MENA-related Events Calendar

Organiser: Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies Research Seminar Series

Join us for a hybrid seminar by Rik Janssen and Reem Al-Sada, two IMES PhD candidates, who will respectively give presentations on foreign observations of Ottoman archery, and the proliferation of religious theological ideas across the Arabian Peninsula and Indian Ocean world.

Organiser: The Alwaleed Centre &  Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh 

Palestinian singer, composer, and musicologist Reem Kelani will lead a performative lecture tracing a spatio-temporal mapping of dispossession and migration. With the lecture participants, Kelani will explore traditional Palestinian songs and their pivotal role as testaments of existence and trauma.

The journey moves from Palestine, past and present, to Egypt in 1919 through the music of Egyptian singer, composer, and social chronicler Sayyid Darwish (1892–1923). Andalusian poet, playwright, and cultural activist Federico García Lorca (1898–1936) completes the mapping with echoes of the underexamined expulsion of the Moriscos from Iberia between 1609 and 1614.

The lecture concludes by returning to Palestine, which serves as the pulse for this journey, and at its centre, the voices of older Palestinian women to whom Kelani refers as “Big Mamas” — living repositories of cultural survival.

This presentation is interactive, based on the compositional technique of call-and-response, realised through group singing with the participants. No prior musical experience is required — only a willingness to listen, sing, travel across time and history, and celebrate musical memory.

Organiser: LSE Middle East Centre

Speakers: Fabrício M. Fialho (LSE International Inequalities Institute); Abrar Al Hasan (Kuwait University)

Chair: Aygen Kurt-Dickson (LSE Innovation & Impact)

Join the LSE Middle East Centre for a Kuwait Programme workshop, presenting research on the influence of social media on food-consumption behaviours in Kuwait. Kuwait is experiencing public health challenges driven by rising rates of non-communicable nutrition-related diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Adding to this issue is the widespread social media culture in Kuwait surrounding food photography. The extensive use of digital platforms, combined with Kuwait's unique social media culture, offer new and unique avenues for studying how online content and interactions might shape food-consumption behaviours. This research addresses the influence of social media on food-consumption behaviours in Kuwait

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: 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.