Opportunities

Atlas of Today's World is a nonprofit online encyclopedia that aims to help the general public worldwide better understand the broad socio-political situation in today’s world. By providing a broader and more comprehensive perspective on current events, our goal is to enable the general public to access academic-quality "big-picture" portraits of long-term social and political realities. The lack of a systematic, high-quality, and accessible overview of the world in the current information landscape is the gap we intend to fill.

We are currently accepting contributions to our Middle East and North Africa Profile, covering topics including:

• Human Rights, Minorities and Gender
• Living Standards & Impacts of Conflict
• Environmental Conditions
• Economic Systems and Corruption
• Ideology and Religion (including Sunni-Shia dynamics and religious minorities)
• Society, Demography, Migration & Social Tensions
• Nature of the State (democracy, autocracy, monarchy, hybrid structures)
• Major Non-State Actors (religious institutions, tribal structures, civil society, media, armed groups)
• International Relations & Regional Power Dynamics
• Colonial Legacy, State Formation & Post-Independence Transformations
• Political Upheavals, the Arab Spring, Youth and Digitalization

Interested contributors can submit a 100-word abstract to navarro-mana@atlasoftodaysworld.org on a rolling basis, with priority given to applications sent by October 31, 2026. Submissions are reviewed and edited by our editorial team for clarity, accuracy, and rigor. You can find examples of entries here.

BRISMES Trustee and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Dr Feras Alkabani, has been commissioned to edit The Bloomsbury Handbook to LGBTQ+ Culture in the Middle East and North Africa, and would like to invite scholars working on relevant areas covered in the edited collection to contribute a chapter. 

The Bloomsbury Handbook to LGBTQ+ Culture in the Middle East and North Africa offers an exploration of LGBTQ+ culture across a region often overlooked or misrepresented in global queer narratives. Through a blend of historical context and contemporary cultural analysis, the book challenges monolithic portrayals and highlights the resilience, creativity and complexity of queer identities across diverse MENA societies and in their diaspora.

Chapters will typically be around 8,000 words (with some flexibility); first drafts are expected to start arriving in early 2027. 

If you are interested or would like to discuss your potential contribution, please contact Dr Alkabani directly: f.alkabani@sussex.ac.uk. 

This edited volume centers the space that is bounded by an Arab East, a European North, an African South, and an Atlantic West. Generally encompassing Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia, the label used to name this region variously includes or excludes Mauritania, Libya, and Egypt. Tamazgha, the Maghreb, al-Maghrib al-‘Arabi, and North Africa: each label originates in specific historical-political junctures and comprises particular power relations. 

This collective book seeks to provide a view of visual, literary, and cultural aspects of the region to explore and critically interrogate the multifaceted encounters between the peoples and ideas of Tamazgha, the Maghreb, North Africa, and the world. It invites chapters that examine how Western images of this region have evolved over time and how local representations of the West have developed in response—including through trans-Saharan and trans-Mediterranean networks, borderland formations, and other sites of mobility and encounter. 

Emphasizing a contrapuntal reading and a multidisciplinary and decolonial methodology, the book seeks to reassess how this region of complex and contested identities and cultures have been shaped by engagements with Western and non-Western thought, aesthetics, and ideology. It centers local and indigenous perspectives in shaping and contesting cultural representations, while fostering dialogue across disciplines. The book encourages innovative methodologies that challenge previous approaches and discourses while also opening space for more nuanced and decolonial readings of cultural production and exchange.