Featured Research
From language shift to linguistic hybridity: The status and perceptions of Tamazight in the Algerian higher education system (Imene Medfouni & Yousef Barahmeh)
This article examines how Tamazight, the indigenous language of Algeria and the wider North African region, is perceived, used, and hybridised within the Algerian higher education system. It considers how Tamazight intersects with the concepts of indigeneity and linguistic hybridity, particularly among the Imazighen in the Chaoui region, an Amazigh-populated area in eastern Algeria.
How the Jewish Chronicle weaponises 'antisemitism' to fuel a moral panic (Neve Gordon)
Antisemitism is alive and well in the UK and across Europe. This must be vigorously clamped down on. But, instead of focusing on this very real problem, major Jewish groups have instead followed the Israeli government by instrumentalising antisemitism in an effort to criminalise and silence Palestinians and their supporters in the struggle for liberation and self-determination. The cruel irony is that, in effect, these organisations are dramatically weakening the real fight against antisemitism.
Crime and Dystopia in Three Egyptian Novels: Dissecting Cityscapes and the Body as a Terrain for Political Critique (Dalia Said Mostafa)
This article comparatively analyses three prominent novels that have acquired a large readership and significant critical attention since being published: al-Singa (The Knife) by Ahmed Khalid Tawfiq (2012); al-Tabur (The Queue) by Basma ‘Abdel ‘Aziz (2013); and Nisa’ al-Karantina (Women of Karantina) by Nael Eltoukhy (2013). Two key questions guide the analysis: in what ways do crime and dystopia intersect in these fictional works? What does their dystopian vision tell us about contemporary Egyptian society?
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.
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