LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

Life in Abu Dhabi is centred around cars. Its urban development and open space infrastructure has impacted the walkability of the city, increasing residents' reliance on cars for mobility. This pattern of development is embedded in a social and spatial practice of not only urban life, but also urban governance and planning. This seminar explores some of the dimensions that have impacted and are emerging from a car infrastructure-led expansion in Abu Dhabi. How did historical decisions lead to car-centric development? How has the road network affected the city and its residents? What is the impact of car-centric development? This seminar is part of the Abu Dhabi (Dis)connected exhibition that was on display at the LSE in February-March 2023. Recorded on 10 March 2023. ________________________________________________________________ Alexandra Gomes is Research Fellow with LSE Cities where she is responsible for coordinating the Centre’s socio-spatial analysis across a range of projects. Her research focuses on urban studies, comparative analysis, urban inequalities, urban health, sustainable mobility and placemaking. Alex is Principal Investigator on the 'Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods' project. Apostolos Kyriazis is Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at Abu Dhabi University. His research focus includes Architecture, Urban Design and Urban/Rural Sociology. Apostolos is co-Principal Investigator on the 'Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods' project. Clémence Montagne is Director of Care Design Lab based at the L'École de Design, Nantes Atlantique which leads on abductive research in urbanism and social design. Clémence is a consultant for the 'Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods' project. Peter Schwinger is a transport economist and planning expert and is a consultant for the 'Roads as Tools for (Dis)connecting Cities and Neighbourhoods' project. Philipp Rode is Executive Director of LSE Cities and Associate Professorial Lecturer at the School of Public Policy. He is Co-Director of the LSE Executive MSc in Cities and Visiting Professor at University of St Gallen’s Institute for Mobility. Philipp has been leading interdisciplinary programmes in urban development and transport, sustainable urbanism and climate change, and city policy and governance at the LSE since 2003. Across his work, he is interested in multi-dimensional aspects of global urbanisation, sustainability and urban change. Join the conversation on Twitter using #LSEMiddleEast #AbuDhabiDisconnected

This event opened the exhibition 'Ruptured Domesticity: Mapping Spaces of Refuge in Iraq' by Dr Sana Murrani, hosted at LSE until 12 May 2023. Using photographs, illustrative maps and drawings, Murrani examines the domestic and intimate spaces of refuge created by Iraqis in preparation for, and in response to, wartime and violence. This work is funded by the British Institute for the Study of Iraq. Murrani was joined by Ammar Azzouz and Dena Qaddumi in a broad-ranging discussion on the exhibition and her forthcoming book 'Rupturing architecture: spatial practices of refuge in response to war and violence in Iraq' (Bloomsbury, 2024). Sana Murrani is an Associate Professor in Spatial Practice at the University of Plymouth. She studied architecture at Baghdad University School of Architecture at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. Sana completed her PhD in the UK. Sana’s main research falls within the fields of architecture, human geography and urban studies in particular, the imaginative negotiations of spatial practices and social justice. She is the founder of the Displacement Studies Research Network and co-founder of the Justice and Imagination in Global Displacement research collective. Ammar Azzouz is a Research Associate at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, and a Lecturer in Heritage Studies, at the School of Philosophy and Art History, University of Essex. Dena Qaddumi is a Fellow in City Design and Social Science in the Department of Sociology at LSE. Her research spans architectural and urban studies and draws on postcolonial urban theory, political geography, and cultural studies.

What is the relationship between archiving and collective visions for liberation? Where does the practice of archiving fit within contemporary subaltern struggles? This conversation, co-curated between historian Leyla Dakhli, Yasmine Kherfi (LSE Middle East Centre), and Mai Taha (LSE Human Rights), builds on the work of Dakhli, who joined us to reflect on archival projects from the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on those that emerged in the 2000s in Syria, Algeria and Lebanon. By exploring archival traces of imagined futures and the aesthetic forms they assume, Dakhli's work seeks to understand how archiving practices can be understood as gestures of a continued revolt. Leyla Dakhli is a full-time researcher in Modern History at the French Center for National Research (CNRS), and member of the Center of social history of Contemporary Worlds (CHS). Her work deals with the study of Arab intellectuals and social history of the South Mediterranean region, with a particular focus on the history of women and the question of exiled intellectuals and activists. Sara Salem is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology, LSE. Her main research interests include political sociology, postcolonial studies, Marxist theory, feminist theory, and global histories of empire and imperialism. Mai Taha is an Assistant Professor in Human Rights at LSE. Previously she was a Lecturer in Law at Goldsmiths, University of London, and an Assistant Professor in International Human Rights Law and Justice at the American University in Cairo (AUC). Mai has written on international law and empire, human rights, labour movements, class and gender relations, and care work and social reproduction.

How does the political and cultural shape the linguistic? How does power seep into terminology? What vocabulary is left for a people facing accumulated traumas caused by authoritarian brutality and imperial interventions recently compounded by natural disasters? This panel focuses on Syria to explore these questions about conducting cultural studies in times of disaster. It brings together the editor of and contributors to the recent special issue in the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication “Keywords in Contemporary Syrian Media, Culture and Politics.” The panellists will address the place of keywords in their scholarly research and engagement. Emma Aubin-Boltanski is a social anthropologist and an Arabist. She is one of the principal investigators of the research programme SHAKK (From revolt to War in Syria: Conflict, displacements, uncertainties), funded by the ANR (2018-2022) where she coordinates the project of a lexicon of the revolution and the war in Syria: https://syria-lexicon.pubpub.org/. Eylaf Bader Eddin is a post-doctoral researcher at The Prison Narratives of Assad’s Syria: Voices, Texts, Publics (SYRASP) Project (851393) for his research “Musical Remains and Songs in Syrian Prisons and Exile” at the EUME Forum, Transregionale Studien in Berlin. Razan Ghazzawi is an exiled Syrian-Palestinian. Ghazzawi finished their PhD at the University of Sussex in Brighton and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at EUME, Berlin. Their thesis project is an ethnographical exploration of sexuality politics in the context of the ‘war on terror’ and the ‘refugee crisis’ in Syria and Lebanon by examining checkpoints and arrests as everyday forms of political violence against Syrian and Palestinian LGBTQ activists, artists, migrant workers, students and teachers based in Lebanon. Omar Al-Ghazzi is an Associate Professor in Media and Communications at LSE. His work focuses on the geopolitics of global communications, particularly in relation to news media and popular culture.

This panel, co-organised with Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU), focused on the role that representations of femininities, masculinities, and sexualities in media and cultural productions play in maintaining or challenging stereotypes, and the gendered norms and regimes that these give rise to. Drawing on feminist approaches to media and cultural studies, speakers will discuss how different media forms, ranging from traditional print to film, advertising, and digital media have shaped gendered discourses and, relatedly, feminist thinking and praxes in the Middle East. Dalia Said Mostafa is Associate Professor on the Women, Society & Development Programme, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. On this panel she will discuss 'Women's Formidable Role and Influence in the Making of Arab Cinema'. Polly Withers is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. On this panel she will discuss 'Problematising feminist media studies from the Middle East: Gendering media in Palestine'. Amal Al-Malki is the Founding Dean of the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, Qatar Foundation. Before that, she was the Executive Director of the Translation and Interpreting Institute, which she founded in 2011. She also was an Associate Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar where she taught courses in writing composition, postcolonial literature, theories of translation, and Islamic feminism. Marc Owen Jones is an Associate Professor of Middle East Studies at Hamad bin Khalifa University, where he lectures and researches on political repression and informational control strategies. His recent work has focused on the way social media has been used to spread disinformation and fake news in the Middle East. Sophie Richter-Devroe is Associate Professor in the Women, Society and Development Program at the College of Humanities and Social Science, Hamad Bin Khalifa University. Sophie's broad research interests are in the field of everyday politics and women's activism in the Middle East. https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2023/feminist-media-studies-middle-east

This event was the launch of Spyros A. Sofos' latest book 'Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism' published by Edinburgh University Press. By analysing Turkish political culture and institutional architecture through archival research and a critical rereading of the historiography of the Turkish state and society, Sofos proposes key conceptual tools to study popular and populist politics and applies them to the Turkish case. Drawing on a diverse body of scholarship including sociology, cultural studies, psychosocial studies, political science and political theory, Turkish Politics and 'The People' explores the transformations of the notion of ‘the people’ from the late Ottoman to current Turkish political discourses. Spyros A. Sofos is a political scientist based at the London School of Economics Middle East Centre and is founder and lead editor of openDemocracy’s #rethinkingpopulism. His other books include Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (1996, Routledge), Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (2008, Hurst and Oxford University Press), Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks (2013, Palgrave). Bahar Baser is Associate Professor at Durham University's School of Government and International Affairs. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University where she led the "Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Research Group". Dimitar Bechev is a Russia and East European Studies Affiliate at the School of Global Area Studies, University of Oxford. His research interests are the politics of Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey as well as Russian foreign policy.

This panel, co-organised with Hamad Bin Khalifa University, was the launch of 'Tunisia's Economic Development: Why Better than Most of the Middle East but not East Asia' co-authored by Mustapha K. Nabil and Jeffrey B. Nugent. Recently published as part of the Routledge Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa Series edited by Hassan Hakimian, 'Tunisia's Economic Development' provides useful insights into the factors that have enabled Tunisia's initial economic success, and suggests opportunities for improving the management of economic development in the country, drawing wider lessons for the MENA region. Find out more here: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/events/2023/tunisia-economic-development. Mustapha K. Nabli has been Professor of Economics at the University of Tunis, Chairman of the Tunis Stock Exchange, Minister of Planning, Regional and Economic Development in the Government of Tunisia, Chief Economist and Director of the Social and Economic Development Department for the Middle East and North Africa Region at the World Bank, and Governor of the Central Bank of Tunisia. Jeffrey B. Nugent is Professor of Economics at the University of Southern California, USA. He has worked on and in various countries of both the MENA and East Asian regions including for the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Leila Baghdadi is Professor of Economics at ESSECT, University of Tunis, where she holds the World Trade Organization Chair. She is an executive board member of the Central Bank of Tunisia since August 2019. Mohamed Ali Marouani is Associate Professor in Economics at the Sorbonne Institute of Development Studies and currently on leave as Resident Representative of the Institute of Research for Development (IRD) in Tunisia. Hassan Hakimian is Professor of Economics and Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Department (MESD) at the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Hamad Bin Khalifa University. During 2010-19, he was Director of the London Middle East Institute (LMEI) and Reader in the Economics Department at SOAS University of London.

This panel, co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies, explored the relationship between sports and society in the Maghreb. Panellists from across academia and the media discussed the historical development of sport in the region, as well as the relationship between gender and sport. With Morocco and Tunisia qualifying for the 2022 Men's World Cup, and Morocco qualifying for the 2023 Women's World Cup, panellists also charted the contemporary development of football in the region, and how the societies of the Maghreb understand their politics and identities through the sport. Mahfoud Amara is Associate Professor in Sport Social sciences and Management at Qatar University. Amara has published on sport, business, culture, politics and society in the Arab region. In 2012, he published a book with Palgrave Macmillan titled Sport Politics and Society in the Arab World. Maher Mezahi is an independent football journalist based between Marseille and Algiers. He examines the relationship between sport and politics, and his research interests include North African politics and the history of colonial sport in Africa. He covers North African football extensively, and his work has been published by the BBC, The Guardian, ESPN Africa and Al Jazeera English. Aziza Nait Sibaha is a Senior TV anchor and Executive Editor at France24. She has worked as a journalist in Morocco and France for the last 25 years. Nait Sibaha is also the Founder of Taja Sport, a media platform dedicated to women’s sports in the MENA region. She has also directed the documentary Atlas Lionesses: Hear them Roar! on Morocco's women’s national football team.

This event was the launch of 'The Untold Story of the Golan Heights: Occupation, Colonization and Jawlani Resistance' edited by Muna Dajani, Munir Fakher Eldin and Michael Mason. This landmark volume is the first academic study in English of Arab politics and culture in the occupied Golan Heights. It focuses on an indigenous community, known as the Jawlanis, and their experience of everyday colonisation and resistance to settler colonisation. Chapters cover how governance is carried out in the Golan, from Israel's use of the education system and collective memory, to its development of large-scale wind turbines which are now a symbol of Israeli encroachment. Muna Dajani holds a PhD from the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her research focuses on documenting water struggles in agricultural communities under settler colonialism. Munir Fakher Eldin is Associate Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Birzeit University, Palestine (BZU). Munir has published in Arabic and English on British colonial land policies in Palestine as well as on current issues in Palestine and the occupied Golan Heights. 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. Omar Tesdell is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Birzeit University, Palestine (BZU) and studies landscape and agroecological transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean. Omar Al-Ghazzi is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. He works on the geopolitics of global communications, particularly in relation to news media and popular culture.

This panel, co-organised with the Department of Gender Studies and the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at LSE, combined reflections from Ethiopia and Iran to query the legacies of revolutionary politics in our present, with particular focus on the current protests in Iran. Arash Davari is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. His writings have appeared in Political Theory, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and Radical Philosophy, among other venues. His first book manuscript reappraises debates in political theory about self-determination, revolution, and the extraordinary through reconstruction of the discursive conditions that made the 1979 revolution in Iran possible. Elleni Centime Zeleke is Assistant Professor of African Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Zeleke is the author of Ethiopia in Theory: Revolution and Knowledge Production, 1964–2016 (Brill/Haymarket). Her current project examines the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia in relation to the history of Black political thought. Nazanin Shahrokni is Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalisation at the Department for Gender Studies, LSE. Her research interests fall at the intersection of gender politics, feminist geography, and ethnographies of the state in Iran, the Middle East, and beyond. Shahrokni is author of Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press, 2019).