LSE Middle East Centre Podcasts

This event was the launch of Isabel Käser's latest book 'The Kurdish Women's Freedom Movement: Gender, Body Politics and Militant Femininities' published by Cambridge University Press. Amidst ongoing wars and insecurities, female fighters, politicians, and activists of the Kurdish Freedom Movement are building a new political system that centres gender equality. Since the Rojava Revolution, the international focus has been especially on female fighters, a gaze that has often been essentialising and objectifying, brushing over a much more complex history of violence and resistance. Going beyond Orientalist tropes of the female freedom fighter and unpacking the movement's own discourse and practices around the 'free woman', Isabel Käser's new book looks at personal trajectories and everyday processes of becoming a militant in this movement. Based on in-depth ethnographic research in Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan, with women politicians, martyr mothers and female fighters, she looks at how norms around gender and sexuality have been rewritten and how new meanings and practices have been assigned to women in the quest for Kurdish self-determination. Her book complicates prevailing notions of gender and war and creates a more nuanced understanding of the everyday embodied epistemologies of violence, conflict, and resistance. 'The highly original ethnography and bold ethnography of Isabel Käser sheds new light on the evolution of the Kurdish conflict and allows us to understand the complexity of gender-based emancipatory projects emerging in a Near East under fire.' Hamit Bozarslan - EHESS, Paris Isabel Käser is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. She is the Principal Investigator of the collaborative project between the LSE, the University of Kurdistan Hewlêr (UKH), and Culture Project entitled ‘The Kurdistan Region of Iraq Post-ISIS: Youth, Art and Gender’. Isabel gained her PhD at SOAS University of London and has previously worked in journalism and diplomacy, most recently leading the research project ‘Art in Peace Mediation’ for the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. Zeynep Kaya is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield. Her main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender in the Middle East. She has recently published a monograph entitled Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism with Cambridge University Press. Zeynep is co-editor of I.B. Tauris-Bloomsbury's Kurdish Studies Series and is also a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and an Academic Associate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.

Kuwait’s nationality and citizenship rules have been contentious since the country’s independence in 1961. The rightful claim to full citizenship rights in the oil-rich Gulf state is highly restricted and divided along lines of kinship, religion, gender, ethnicity and nationality, leaving the majority of Kuwait’s population excluded from many social privileges. Shaping youth civic identities through education and media messaging has been an important part of the state’s construction of nationalist narratives of Kuwaiti citizenship. While young people’s voices are largely absent from official discourses, they have been creating their own spaces and means of participation. This webinar presented findings from the LSE Kuwait Programme project ‘Empowering Democratic Citizenship through Education: Exploring Rights-Based Approaches to Educational Policymaking in Kuwait’. The study explored the tensions between young people’s perspectives and Kuwaiti official discourses around citizenship identities, rights and participation. Findings are based on focus group discussions and interviews with more than 100 secondary school students and youth activists in Kuwait, as well as an analysis of Kuwaiti media outlets. Dr Rania Al-Nakib is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait, where she teaches courses in the sociology of education as well as human rights. She also worked as a consultant to en.v (a Kuwaiti organization dedicated to fostering civic engagement in the Middle East) on their n-mu programme, developed in partnership with the Eurasia Foundation and the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX) to promote constructive youth engagement in Kuwait. Her research focuses on human rights education and education for democratic citizenship in Kuwait. She is particularly interested in the impact of the hidden curriculum on Kuwaiti students’ citizenship activities and Kuwaiti female students’ gendered experiences of public education. Her PhD from the Institute of Education, University of London was titled ‘Dialogic Universalism and Human Rights Education: A Case Study from Kuwait’. She has an MS in Theoretical Linguistics from Georgetown University and an MEd from Marymount University. Her most recent publication is a chapter in an edited volume, entitled Citizenship and Global Migration: Implications for Theory, Research, and Teaching, published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Dr Sam Mejias is Research Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. He conducts multidisciplinary research on the cultural politics of human rights and equity across several connected strands of work in different countries (currently the UK, USA and Kuwait). Dr Mejias holds a PhD in Education from University College London and a Master’s degree in International Educational Development from Columbia University Teachers College. Abdullah al-Khonaini completed his MA in Power, Participation, and Social Change from the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University. He co-founded 'Raqib50', an online parliament watch that holds Kuwaiti parliamentarians accountable by making their voting records accessible to the public. His research interests include a focus on civil society, dynamics of informal civic groups and participation, postcolonial identity and belonging in the Gulf. Abdullah is a researcher on the LSE Kuwait Programme project led by Rania and Sam. Dr Rana Khazbak recently joined the University of Nottingham's Rights Lab as a post-doctoral researcher. She did her PhD in the Department of Social Policy at LSE, during which she explored the impact of urban regeneration on young people's wellbeing in London. Rana is a researcher on the LSE Kuwait Programme project led by Rania and Sam.

This event was co-organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the LSE. On 25 October 2021, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan declared a state of emergency in Sudan, dissolving the government and detaining civilian leadership. Burhan is leader of the joint ruling council. The council's official goal is to hand over leadership to civilians ahead of elections in 2023 Since the beginning of the coup, the Central Committee of Sudanese Doctors, an independent union of medics, have estimated that more than 200 people have been wounded in anti-coup protests and at least 23 been killed (as of 15 November 2021). Civilians have been taking to the streets daily, promising to keep up the pressure on the transitional military-civilian authority. Speakers will discuss the historical and political context of the latest coup, the effects of the military crackdown on the ground and the international response. Muzan Alneel is a Nonresident Fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) focusing on people-centric approach to economy, industry, and environment in Sudan. She is a writer and public speaker with an interdisciplinary professional and academic background (engineering, socioeconomics, public policy). Muzan is the co-founder of The Innovation, Science and Technology Think-tank for People Centered Development (ISTiNAD) – Sudan. Nafisa Eltahir is a correspondent covering political and economic news in Sudan as well as Egypt for Reuters News. Before her current posting she reported on the Gulf out of Dubai, and was a fellow at The Intercept. Magdi el-Gizouli is a scholar of the Sudans and a fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. He writes mostly on Sudans' affairs, often on his blog StillSUDAN. Laura Mann is a sociologist and research affiliate of the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa, whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa, particularly Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda, where she has conducted collaborative research on ICTs and digitisation within global agriculture. Before joining the LSE as an assistant professor, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford and at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, and received her PhD from the University of Edinburgh. She is on the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy.

This webinar was co-organised with the Society for Algerian Studies. Historically Algeria has had its ups and downs with the Gulf states. During the Arab Spring, Algeria was at odds with the assertive and proactive approach from GCC states, most notably in Libya, where Algeria opposed interventions and involvement from Qatar and the UAE. In line with its commitment to non-interventionism, the country also rejected involvement in the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen in 2015. More recently, Algiers remained neutral throughout the intra-GCC rift, an easier accomplishment due to the lack of economic engagement and personalised ties it has with the monarchies, when compared with its neighbours. During this webinar, speakers explored this historical background, and took stock of the geo-political and economic relations between Algeria and the countries of the GCC. Arslan Chikhaoui is Chairman of Nord Sud Ventures, a consultancy company established in Algeria in 1993. He is a member of the Defense and Security Forum Advisory Board, the World Economic Forum Expert Council and the UNSCR 1540 Civil Forum. Arslan is a visiting lecturer at both the Algerian Staff Academy and Algerian Civil Defense Academy. He is active in various Track II task forces such as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Security in the Mediterranean Region, the Maghreb and Sahel, WMD Free Zone in MENA, and Security Sector Reform (SSR) in North Africa. He has served as Senior Advisor to the Algerian Institute for Strategy Studies (1991-1994) and as Senior Coordinator of the Development Aid and Cooperation Programs for Algeria (1982-1990). He contributed to the report Algérie, Perspective 2005 (Algeria: Forecast 2005) carried out in 1991/92, and has been involved in the development of the Algerian non-hydrocarbon export policy and the restructuring and privatization policies of Algerian SOCs. Fatiha Dazi-Héni is a Middle East researcher specializing on the GCC monarchies at L’Institut de recherche stratégique de l'École militaire (IRSEM). Fatiha also lectures at Sciences Po Lille where she teaches history and socio-political developments in the Arabian Peninsula. Fatiha is author of L’Arabie saoudite en 100 questions (Tallandier, 2020). She is also a contributor to the Arab Reform Initative's e-book A Way Out of the Inferno? Rebuilding Security in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen (2017) and to Yahyia Zubir’s edited book The Politics of Algeria Domestic issues and International Relations (Routledge, 2019). She recently published, The New Saudi Leadership and its Impact on Regional Policy (The International Spectator, Italian Journal of International Affairs, Nov 2021). Sebastian Sons is a researcher at the Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO-Bonn). Previously, he served as an advisor for the Regional Programme “Cooperation with Arab Donors” (CAD) of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). As a political analyst, he is consulted by German and international political institutions as well as by international journalists to provide expertise on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. Among many other articles and analyses on Saudi Arabia, he published the book Built on Sand: Saudi Arabia – A Problematic Ally (in German) in 2016. He also conducted a study with the title A new “Pivot to the Maghreb” or “more of the same”? The transformative shift of the Gulf engagement in North Africa in 2021. Sebastian holds a Ph.D. from the Humboldt University Berlin with a thesis on media discourses on labor migration from Pakistan to Saudi Arabia.

This event was the launch of the special issue 'Building Sustainable Peace in Iraq' published in the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding. Peacebuilding and transitional justice are viewed as integral components of statebuilding in post-conflict spaces. This special issue critically evaluates statebuilding and peacebuilding in Iraq through macro and micro-level analyses of Iraq's political development following foreign-imposed regime change. Ruba Ali Al-Hassani is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at Lancaster University's Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion and Project SEPAD. Her research employs interdisciplinary methodologies in the study of state-society relations in Iraq and beyond to centre and amplify voices on the ground in public discourse, analysis, and policy. Ruba's research interests also include the Sociology of Law, transitional justice, crime, social control, and social movements. She has taught Sociology at her alma maters York University and Trent University. Ruba holds an LL.M. in transitional justice, as she completes her Ph.D. at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University. She sits on the Board of Directors at the Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture and co-founded the Canadian Association for Muslim Women in Law. Ruba wrote the article 'Storytelling: Restorative Approaches to Post-2003 Iraq Peacebuilding' featured in this special issue. Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an Associate Professor of History at California State University San Marcos and Visiting Professor at the IE University School of Global and Public Affairs in Madrid, Spain. He is co-author of Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008), The Modern History of Iraq, with Phebe Marr (Routledge 2017), and A Concise History of the Middle East (Routledge, 2018). Ibrahim wrote the article 'Demobilization Minus Disarmament and Reintegration: Iraq’s Security Sector from the US Invasion to the Covid-19 Pandemic' featured in this special issue. Shamiran Mako is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. Shamiran co-authored the introduction to this special issue 'Evaluating the Pitfalls of External Statebuilding in Post-2003 Iraq (2003–2021)' with Alistair D. Edgar, as well as the article 'Subverting Peace: The Origins and Legacies of de-Ba’athification in Iraq'. Toby Dodge is a Professor in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics. His publications include Iraq: From War to a New Authoritarianism (Abingdon: Routledge) and Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York and London: Columbia University Press and Hurst & Co). He has published papers in Nations and Nationalism, Historical Sociology, The Review of International Studies, International Affairs, International Peacekeeping and Third World Quarterly. Toby wrote the article 'The Failure of Peacebuilding in Iraq: The Role of Consociationalism and Political Settlements' featured in this special issue.

Kuwait, a leading emitter of Greenhouse Gasses and exporter of hydrocarbons, in recent years has experienced the severe impact of climate change with record breaking temperatures, deadly floods and increasingly severe dust storms. The Government of Kuwait has recognized that the global transition away from fossil fuels and efforts to limit global warming will have profound implications for the country’s economy, environment and social life. The event launched 'The Quiet Emergency: Experiences and Understandings of Climate Change in Kuwait', a new report from the LSE Kuwait Programme project 'Sustaining Kuwait in Unsustainable Times' that provides a grounded account of climate change in Kuwait. It examines how the inhabitants of Kuwait (both citizens and non-citizens) understand and experience climate change, drawing on a series of focus groups, a media review, an analysis of the December 2020 Kuwait parliamentary elections, and over 30 interviews with key stakeholders based in Kuwait. The researchers discussed the key findings from the report, including the extent to which climate change is impacting daily life, how politicians are addressing the question, the generational divide, and the unequal impact of climate change within Kuwait. Deen Sharp is an LSE Fellow in Human Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment at LSE, whose research focuses on the political economy of urbanization in the Middle East. He was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He holds a PhD in Earth Environmental Sciences (Geography Track) at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, a MSc in International Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and BA in Human Geography from Queen Mary University. Samia Alduaij is a Senior Environmental Specialist with experience working for the World Bank and with United Nations Development Programme. Her work has consisted mostly of operational projects and technical assistance programs related to environmental policy, management, governance, solid waste managment, marine issues, the sustainable development goals and climate change. Prior to the World Bank, she worked for Kuwait Petroleum International in Denmark and the Scientific Center in Kuwait. She is currently working for the Center for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Sciences in the UK and the British Embassy in Kuwait on an environmental sustainability programme, with a focus on climate change awareness and outreach ahead of COP 26 in November 2021. She is a member of the Voluntary Advisory Committee under the Supreme Council for the Environment in Kuwait. She holds a Master's degree in Environment, Politics and Globalization from King’s College, London. Abrar Alshammari is a PhD student at Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies department. Her research explores sociopolitical issues relating to citizenship and inequality in the Arabian Peninsula. She graduated with an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University's Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where she wrote her dissertation on the intersection of cultural production and politics in Kuwait. She is fluent in English and her native language is Arabic. Kanwal Tareq Hameed is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter, and member of the Gulf Studies department and the European Centre for Palestine Studies. She works on modern histories of the Gulf. Her interests include critical histories, gender studies, the role for academia beyond the university, and social justice. Courtney Freer is a Visiting Fellow with the LSE Middle East Centre. Previously, Courtney was an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Middle East Centre.

الطوارئ الصامتة: تجارب وفهم لحالة تغيّر المناخ في الكويت

This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was a launch for Cengiz Çandar's latest book 'Turkey’s Mission Impossible: War and Peace with the Kurds'. The founding of a Turkish nation-state in Asia Minor brought with it the denial of the distinct Kurdish identity in its midst, giving birth to an intractable problem that led to intermittent Kurdish revolts and culminated in the enduring insurgency of the PKK. The Kurdish question is perceived as a mortal threat for the survival of Turkey. In this book, Çandar weaves an account of the encounter between Turkey and the Kurds in historical perspective with special emphasis on failed peace processes. Providing a unique historical record of the authoritarian, centralist and ultra-nationalist—rather than Islamist—nature of the Turkish state rooted in the last decades of the Ottoman period and finally manifested in Erdoğan’s “New Turkey,” Çandar challenges stereotyped and conventional views on the Turkey of today and tomorrow. This book combines scholarly research with the memoirs of a participant observer, revealing the author’s first-hand knowledge of developments acquired over a lifetime devoted to the resolution of perhaps the most complex problem of the Middle East. Cengiz Çandar is a distinguished visiting scholar at the Stockholm University Institute for Turkish Studies. He is a scholar and journalist, and a leading expert in Turkey on the Middle East. As President Turgut Özal’s advisor in the 1990s, Çandar was the main architect of the Turkish-Kurdish rapprochement initiative. Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the Middle East Centre and co-founder of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series. He joined the Centre when it opened in 2010. Robert is responsible for running the Centre's operations, research activities, fundraising and development. He oversees the events and publications programmes, research projects and public outreach. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movement in Syria.

This event was the launch of the paper 'In-between Identities and Cultures: Ms Marvel and the Representation of Young Muslim Women' by Manmit Bhambra and Jennifer Jackson-Preece. You can read the paper here: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/110724/ Can superheroes tell us something important about changing public attitudes towards young Muslim women? To answer this question, the authors compare how young people in different locations in the Middle East and beyond react to the portrayal of the superhero Ms. Marvel as a young Muslim woman. Their findings suggest that a superhero like Ms. Marvel can create a global discourse on gender and Islam that transcends specific cultural contexts. Manmit Bhambra is Research Officer in the Religion and Global Society Unit at LSE and is coordinating its inaugural project, Strengthening Religious Cooperation in Global London. The project is exploring the impact of COVID-19 on interfaith relations and the potential for interfaith collaboration in these circumstances. Her research interests are centred around identity politics and formation, ethnic, religious and national identities as well as the broader themes of race, inclusion and minority rights. She has recently worked on research projects with young people at LSE’s European Institute and Middle East Centre. She is also Lecturer in Global Politics at Imperial College London. Jennifer Jackson-Preece is an Associate Professor in Nationalism, with a joint appointment in both the European Institute and the Department of International Relations, LSE. Jennifer's research interests include: normative responses to nationalism, ethnic conflict and religious intolerance; human and minority rights; multiculturalism; minorities and migration in Europe. Since the 1990s, she has had a sustained engagement with problems and practices of minorities and migrants. Dima Issa is a Senior Lecturer of Mass Media and Communication at the University of Balamand in Lebanon. Her research has primarily focused on Arab diaspora and media consumption, looking at ways in which identity is constructed and reconstructed through space and time. In addition, her interests include gender and representation, popular culture and audience studies, new media and technologies and social networking. Before academia, Dima worked in the corporate sector in media relations, publications and website management as well as in broadcast journalism. Polly Withers is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre, where she leads the project “Neoliberal Visions: Gendering Consumer Culture and its Resistances in the Levant”. Polly’s interdisciplinary work questions and explores how gender, sexuality, race, and class intersect in popular culture and commercial media in the global south. She is particularly interested in examining how different media and cultural modalities frame, produce, and/or challenge dominant subjectivities and social relations in the Middle East and beyond. In her current work she consider how gendered images in neoliberal and commercial media practices reflect and communicate shifts in gender and sexuality norms in post-Oslo Palestine, which will shortly be expanded to incorporate Jordan and Lebanon.

مصنع أزمات الشرق الأوسط: الاستبداد، الصمود و المقاومة by LSE Middle East Centre