Featured Research
The Piruzai of Afghanistan: A Visual Ethnography (Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper and Richard Tapper)
In the early 1970s Nancy Lindisfarne-Tapper and Richard Tapper spent a year living with the Piruzai, pastoralists and farmers in northern Afghanistan. They joined the Piruzai in the spring pastures, trekked with Piruzai families, their camels, horses, sheep, goats and dogs, to the high mountains of the Hazarajat in the summer and returned with them to their farmlands in the autumn. And they took hundreds of photographs. This book reproduces 380 of those photos, most in colour. It is a visual ethnography of the beauty of the people they met and the landscape in which they lived and travelled.
State and Peasants in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt: Some Archival Sources for the Study of Egyptian Rural History (Maha Ghalwash)
This article identifies some of the sources that are helpful for the study of peasant society in mid-nineteenth-century Egypt. In describing each of these sources, which involves specifying the nature of the data documented by a source, it highlights the potential use of each source and its limitations. It concludes that the examination of a combination of archival sources, rather than just one, enables the researcher to address some of the limitations of a particular source, and moreover to avoid developing distorted interpretations.
Scholasticide in Gaza: Settler Colonial Elimination, Genocide, and the Crisis of Academic Responsibility (Nicola Pratt)
In early October 2025, a fragile ceasefire allowed some semblance of education to resume in the Gaza Strip. At Al-Aqsa University, students celebrated becoming the first cohort to graduate since October 2023, a moment of joy amidst devastation. Across Gaza, children returned to learning in buildings with shattered walls, missing desks and chairs, and classrooms still crowded with families displaced by Israel’s two-year-long assault. Amid these scenes of improvisation and resilience, the enormity of what has been lost for Palestinian education is impossible to ignore.
From Subordination to Revolution: A Gramscian Theory of Popular Mobilization (John Chalcraft)
At a time of mass discontent, revolutionary weakness, and right-wing ascendancy, John Chalcraft presents a new theory of popular mobilization. From Subordination to Revolution is based on an innovative reading of the living Gramscian tradition, and it offers an alternative to conservative, liberal, Marxist, and poststructuralist theory. Drawing on examples from across the globe, Chalcraft defines popular mobilization as the many ways in which subordinated groups rearrange their relationships to challenge and overcome domination.
Agrarian Questions in Global Palestine: Past, Present and Future (Fadia Panosetti, Taher Labadi, Ahmad Heneiti)
This article introduces and invites contributions to the Forum on Palestine: Agrarian Questions Unsettled. While agrarian political economy has received renewed attention in the Arab region, Palestine remains largely absent from debates on old and new agrarian questions. This article brings Palestine into conversation with critical agrarian studies, arguing that agrarian questions offer a valuable framework for examining how interlocking capitalist-colonial power structures shape issues of land, food, ecology, production, and social reproduction in Palestine.
Saharan Winds: Energy Systems and Aeolian Imaginaries in Western Sahara (Joanna Allan)
As climate crisis ensues, a transition away from fossil fuels becomes urgent. However, some renewable energy developments are propagating injustices such as land grabs, colonial dispossession, and environmentally destructive practices. Changing the way we imagine and understand wind will help us ensure a globally just wind energy future. Saharan Winds contributes to a fairer energy horizon by illuminating the role of imaginaries—how we understand energy sources such as wind and the meanings we attach to wind—in determining the wider politics, whether oppressive or just, associated with energy systems.
Preparing for Revolutionary Times? Chronic Crisis of Authority and Constructive Subversion in Contemporary Jordan (Hisham Bustani)
Utilizing a multidisciplinary approach rooted in the methodology of participatory action research, this essay uses the lens of praxis to explore how Gramscian concepts, in conversation with ideas proffered by Alain Badiou, Jodi Dean, and the intellectuals of the Paris Commune, can help us understand, and possibly overcome, the socio-political stalemate characteristic of current polities in the Arab region.
Inequality and Mobility: Capabilities and Aspirations in Post-Revolution Tunisia (Jörg Gertel and Katharina Grüneisl)
After the Arab Revolutions in 2011, Tunisia became a symbol of freedom and justice and thus the hope of an entire region. Now, the picture has been reversed: Political freedoms are being curtailed and the economy is in disarray, especially after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In the face of expanding inequality, resentment and attacks against ›Others‹ fall on fertile ground
Choosing Jordanianness: The dialogic construction of Jordanian identity discourse on nationhood and belonging (Yousef Barahmeh and Jona Fras)
This article investigates the dialogic construction of Jordanian identity discourse as reflected through the production of everyday discourse on the nation, following both Anderson’s (1983) idea of nation as a ‘socially constructed community’ and Billig’s (1995) concept of ‘banal nationalism’. Against both the narrative of unifying regime initiatives and Transjordanian ethnic exclusivism, we delve deeper into the narrative of everyday nationalism, revolving around everyday practices through which ordinary people ‘choose the nation’ by means of popular culture. We draw on nationalist songs, memes, graffiti and social media hashtags where Jordanian ‘everyday nationalism’ involves a dialogic construction of identity that can draw on either Transjordanian or Palestinian symbolism. This discourse of nationhood is dialogic through its constitutive, if oppositional, relationship between symbols representing Transjordanians and Jordanians of Palestinian origin. Here, 'choosing the nation’ goes beyond simple narratives of unity or exclusion, reproducing constitutive identity fractures yet remaining dependent on their continued existence.
Feminist Silences in the Face of Israel's Genocide Against the Palestinian People: A Call for Decolonial Praxis Against Complicity (Hala Shoman, Ashjan Ajour, Sara Ababneh, Afaf Jabiri, Nicola Pratt, Jemima Repo, Maryam Aldossari)
This jointly-authored article critically examines a troubling silence within feminist academia regarding the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. This silence isn’t merely passive but actively normalizes oppression, causing tangible harm and perpetuating colonial violence. The article argues for a reinvigorated feminist decolonial praxis that actively confronts these silences by amplifying Palestinian voices, advocating for divestment from institutions complicit in settler colonialism, and supporting civil society movements, such as student encampments and the BDS campaign.
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