This webinar will present the range of travel grants available via the BIAA that are open to students from undergraduate to PhD level and which are currently being advertised with a deadline of 26th April.  In addition to details of the grant schemes, we will share case studies from previous recipients and pass on tips for writing your application. We will also discuss the range of facilities available at the BIAA’s 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 covered.

This event, co-hosted by the Institute of Middle East, Central Asia and Caucasus Studies (MECACS) and the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES), presents a lecture by Alex de Waal, Research Professor in the graduate school of global affairs at Tufts University and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation.

The event will be moderated by Dr Wassim Naboulsi and Dr Khuloud Alsaba of Edinburgh University.

Organiser: Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL

Join us at the Institute of Advanced Studies for the launch of Critical Conditions, the powerful debut memoir by Hadi Abdullah, newly translated into English by Alessandro Columbu. Written in the aftermath of revolution, war, and exile, Critical Conditions is both a personal account of survival and a profound meditation on witnessing, resistance, and the politics of memory. Blending the immediacy of frontline reporting with lyrical reflection, Abdullah’s memoir traces his transformation from a teaching assistant in Homs to one of the most recognisable media voices of the Syrian uprising. Through his lens, we encounter not only the brutal realities of conflict but also deep bonds of friendship, moments of joy, loss, and the enduring will to document

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

Speaker: Eliza Tasbihi (McGill University) 

Through untouched manuscripts, Tasbihi’s Hidden in Plain Sight: İsmāʿīl Anḳaravī’s Commentary on ‘Book Seven’ of Rūmī’s Mathnawī (2025) examines the apocryphal Book Seven of the Mathnawī, which has never been studied. Why was it added to Rūmī’s Mathnawī? What were its implications in the Mevlevī centers in 17th-century Ottoman society or in Persian speaking societies in India and Iran? Was Book Seven added on the Indian subcontinent or in the Ottoman Empire?

Organiser: LSE Middle East Centre and the Centre for Peace and Security, Coventry University

We warmly invite you to attend this British Academy Conference, Algeria: Historical Struggles and Imagined Utopias, at the London School of Economics on Thursday 28 – Friday 29 May 2026.

The important historical legacies of the Independence struggle and exciting recent developments in Algerian political, social, cultural and economic fields call for a public platform in the UK for scholars working on Algeria to share their research. Prioritising decolonising, feminist and other innovative approaches in order to learn from Algeria’s important revolutionary history, contemporary struggles and future imaginations, this conference encourages an intersectional and multidisciplinary approach.

We invite you to attend a two-day workshop critically examining decentralised, autonomist, and federalist modes of political organising in West Asia and North Africa. The workshop aims to be a space of interdisciplinary exploration of historical lineages, contemporary manifestations, and future possibilities of decentralised governance in (post)uprising and (post)revolutionary contexts.

The workshop is structured around three core themes:  

• Historiography and Genealogy: excavating and reassessing historical precedents of autonomist organising in the WANA region, challenging statist historiographies.  
• Political Theory and Philosophy: articulating the distinct political thought emerging from these movements, exploring concepts of democracy, ecology, gender, and pluralism.  
• Contemporary Praxis and Future Possibilities: critically evaluating the successes, limitations, and future prospects of existing and emergent autonomist projects.

The workshop will take place at the University of Glasgow on 22 and 23 July 2026 from 10:00 am to 6 pm. To allow the broadest possible participation, the workshop will be held in person and online via Zoom. If you would like to attend the workshop, please register by following this Eventbrite link. There is no conference fee.