MENA-related Events Calendar

Organiser: LSE Middle East Centre

Speakers: Miriyam Aouragh (University of Westminster); Mohamed Daadaoui (Oklahoma City University); Michael J. Willis (University of Oxford)
Chair: Richard Barltrop (LSE Middle East Centre)

In September, a wave of protests emerged in Morocco led by the country's youth, known as GenZ 212. Since September, 3 people have been killed and 400 arrested according to Amnesty International. Triggered by the deaths of women in an Agadir hospital, the protest movement’s demands come against the background of widespread unemployment and a lack of funding in health and education sectors.

With King Mohammed VI's latest speech announcing budgetary increases and promises of reform, will this be enough to meet the movement’s demands, and does the movement have enough momentum to continue? This panel of experts will take a look at the current protests, how they have been organised and their capacity to gather widespread support. Panellists will also provide broader political and historical analysis on the country, analysing how capacity for reform can be understood in light of the Kingdom's governance systems and political institutions.

Organiser: Contemporary Turkish Studies, LSE

Speakers: Melis Cin (Lancaster University); Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm (Manchester Metropolitan University); Craig Walker (Researcher); Manu Lekunze (University of Aberdeen)
Chair: Yaprak Gürsoy (European Institute at LSE)

This panel, hosted by Contemporary Turkish Studies at LSE, examines how marginalised youth develop alternative forms of political participation through participatory art, co-production, and inclusive deliberation, transforming exclusion into meaningful engagement across the world, including Türkiye, South Africa and Uganda.

Organiser: LSE Middle East Centre

Speakers: Guilain Denoeux (Colby College) & Robert Springborg (Simon Fraser University)
Chair: Greg Shapland (LSE Middle East Centre)

With hardening authoritarianism and state capture by militias exacerbating the challenges faced by providers of development and political aid across the Middle East and North Africa, how can aid be made more effective? Can donors overcome the limitations of their outdated assistance playbooks?

Analysing the fraught relationships between Western aid providers and MENA recipients, the authors of Making Aid Work suggest innovative, practical approaches for overcoming the chronic limitations—and disappointing results—of assistance aimed at encouraging economic development and political reform in the region.

Organiser: MESA Global Academy, the Georgetown University Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, and the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies

Speaker: Dr. Ahmad Qabaha (An-Najah National University)

This online talk with Dr. Ahmad Qabaha of An-Najah National University will address Mahmoud Darwish’s representation of the Israeli settler-colonial genocide, ecocide, and scholasticide in his poetry, especially in his poem, “The Red Indian’s Penultimate Speech to the White Man," which makes connections between the indigenous struggle of Palestinian people and that of Native Americans.

Organiser: Centre for the Study of Islam, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter

Speaker: Edith Szanto (Associate Professor in Religious Studies, University of Alabama)

Dr Szanto’s recent book, Twelver Shi‘i Self-flagellation Rites in Contemporary Syria: Mourning Sayyida Zaynab, examines contested Muharram practices, as well as the institutions and authorities that promoted or condemned them until 2011, when most Shi‘is fled Syria. For 40 years, the Syrian shrine town of Sayyida Zaynab was a place of miracles, where violence engendered healing.To experience miraculous healing, Shi‘is attended mourning gatherings, studied at seminaries, self-flagellated, and frequented spiritual healers. Supported by the political establishment, Shi‘i institutions arose to serve Iraqi refugees and Iranian pilgrims. Seminaries promoted various practices, some highly controversial. Wounded, traumatized, impoverished, and oppressed, asylum seekers from Iraq who performed flagellations sought salvation - a worldly restoration requiring saintly beneficence. In Syria, where Shi‘is were often asylum seekers from Iraq, daily concerns centred on the here and now, on survival, and on the bitterness they felt. They prayed for justice and retribution, as much as for physical and psychological healing.

Organiser: Royal Society for Asian Affairs (RSAA) 

Speaker: Charles Lister (Middle East Institute)
Chair: Dr Rim Turkmani (LSE)

Twelve months ago, following thirteen years of civil war, the then rebel faction, Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) launched a lightening offensive which saw the group take control of huge swathes of Syrian territory, ultimately leading to the capture of the capital city, Damascus, and the fleeing of long-time dictator Bashar al-Assad, ending fifty-four years of Assad family rule. Shortly after the fall of Assad, HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa became the de facto leader of Syria and in January 2025 was appointed President of the Syrian Transitional Government.

Organiser: Centre for the Study of Islam, Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter

Speaker: Gabriel Said Reynolds (Crowley Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology, University of Notre Dame)

The Qur’an’s engagement with Christian stories, including the story of young men and their miraculous “sleep” in a cave, and the story of a clay bird brought to life by the breath of Jesus, points to its emergence in a late antique Christian world. In this talk I will argue that the Qur’an competes with Christian claims by reshaping these stories for its own theological program, thereby undermining their Christian apologetic uses. The clay-bird miracle, for example, was popular among Christians for its presentation of Christ’s divine nature (even as a child). In the Qur’an it becomes simply one of the signs that God works through prophets. These case studies reveal a scripture at once deeply conversant with and strategically resistant to its Christian world.