatrick, International Institute for Strategic Studies Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre With a framework agreement on the future shape of Iran's nuclear programme reached after marathon talks, the world powers and Iran now aim to draft a comprehensive accord by 30 June, resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis. However, the impending deal is still under heavy attack in both Washington and Tehran. Mark Fitzpatrick assesses the political and strategic ramifications of a resolution to the crisis as well as the technical and diplomatic issues involved. Recorded on 5 May 2015. Image credit: Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äusseres, Flickr. Nuclear Talks between the EU+3 and Iran.

Speaker: Thomas Pierret, University of Edinburgh Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE Over the last four years, the Syrian insurgency has witnessed the rise and consolidation of certain factions, particularly Islamist ones, but also the demise of once powerful groups of a more nationalist persuasion. Drawing on Paul Staniland's social-institutionalist conceptual framework, Thomas Pierret argues that groups that have relied on long-standing networks stemming from armed militancy or religious proselytism had a determining organisational advantage over counterparts that lacked such a background. Recorded on 2 May 2017. This seminar forms part of the 'Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Theme'.

Speakers: Danny Postel, Northwestern University; Madawi Al-Rasheed, LSE Middle East Centre; Nader Hashemi, University of Denver; Toby Matthiesen, University of Oxford; Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, University of Oxford As the Middle East descends ever deeper into violence and chaos, ‘sectarianism’ has become a catch-all explanation for the region’s troubles. The turmoil is attributed to ‘ancient sectarian differences’. In this talk, editors Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel join Madawi Al-Rasheed, Toby Matthiesen and Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi to challenge the use of ‘sectarianism’ as a magic-bullet explanation for the region’s ills, focusing on how various conflicts in the Middle East have morphed from non-sectarian (or cross-sectarian) and nonviolent movements into sectarian wars. Recorded on 8 May 2017.