MENA-related Events Calendar

Bashir Abu-Manneh (Hunter College) comes to QMUL to speak about his new book Disposable Palestinians: Israel’s Wars and Genocide in Gaza.

This event, hosted by the QMUL Centre for the Study of Race, Class and Empire, is a conversation between Bashir Abu-Manneh (Hunter College, NYC) and Matan Kaminer (QMUL) about Abu-Manneh's new book Disposable Palestinians: Israel’s Wars and Genocide in Gaza, out with Polity this year. What explains the genocide in Gaza? How is it connected to Israel’s previous wars of politicide against the Palestinian people? And what can Palestinians do to end their condition of disposability under occupation? Join us for a dialogue about Palestine/Israel and the role of international law in a new Palestinian strategy of liberation.

Lessons in Repression: Silencing Campus Workers on Palestine Since October 7, 2023 is MESA’s major new report by the Academic Freedom Initiative. Based on analysis of nearly 200 incidents of retaliation, and interviews with 30 targeted employees, the report gives deep insight into how university administrators and others deployed a range of tactics to try to shut down teaching and speech, how employees responded, and what can be done to continue to stand up for academic freedom. The report finds that all categories of academic workers are at risk (30% involved non-tenure track faculty or instructors, and 36% were tenured) and two-thirds of cases recorded were people of color, who are disproportionately targeted. But most retaliation is not for classroom speech.

Join the researchers, legal activists, political analysts, and people directly affected to consider what these cases reveal about the changing scope of academic freedom in the US and Canada. Come learn about the tactics used to stifle Palestine advocacy and teaching, and how to stand up for academic freedom. Check out some of the data ahead of time.   

Speakers: 

• Lori Allen, AFI Program Manager and report lead author, is an anthropologist of Palestine 
• Andrea Brower, a scholar of environmental justice, quit her job as primary professor in the Solidarity and Social Justice program at Gonzaga University in Spokane Washington after the Civil Rights Act was used to challenge her activism in support of Palestinian rights
• Isaac Kamola, directs the American Association of University Professors Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom and is a professor of political science at Trinity College
• Darryl Li, co-chair of MESA’s Task Force on Civil and Human Rights and an anthropologist and legal scholar at the University of Chicago 
• Jonah Rubin, Senior Manager of Campus Organizing, Jewish Voice for Peace
• Radhika Sainath, Litigation Director at Palestine Legal, an organization that protects the civil and constitutional rights of people in the US who speak out for Palestinian freedom

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

Speaker: John P Cooper (Visiting Professor, Centre for Maritime Archaeology of the University of Southampton)

The wooden watercraft of Yemen are unusually richly decorated— normally with paint and, on some vessels, with carving. Fieldwork conducted by the author (with colleagues Dionisius A Agius and Chiara Zazzaro) in 2008–2009 around the coast of Yemen and neighbouring countries documented through photography a wide range of painted and carved schemas on ‘traditional’ watercraft. Analysis by Cooper has, so far in a largely descriptive manner, characterised the principal features of these schemas: large painted triangles at bow and stern; stripes along the hull; intricate friezes carved and painted around the upper stern quarters incorporating figurative and abstract imagery; Qur’anic verses in the superstructure. Given the impossibility of returning to Yemen to consult the creative communities who produced these schemas, this presentation asks the extent to which we as outsiders can successfully infer meaning and define space from the photographic record of the fieldwork. As a work in progress, it solicits the views of its audience.

Organiser: SOAS Middle East Institute

Speaker: Christian Henderson (Leiden University)

In a region known for its export of oil, Monarchies of Extraction explores how the Gulf states are simultaneously defined by the importation of food.

Charting the economics and politics of the Gulf through an examination of its food system, Christian Henderson demonstrates how these states constitute a distinct social metabolism. The Gulf states represent 'inverted farms', where the import of prodigious quantities of agricultural commodities has enabled these economies to overcome their lack of arable land. This phenomenon reveals the extreme imbalance of patterns of consumption and development within the food system of the Middle East and North Africa.

Are you a UK Higher Education Institution-affiliated researcher working within the humanities and social sciences and planning a project in Türkiye and/or the Black Sea region next year? If so, join us on Wednesday 21th October for a webinar on how the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA) can support your research. This webinar will present the range of grants and opportunities available via the BIAA, with a particular focus on the Study (up to £2,000), Research (up to £5,000) and Large Research (up to £10,000) grants, which are currently being advertised with a deadline of 1st November. We will also discuss the range of facilities available at the BIAA’s world-class research centre in Ankara, including the BIAA David H. French Library – one of Türkiye’s premier research libraries, the BIAA laboratory and reference collections, the BIAA’s digital repository and archive and our research support and facilitation services. The BIAA’s research agenda and current Strategic Research Initiatives will also be presented.