Middle East Centre

Dr Elife Bicer-Deveci, postdoctoral fellow of Swiss National Science Foundation and academic visitor at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony’s College, gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series. Bicer-Deveci is specialised in the field of gender studies, history of women’s movement, history of Iran and Turkey. She published several papers and a peer-reviewed monography based on her Phd-project about the history of the Ottoman-Turkish women’s movement and international women’s organisations. Both the Phd-project and the publication of the monography were granted by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She has defended her Phd-thesis at the Historical Institute of the University of Bern and was a fellow of the Graduate School for Gender Studies and Center for Global Studies in Bern. Her recent research project is about the history of international prohibitionist policies and their impacts on Iran and Turkey from 1900 until today.

Madawi al-Rasheed (LSE) and Courtney Freer (LSE), give a talk for the Middle East Centre Seminar Series at St Anthony's College Oxford, chaired by Toby Matthiesen (St Anthony's College). Dr Courtney Freer is a Research Officer at the Kuwait Programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her work focuses on the domestic politics of the Arab Gulf states, with a particular focus on Islamism and tribalism. Her DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford revised rentier state theory by examining the socio-political role played by Muslim Brotherhood groups in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE; a book version of these findings will be published by Oxford University Press in Spring 2018 under the title Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies. She previously worked as a Research Assistant at the Brookings Doha Center and as a researcher at the US-Saudi Arabian Business Council. Professor Madawi Al-Rasheed is Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre, London School of Economics. Previously she was Professor of Social Anthropology at King’s College, London and Visiting Research professor at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore. Her research focuses on history, society, religion and politics in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Middle Eastern Christian minorities in Britain, Arab migration, Islamist movements, state and gender relations, and Islamic modernism. Her latest book Muted Modernists: the Struggle over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia was published by Hurst in 2015. Her presentation draws on her forthcoming edited volume: Salman’s Legacy: the dilemmas of a new era published by Hurst and OUP in March 2018.

Ziad Majed discusses his research on the political situation in Syria, which is the focus of his latest publication. Ziad Majed, a Lebanese/French political scientist, is an associate professor of Middle East studies and International Affairs at the American University of Paris. His research focuses on Lebanon, Syria, Political transitions, Consociationalist systems and Political Islam. In 2007, he co-founded the Arab Network for the Study of Democracy. Dr. Majed’s latest publication: Syrie, La révolution orpheline (Syria, the Orphan Revolution), Paris, 2014. He also has two blogs: ziadmajed.blogspot.com (in Arabic) and vendredis-arabes.blogspot.com (French and English).

Dr Hatsuki Aishima (National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka) gives a talk for the Middle East Studies Centre seminar series. This paper explores karate as a cultural practice of Egyptian middle classes in which they experiment on a variety of ways to be 'global'. They perceive karate as a means to join the global community, which is a rare opportunity for citizens who are situated at the margins of international political economy. I will focus on the aspirations of Egyptian Traditional Karate Federation (ETKF) members to reinstitute Japanese 'traditions' of karate by searching for its budo roots. ETKF was established shortly after the January 25 Revolution of 2011 which ousted President Hosni Mubarak. In their view 'traditional karate (karate taqlidi)' should be distinguished from the World Karate Federation style 'karate riyadi (sport karate)' which has become a mere competitive sport. Their goal is to spread “educational karate (karate tarbawi)” which is derived from what they perceive as the original ethos of budo that 'karate must be a lifestyle'. Although karate is the second most popular sports in Egypt after football, most practitioners are unaware of its Japanese or Okinawan origin. Alluding to Egyptian national team’s victories at international competitions, some asserted that “Karate might have come from Japan but it has become fully Egyptian”. It was the ETKF founder, an Egyptian karate master who has been residing Paris since the 1980s, that reintroduced the notion of budo to contemporary Egyptians. When budo means “the way of warrior” in Japanese, he defines the term as 'martial arts', using the English expression rather than its Arabic equivalent, funun al-qataliya. In other words, in Egyptian ears, budo sounds doubly foreign - Japanese and English, yet somewhat modern due to its English rendering. This complex genealogy of Egyptian karate illustrates the ways in which globalisation flows. Although the West ceased to be the colonial power, they continue to mediate and shape Egyptian images of Japan.

Dr Hugh Roberts gives a talk for the middle east studies centre seminar series. Dr Hugh Roberts is the Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History at Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts, USA and a specialist on North African history and politics. He took up his post at Tufts in January 2012. For academic year 2015-2016 he was also the Simons Visiting Professor in Dialogue on International Law and Human Security at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. Between 1976 and 1997 he lectured in the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia, the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley and the Department of History at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the University of London. From 1997 to 2002 he was a Senior Research Fellow of the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has also worked outside academia, as an independent scholar and consultant on North African affairs and as Director of the International Crisis Group’s North Africa Project, based in Cairo, from 2002 to 2007 and again from February to July 2011. He is the author of The Battlefield: Algeria 1988-2002. Studies in a broken polity (Verso, 2003; p/b 2015); Berber Government: the Kabyle polity in pre-colonial Algeria (I.B. Tauris, 2014; p/b 2017) and Algérie-Kabylie: Études et interventions (Algiers, Éditions Barzakh, 2014).

Noa Landau (Editor-in-Chief at Haaretz English Edition) gives a talk for the middle east studies centre seminar series. In her talk she is going to address some of the key challenges modern Israel is faced with: How is Israel's relationship with the US changing in the Trump era? What is the future of Israel's relationship with the Jewish Diaspora? What are the key issues affecting the political climate in Israel? How can traditional media stay relevant and authoritative today?

Professor Robert Springborg (Italian Institute of International Affairs, Rome), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series. Robert Springborg is a non-resident Research Fellow of the Italian Institute of International Affairs, Rome. Until October 2013, he was Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School, and Program Manager for the Middle East for the Center for Civil-Military Relations. From 2002 until 2008, he held the MBI Al Jaber Chair in Middle East Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, where he also served as Director of the London Middle East Institute. Before taking up that Chair, he was Director of the American Research Center in Egypt, University Professor of Middle East Politics at Macquarie University in Sydney Australia; and assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also taught at King’s College, London; University of California, Berkeley; the College of Europe; the Paris School of International Affairs of Sciences Po; and the University of Sydney. In 2016, he was Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar, Middle East Initiative, Kennedy School, and Harvard University. His publications include Mubarak’s Egypt: Fragmentation of the Political Order; Family Power and Politics in Egypt; Legislative Politics in the Arab World (co-authored with Abdo Baaklini and Guilain Denoeux); Globalization and the Politics of Development in the Middle East first and second editions, (co-authored with Clement M. Henry); Oil and Democracy in Iraq; Development Models in Muslim Contexts: Chinese, ‘Islamic’ and Neo-Liberal Alternatives and several editions of Politics in the Middle East (co-authored with James A. Bill). He co-edited a volume on popular culture and political identity in the Gulf that appeared in 2008. He has published in the leading Middle East journals and was the founder and regular editorialist for The Middle East in London, a monthly journal that commenced publication in 2003. His new book -‘Egypt’ has just been published in October 2017 by Polity Press.

Dr Basma Al Mutlaq (School of Oriental and African Studies) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series called Women's Rights Research Seminars. As in other parts of the world, women’s empowerment has gained prominence in today’s Saudi Arabia, with a surge in initiatives and leadership projects – all seeking to address the themes of ‘reform’, ‘renewal’ and ‘change.’ Drawing on Michel Foucault’s ‘counter memory’ theory, I examine women’s discourse as a space of identity, power and agency that counters the ‘master narrative’ of a patriarchal and religious culture. Surveying women’s literature between 1960 and 2015, this seminar which is based on my forthcoming book Saudi Women Writers: Gender, Identity and Resistance, examines how women writers are challenging their male-dominated culture and responding to the institutionalization of their womanhood. It begins by discussing women’s struggle for rights in the kingdom, and how the ‘woman issue’ has been used as political bargaining chip by both religious/national and Western discourses. Subsequent chapters discuss themes born out of these women’s work, which are ‘Breaking Taboos’, ‘Globalization, Women and the City’, ‘Violence and Gender’ and ‘Incarcerated bodies’.

Zachary Lockman has taught modern Middle Eastern history at New York University since 1995. His most recent book is Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States (2016). His other books include Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (2004/2010); Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (1996); and (with Joel Beinin) Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (1987). He is a former president of the Middle East Studies Association, chairs the wing of MESA’s Committee on Academic Freedom that deals with North America, and is a contributing editor of Middle East Report.

Jeremy Greenstock is the Chairman of the strategic advisory company, Gatehouse Advisory Partners, established in September 2010, and Chairman of Lambert Energy Advisory, the oil and gas specialists, since January 2012. Born in 1943, Sir Jeremy was educated at Harrow School and Worcester College, Oxford. His principal career was with the British Diplomatic Service, ending his career as UK Permanent Representative at the United Nations in New York (1998-2003) and then, after a suspension of his retirement, as the UK Special Envoy for Iraq (September 2003-March 2004). After three years as an Assistant Master at Eton College, he joined the Diplomatic Service in 1969. The two themes of his career were the Middle East and US/Western European Relations. He studied Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, Lebanon (1970-72) and went on to serve in Dubai and Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s and mid 1980s respectively. From 1974-1978 he was Private Secretary to Ambassadors Peter Ramsbotham and Peter Jay in the British Embassy in Washington, starting a total of ten years spent in Washington and New York on US and Transatlantic business. After a spell as Political Counsellor in Paris (1987-90), Sir Jeremy came back to London as Director for Western and Southern Europe, the foundation for a number of years’ work on the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and in particular on the Balkans, Cyprus and Gibraltar. He returned to Washington as Minister (Deputy Ambassador) in 1994-95, and was then brought back to London as Director General for Eastern Europe and the Middle East (1995) and then Political Director (1996-98). After chairing the European Union’s Political Committee during the UK Presidency in the first half of 1998, he moved to New York as UK Ambassador to the UN in July 1998. As the UK’s Representative on the Security Council up to July 2003, he worked extensively on matters of peace and security in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and South Asia, but particularly on Iraq. He chaired the Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee from October 2001 to April 2003. Sir Jeremy left government service in March 2004, after seven interesting months in Baghdad. He became Director of the Ditchley Foundation, the conference centre in Oxfordshire promoting transatlantic dialogue, in August 2004, a position he left in August 2010. He was also a Special Adviser to the BP Group from 2004 to 2010, a Non-Executive Director of De La Rue from 2005 to 2013, a Governor of the London Business School from 2005 to 2008 and Chairman of the UN Association in the UK from 2011 to 2016. He now works concurrently as a Member of the Chatham House Council, as a Special Adviser to the NGO Forward Thinking, as a policy adviser to the International Rescue Committee (UK) and as co-Chair of the European Eminent Persons Group on Middle East issues.