Past Conferences
Our annual conference, the largest and most prestigious UK gathering of scholars focused on the MENA region, has taken place since 1995. We have been fortunate to be hosted by many great institutions, including, in recent years, the universities of Exeter, St Andrews, Leeds, Edinburgh and Dublin, as well as universities in London such as King’s College, LSE and SOAS.
2023: Ecology, Crisis, and Power in the Middle East
Host: University of Exeter
Keynotes:
Associate Professor Jessica Barnes, University of South Carolina: Placing the Environment in Middle East Studies: Scale, Stories, and Everyday Life
Professor Sharzhad Mojab, University of Toronto: A Revolutionary Storm Sparked by the Fall of a Butterfly
Conference Theme:
It is widely expected that the Middle East will be one of the areas of the world most impacted by anthropogenic climate change, with predictions of sharp fluctuations in temperature and sea levels, changing precipitation patterns, and increased frequency of extreme weather events. Much analysis of these climactic effects, however, tends to focus on their techno-scientific dimensions, ignoring what they might mean for established patterns of political and economic power in the region. In this context, it is essential to consider how ecological change might intersect with the region’s multiple and interconnected crises, including unprecedented levels of human displacement, food and water scarcity, war and violence, and some of the highest levels of economic inequality and social marginalisation in the world. The ways in which these crises reinforce and overlap with ecological change will shape future dynamics of political, social, and economic power in the region. Similarly, how have actors, both in the private and public sector, been preparing for climate change? What renewable and other technologies have they embraced and what are their implications? Despite some important emerging research on these themes, issues of ecology have not been adequately addressed in Middle East studies. The Middle East is also largely absent in contemporary debates around climate change. This theme is also broad and necessarily interdisciplinary, inviting contributions from across the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences.
Some of the potential questions that could be addressed within this theme, include:
- What are the potential implications of climate change on social, political, and economic structures in the region, including the nature of authoritarianism, neoliberalism, securitisation, and the cycles of ‘contentious politics’?
- What might the intersectionalities of crisis and climate change mean for the most marginalised populations in the region, including women, youth, minorities, and displaced populations?
- How are social movements in the region confronting, challenging, and contesting the potential implications of climate change?
- How are narratives of ‘ecological crisis’ wielded by elites in the region, and what role do ecological demands play in the wider political imaginary?
- How are global initiatives to address and mitigate the effects of climate change connected to existing economic reform packages promoted by multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund?
- How is climate change – and the urgent need to end global fossil fuel production – reshaping the region’s place in global capitalism?
- What are the political, economic, and cultural implications of the ‘energy transition’ in the Middle East? How are we to understand the significant role of major Middle East states – especially in the Gulf – in global renewable energy projects, alongside the on-going expansion of traditional fossil fuel sectors?
- Given the widespread exclusion of the Middle East in contemporary ecological debates, what can the study of the region bring to our understanding of climate change and campaigns for a ‘just ecological transition’?
- What does climate change mean for the lives of rural farmers, and the rural-urban relationship?
- What can contemporary ecological debates around notions such as the ‘Anthropocene’, ‘Fossil Capital’, and the ‘New Green Deal’ contribute to our understanding of the Middle East?
- What are the implications of climate change for the nature of food regimes in the region? How are states, multilateral organisations, and private corporations intervening in the circulation of food across the region, given the significant impact that climate change is expected to have on the production of food?
- What role has environmental change played in earlier periods of Middle East history, including pre-colonial times?
2022 - Exploring and Contesting the (Re)Production of Coloniality in the Middle East: Borders, Transnationalism, and Resistance
Host: University of St Andrews
Keynotes:
Professor Amira K. Bennison, University of Cambridge: Appropriation, Resistance and the Idea of the Moroccan Centre in the Medieval Maghribi Imaginary
Dr Heba Raouf Ezzat, Ibn Haldun University in Istanbul: Beyond Orders and Borders: The Refiguration of the Urban Spaces of the Middle East
Professor Raymond Hinnebusch, University of St Andrews: From Proxy War to Sanctions War: The Later Phases of the Syrian Conflict
2020/2021 - Knowledge, Power and Middle Eastern Studies
Host: University of Kent
Keynotes:
Professor Caroline Rooney, University of Kent
‘The Revolution is a Woman’: From Woke Culture to the Arab Awakening
Dr amina wadud, National Islamic University of Jogjakarta
Islamic Feminism: What’s in a Name?
Professor Pinar Bilgin, Bilkent University
Nowhere to run? Decolonising the study of the Middle East between Area Studies and International Relations
2019 – Joining the Dots: Interdisciplinarity in Middle East Studies
Host: University of Leeds
Keynotes:
Professor Mona Harb, American University of Beirut
Crafting Oppositional Politics amidst Urban Governance Ills and Radical Urban Planning Imaginaries: Learning from Beirut
Professor Salman Sayyid, University of Leeds
Post-Disciplinarily and the Challenge of Middle Eastern Studies
2018 New Approaches to Studying the Middle East
Host: King’s College London
Keynotes:
Professor Ussama Makdisi,
The Harmony of Coexistence in the Modern Middle East
Professor Lara Deeb
Quiet Constraints on Scholarship: Self-Censorship, Refusal, and Topics We Wish Did Not Exist
Dr Seteney Shami
Knowledge at Risk: Studying the Middle East in a Disordered World
2017 – Movement and Migration in the Middle East: People and Ideas in Flux
Host: IMES, University of Edinburgh
Keynotes:
Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila, University of Edinburgh
Laurie Brand, University of Southern California
2016 – Networks: Connecting the Middle East through Time, Space and Cyberspace
Host: University of Wales Trinity St David
Keynote:
Grahame Davies
The Dragon and the Crescent
2015 – Liberation
Host: London School of Economics, Middle East Centre
Keynotes:
Peter Sluglett, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore
Tahrir and What We’re Still Waiting For
Shereen El Feki
Liberation in the Bedroom? The Shifting Sexual Landscape of the Arab Region
2014 – The Middle East in Global Perspective: Interactions Across Time and Space
Host: University of Sussex
Keynotes:
Professor Marilyn Booth, University of Edinburgh and Professor Mark Sedgwick, University of Aarhus
The Middle East in Global Perspective I
Professor Francis Robinson, University of Oxford and Dr Andrew Arsan, University of Cambridge
The Middle East in Global Perspective II
Professor Asef Bayat, University of Illinois
After the Arab Spring
2013 – Popular Movements in the Middle East and Islamic World
Host: University College, Dublin
Keynote:
Eamon Gilmore, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade
Ireland, Europe and the Middle East
2012 – Revolution and Revolt: Understanding the Forms and Causes of Change
Host: London School of Economics, Middle East Centre
Keynotes:
Professor Ghassan Salamé, Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA)
Revolution and Revolt: Understanding the Forms and Causes of Change in the Arab World
Rt Hon William Hague MP, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
International Policy Responses to Change in the Arab World Annual Conference
2011 – The Middle East: Aspirations and Challenges
Host: University of Exeter
Keynotes:
Professor Ilan Pappé, University of Exeter
The Expert’s Defining Moment: The Revolutionary Middle East 2011
Professor Paul Starkey, Durham University
The Novellist as Political Guide: Sun’Allah Ibrahim and the Egyptian Revolution (Pearson Memorial Lecture)
2010 – Third World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies in Barcelona
2009 – Frontiers: Space, Separation and Contact in the Middle East
Host: University of Manchester
Keynote:
Professor Dale F. Eickelman, Dartmouth College
Theory of Limits: Transgressing the Boundaries of Traditional Religiosity
Roundtables:
Roundtable with the BBC, Al-Jazeera and German State Television (ARD)
Roundtable bringing together academics and analysts from the FCO
2008 – Mapping Middle Eastern and North African Diasporas
Host: University of Leeds
Keynotes:
Professor Kim Knott, University of Leeds
Professor Michael W. Suleiman, Kansas State University
2008 (special conference) – What Has the Middle East Done for Us?
Host: SOAS
2007 – EURAMES Conference in Freiburg
2006 – Faith, Politics and Society
Host: University of Birmingham
Keynote:
Professor Jørgen Nielsen
2005 – Renaissance, Representation and Identity
Host: Durham University
Keynotes:
Professor Fred Halliday
Professor Robert Hillenbrand
Sir Harold Walker
2004 – Domination, Expression and Liberation in the Middle East
Host: SOAS
Keynotes:
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Former British Ambassador to the United Nations
Roger Owen (also the Annual Lecture)
Biography and Empire: Lord Cromer(1841-1917) Then and Now
Nader Fergany, Director of the Almishkat Centre for Research, Egypt
Robert Malley, Director of the Middle EastProgramme, International Crisis Group
2003 – Education as a Force for Change?
Host: University of Exeter
Keynotes:
Tariq Ali
America’s Moment in the Middle East
Jonathan Berkey, Davidson College, North Carolina
Education as a Force for Change: A Medievalist’s Reflection on a Modern Problem
Heads of Departments of Middle East Studies in the UK
Middle East Studies in the UK
2002 – First World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies
Host: University of Mainz
Keynote:
HRH Prince Hassan Bin Talal
The Inter-religious Dialogue after 9/11
2001 – The View from the Top: State and People in the Middle East and North Africa
Host: University of Edinburgh
Keynote:
Dr Sami Zubaida, Birkbeck, University of London
Citizen and Community in Middle Eastern Politics
2000 – Writing the Middle East
Host: University of Cambridge
Keynotes:
Professor Josef Van Ess, University of Tübingen
Political Theory in Early Muslim Theological Thinking
Professor Dimitri Gutas, Yale University
Arabic Philosophy in the 20th Century and Beyond
Lord Hurd, former British Foreign Secretary
Speaker at the conference dinner
1999 – EURAMES conference in Ghent
1998 – Religion and Pluralism
Host: Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham
Keynotes:
Professor Mahmoud Ayoub, Temple University, Philadelphia
Qur’anic Bases for Concepts of Religious Pluralism
Professor Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford
Religious Foundations of Pluralism
Professor Douglas Johnston, Centre for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC
Christian Initiatives in the Arena of Communal and Political Reconciliation
Sir Marrack Goulding, formerly of the United Nations, and Warden of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford
Speaker at the conference dinner
1997 – Re-Thinking Islam
Host: University of Oxford
Keynotes:
Michael Bonner, University of Michigan and Rudolph Peters, University of Amsterdam
Re-Thinking Islam: Jihad
Derek Fatchett MP, Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs responsible for Asia and the Middle East
Speaker at the conference dinner
1996 – EURAMES conference in Aix-en-Provence
1995 – The Middle East and the Environment
Host: Durham University
Keynotes:
Dr Mundhir Abdul Salam, UNESCWA
Dr Clive Agnew, University College London
Database of Expertise
The Database of Expertise in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies provides a publicly available list of MENA experts with their research and areas of expertise.
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