LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

This event was the launch of Tilde Rosmer's latest book 'The Islamic Movement in Israel' published by University of Texas Press. Since its establishment in the late 1970s, Israel’s Islamic Movement has grown from a small religious revivalist organization focused on strengthening the faith of Muslim Palestinian citizens of Israel to a countrywide sociopolitical movement with representation in the Israeli legislature. But how did it get here? How does it differ from other Islamic movements in the region? And why does its membership continue to grow? Tilde Rosmer examines these issues in The Islamic Movement in Israel as she tells the story of the movement, its identity, and its activities. Using interviews with movement leaders and activists, their documents, and media reports from Israel and beyond, she traces the movement’s history from its early days to its 1996 split over the issue of its relationship to the state. She then explores how the two factions have functioned since, revealing that while leaders of the two branches have pursued different approaches to the state, until the outlawing of the Northern Branch in 2015, both remained connected and dedicated to providing needed social, education, and health services in Israel’s Palestinian towns and villages. The first book in English on this group, The Islamic Movement in Israel is a timely study about how an Islamist movement operates within the unique circumstances of the Jewish state. Tilde Rosmer is Assistant Professor in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. Rosmer’s research on collective identity formation and religious-political movements with a particular focus on Israel-Palestine is published in peer-reviewed journals such as the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies; Journal of Palestine Studies; Die Welt des Islams; Journal of Islamic Studies and Cultural Dynamics. Currently her research in the emerging field of Environmental Humanities focuses on awareness and knowledge of sustainability among Emirati youth. Jeroen Gunning is a Visiting Professor at the LSE Middle East Center and the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. His research focuses on political contestation in the Middle East, with a specific focus on the interplay between social movements, religion, electoral politics, repression, violence and structural change.

Students at all levels and institutions were invited to this careers panel where practitioners in various Middle East-related fields will talk through their career paths. Reza Afshar is the Executive Director of Independent Diplomat, a non-profit non-governmental organisation founded in 2004 by British former diplomat Carne Ross to give advice and assistance in diplomatic strategy and technique to governments and political groups. Previously, Reza was head of the team responsible for Syria policy at the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). During his time at the FCO, Reza also served as head of the Middle East, Asia and Europe Team at the UK Mission to the United Nations (2009 to 2012). He was awarded an OBE in 2012 for his work as lead negotiator on Libya in the UN Security Council. During his 13 years of service, Reza also worked on Iraq (2003-2004), Zimbabwe (leading the UK Foreign Office’s crisis team in 2008), and negotiated new arms control protocols relating to cluster munitions and landmines. Hind Hassan is an award winning international correspondent for VICE News covering conflicts, humanitarian crisis and the biggest developing stories from around the world. Since joining VICE News, Hassan has reported on wars and uprisings across the globe including the post-ISIS legacy in Syria, Lebanon’s blast demonstrations and the battle over Nagorni-karabakh where her team became the first journalists to independently confirm the use of cluster munitions against civilians in Azerbaijan. Most recently Hassan travelled to Ukraine where she documented war crimes and the devastation caused by Russian bombs in the city of Kharkiv, just 30 kilometres from the Russian border. She was also part of a team that investigated the essential oil industry’s frankincense supply chain, uncovering allegations of abuse made against a multi-million dollar American wellness company. Hassan embedded with the Taliban in Afghanistan just months before the group’s takeover of Kabul and was on the ground in Jerusalem and Gaza ahead of the military offensive on the Strip. Prior to joining VICE News, Hassan worked as a reporter for Sky News. Ahmed Tabaqchali is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a capital markets professional with over 25 years’ experience in US and MENA markets. He is the Chief Strategist of the Asia Frontier Capital Iraq Fund. Ahmed is a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Regional and International Studies (IRIS), and non-resident Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council - Iraq Initiative. He is a board member of Capital Investments, the investment banking arm of Capital Bank-Jordan. Previously, he was former Executive Director of NBK Capital, the investment banking arm of the National Bank of Kuwait, Managing Director and Head of International Institutional Sales at WR Hambrecht + Co., Managing Director at KeyBanc in London and Director & Head of Capital Markets & Institutional Sales at Jefferies International in London. He started his career at Dean Witter International in London. At the LSE Middle East Centre, Ahmed is researching Iraq’s economy and political economy with a specific focus on the economic aspects of the relationship between the GoI (Government of Iraq) and the KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government). Michael Mason is Director of the LSE 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.

This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was the launch of Francis O'Connor's latest book 'Understanding Insurgency: Popular Support for the PKK in Turkey' published by Cambridge University Press. No insurgent movement can survive without some degree of popular support, but what does it mean to support an armed group? Focusing on the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party), which has come to global attention in recent years for its efforts in resisting ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but has been present and active in the region for much longer, Francis O'Connor explores the first three decades of the PKK's insurgency in Turkey. Looking at how the relationship between armed groups and their supporters should be conceptually understood, how this relationship varies spatially and what role violence has in their relationship, O'Connor draws on Civil War, Social Movements and Rebel Governance literatures to outline how the PKK survived a military coup in 1980 and slowly won popular support through incipient forms of rebel governance, the targeted use of violence and a nuanced projection of its ideology and objectives. In doing so, the book provides an historical narrative to an organisation which has managed to successfully resist NATO's second largest army with limited weapons for decades and has become a key player of Kurdish rights in the wider region. Francis O’Connor is a Marie Curie Skłodowska Post-Doctoral Fellow in Rural Sociology at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. His research addresses the grey-area between violent and non-violent mobilization. He particularly focuses on the relationship between insurgent movements and their supporters: his current project Routinised Insurgent Space looks at the spatial dynamics of insurgent support in the cases of the PKK in Turkey and the M-19 in Colombia. He is a member of the Centre of Social Movement Studies at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, Italy, a member of the International Expert Network for the Right-wing Terrorism and Violence in Western Europe Dataset and sits on the Advisory Academic Board for The Commentaries. He has published on insurgent movements in Turkey, Mexico and Colombia, anti-austerity protest in Europe, lone-actor radicalisation and social movement mobilisation in secessionist referendums. Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Co-Editor of the Kurdish Studies Series published by I.B. Tauris. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria.

In this event, Makan, a Palestinian-led education organisation that strengthens voices for Palestinian rights, launched their curated online course, 'Understanding Palestine'. The launch included a discussion with the head of Inclusive Education at the LSE Eden Centre for Educational Enhancement, Akile Ahmet.

This keynote lecture took place at the Gramsci in the Middle East & North Africa Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in cooperation with Ghent University. The conference explored, through empirically-grounded research, how Gramsci’s work can help us make sense of our contemporary moment in the region marked by a significant expansion in resistance and uprising. Sunaina Maira is Professor of Asian American Studies, and is affiliated with the Middle East/South Asia Studies program and with the Cultural Studies Graduate Group at the University of California, Davis. Her research and teaching focus on Asian, Arab, and Muslim American youth culture, migrant rights and refugee organizing, and transnational movements challenging militarization, imperialism, and settler colonialism John Chalcraft is Professor of Middle East History and Politics in the Department of Government at the LSE. He graduated with a starred first in history (M.A. Hons) from Gonville and Caius college Cambridge in 1992. He then did post-graduate work at Harvard, Oxford and New York University, from where he received his doctorate with distinction in the modern history of the Middle East in January 2001. He held a Research Fellowship at Caius college (1999-2000) and was a Lecturer in Modern Middle Eastern History in the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Edinburgh University from 2000-05. This conference was supported by the Departments of Government, Sociology, and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme based at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.

This keynote lecture took place at the Gramsci in the Middle East & North Africa Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in cooperation with Ghent University from 9-10 May, 2022. The conference explored, through empirically-grounded research, how Gramsci’s work can help us make sense of our contemporary moment in the region marked by a significant expansion in resistance and uprising. Alia Mossallam is a cultural historian interested in songs that tell stories and stories that tell of popular struggles behind the better-known events that shape world history. She was previously a post-doctoral fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin where she was writing a book on the visual and musical archiving practices of the builders of the Aswan High Dam and the Nubian communities displaced by it. She is also a visiting scholar at Humboldt University’s Lautarchiv exploring the experiences of Egyptian, Tunisian and Algerian workers and subalterns on the fronts of World War I (and resulting revolts in their regions in 1918) through songs that capture these experiences. Sara Salem is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the LSE. Her research interests include postcolonial feminism, Marxist theory, and global histories of anticolonialism. Her recently published book with Cambridge University Press is entitled Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony (2020). Her recent writing has focused on Angela Davis in Egypt; on Frantz Fanon and Egypt’s postcolonial state; and on the ghosts of anticolonialism and Nasserism in Egypt. This conference was supported by the Departments of Government, Sociology, and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme based at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.

This keynote lecture took place at the Gramsci in the Middle East & North Africa Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in cooperation with Ghent University from 9-10 May, 2022. The conference explored, through empirically-grounded research, how Gramsci’s work can help us make sense of our contemporary moment in the region marked by a significant expansion in resistance and uprising. Patrizia Manduchi is Director of the GramsciLab and Associate Professor of History of the Contemporary Arab World at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Cagliari. She has published numerous works on the topic of Islamic radicalism, such as: 'The fury of Allah' (Quaderni di Orientalia Karalitana); 'From pen to mouse: Dissemination tools of the concept of jihad' (curated by Franco Angeli); 'This world is not a place for rewards: Life and works of Sayyid Qutb, martyr of the Muslim Brothers' (Aracne) and 'Voices of dissent: Student movements, opposition politics and democratic transition in Asia and Africa' (Aracne). Brecht De Smet is a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Middle East and North Africa Research Group at Ghent University, where in 2012 he completed his PhD. Brecht's research interests entail prefigurative and hegemonic class politics, marginalization, and political economy in Egypt, the MENA region, and beyond. He has published articles, opinion pieces, and two books on the politics of revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt (2016). He is now working on the 'Understanding political change from the Margins: Social and Environmental Justice in Morocco and Tunisia' project sponsored by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research. This conference was supported by the Departments of Government, Sociology, and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme based at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.

This event was the launch of Jessica Watkins' latest book 'Creating Consent in an Illiberal Order: Policing Disputes in Jordan' published by Cambridge University Press. Middle Eastern police forces have a reputation for carrying out repression and surveillance on behalf of authoritarian regimes, despite frequently under enforcing the law. But what is their role in co-creating and sustaining social order? In this book, Jessica Watkins focuses on the development of the Jordanian police institution to demonstrate that rather than being primarily concerned with law enforcement, the police are first and foremost concerned with order. In Jordan, social order combines the influence of longstanding tribal practices with regime efforts to promote neoliberal economic policies alongside a sense of civic duty amongst citizens. Rather than focusing on the 'high policing' of offences deemed to threaten state security, Watkins explores the 'low policing' of interpersonal disputes including assault, theft, murder, traffic accidents, and domestic abuse to shed light on the varied strategies of power deployed by the police alongside other societal actors to procure hegemonic 'consent'. Jessica Watkins is an analyst at the International, Impartial and Independent Mechanism, which assists in the investigation of serious crimes committed in Syria. She is a visiting research fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and a Research Associate at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA). Between 2017 and 2021 Jessica was a postdoctoral research officer on LSE’s Conflict Research Programme focusing on regional and domestic drivers of conflict and peace in Iraq and Syria. Jessica has a BA from Cambridge University in Arabic and French, a Masters in International Relations from the War Studies Department, King’s College London, and a PhD on civil policing in Jordan, also from the War Studies Department. Yazan Doughan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Yazan is an anthropologist whose work straddles the linguistic and socio-cultural branches of the discipline, with close engagements with social and legal theory, conceptual and social history, and moral philosophy. His work blends ethnography, genealogy, and history to shed light on the question of social justice in contemporary postcolonial contexts, with Jordan as a primary field site. Yazan’s current research and book project takes the Arab Spring protests in Jordan as an ethnographic entry point to think the postcolonial political present, and the paradoxical status of ‘the rule law’ in it – both as the mark of post-Cold War emancipatory projects for social justice, and the condition of possibility for various kinds of injustices. Milli Lake is an Associate Professor of International Security at the London School of Economics' Department of International Relations. Her expertise lies in political violence, institutions, law, poverty, and gender. She co-directs the Women's Rights After War project, a project that falls under LSE’s Gender Justice and Security HUB, and is jointly funded by the National Science Foundation and the UKRI Global Challenges Research Fund. Her 2018 book Strong NGOs and Weak States: Pursuing Gender Justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo and South Africa was published by Cambridge University Press. Milli has worked as a consultant with organisations including USAID, The World Bank, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee, Berkeley School of Law and the International Law and Policy Institute. She regularly provides expert testimony in asylum cases and has written extensively on the ethics and practicalities of field research in violence-affected settings.

This panel explored the interconnectedness of Turkey’s domestic and foreign politics over the past two decades. How do geopolitical histories and imaginaries affect Turkey’s foreign policy? What are the links between everyday culture and Turkey’s foreign policy? To what extent have global and regional developments impacted on and informed domestic politics? In what ways has foreign policy been used as a technique of governance? Evren Balta is Professor of International Relations and chair of the International Relations Department at Özyeğin University. She is the author of 'The American Passport in Turkey: National Citizenship in the Age of Transnationalism' (with O Altan-Olcay, UPenn, 2020), 'Age of Uneasiness' (İletisim, 2019) and 'Global Security Complex' (İletisim, 2012). She is the editor of 'Neighbors with Suspicion: Dynamics of Turkish-Russian Relations' (with G. Ozcan and B. Besgul, İletisim, 2017); 'Introduction to Global Politics' (Iletisim, 2014) and 'Military, State and Politics in Turkey' (with I. Akca, Bilgi University Press, 2010). She served as a research fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences/Russia in Global Dialogue Program (Vienna, Austria 2017) and as a Fulbright visiting associate professor at New York University, Program in International Relations during the 2017-2018 academic year. Balta is a senior scholar at Istanbul Policy Center, a member of the Global Relations Forum and co-editor of International Relations Journal. She was appointed as the academic coordinator of TÜSİAD Global Politics Forum in 2021. Lisel Hintz is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. She was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University and was visiting assistant professor at Barnard College, Columbia University. She studies the arenas in which struggles over various forms of identity – e.g., national, ethnic, religious, gender – take place. Her regional focus is on Turkey and its relations with the Middle East, Europe, and the US. Her 2018 book 'Identity Politics Inside Out: National Identity Contestation and Foreign Policy in Turkey' (Oxford University Press) examines how Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) used foreign policy gambits to weaken its domestic obstacles and open up space for disseminating its own Ottoman Islamist understanding of Turkish national identity and, ultimately, the ways in which contestation over national identity spills over to shape and be shaped by foreign policy. Her current book project, under contract with Cambridge University Press, investigates Turkey’s state-society struggles over identity in the pop culture sphere. Her work also appears in journals and news outlets contributing to discussions on Turkey’s increasing authoritarianism, opposition dynamics, foreign policy shifts, and identity-related topics including Kurdish, Alevi, and gender issues. Spyros A. Sofos is a Researcher at the LSE Middle East Centre. Spyros has been a member of the Fragmentation of peacemaking and peacebuilding: Non-Western dynamics of peace and transition management project team, funded by the FCDO and the PeaceRep Consortium. His research explores the intersection of societal insecurity, identity, and collective action and, to date, it has focused on Turkish politics and society, nationalism, populism and Islamism in Europe and the Middle East, urban citizenship, and European Muslim identities and politics. His latest book Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism (Edinburgh University Press) – explores the emergence of populism in Turkey and its genealogy as a tradition of action and discourse. His other publications include 'Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe' (Routledge), 'Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey' (Oxford University Press), 'Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks' (Palgrave).

This event was the launch of three papers authored by Courtney Freer and Spyros Sofos of the LSE Middle East Centre as part of the Global Transitions Series, a research output from PeaceRep – the Peace and Conflict Resolution Evidence Platform funded by the UK Aid from the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). 1. Qatar and the UAE in Peacemaking and Peacebuilding by Courtney Freer 2. Peacebuilding in Turbulent Times: Turkey in MENA and Africa by Spyros Sofos 3. MENA Regional Organisations in Peacemaking and Peacebuilding: The League of Arab States, Gulf Cooperation Council and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation by Courtney Freer. Courtney Freer is Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously, Courtney was Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. From 2015-2020, Courtney was a Research Officer for the Kuwait Programme at the LSE 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. She previously worked at the Brookings Doha Center and the US–Saudi Arabian Business Council. Spyros Sofos is a Research Officer on the LSE Kuwait Programme project 'Ecologies of Belonging and Exclusion: An Intersectional Analysis of Urban Citizenship in Kuwait City.' Spyros's research explores the intersection of societal insecurity, identity and collective action and, to date, it has focused on Turkish politics and society, nationalism and populism in Europe and the Middle East, urban citizenship in the Middle East, European Muslim identities and politics, and the theory of populism. His latest book Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism published by Edinburgh University Press explores the emergence of populism in contemporary Turkey and its genealogy as a tradition of action and discourse. His other publications include Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe published by Routledge, Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey published by Oxford University Press, and Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks published by Palgrave. Greg Shapland is a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and an independent researcher, writer and consultant on politics, security, resources and environment (including water) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). His entire career has been focussed on the Middle East and North Africa, whether as a commercial representative, university lecturer or government official (in the Ministry of Defence, Cabinet Office and FCO). From 1979 until 2015, he served in the MENA Research Group in the FCO. He was also Head of Research Analysts from July 2010 to July 2013. During his time with the FCO, Greg served in British Embassies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Tel Aviv and in the Consulate General in Jerusalem. Since leaving the FCO, Greg has worked on post-conflict stabilisation, Israeli-Palestinian relations, inter-state and intra-state water disputes and the impact of climate change in the MENA region. He is currently working on a book on the politics and geography of the MENA region.