Opportunities

Location: University of Oxford
Co-convenors: Dr. Weston Bland and Dr. Cyma Farah, Faculty of History, University of Oxford

Taking inspiration from the centennial anniversary of the 1926 Lebanese Constitution, this workshop asks how historical actors in the modern Middle East have approached constitutions as mediators of religious identity. From nineteenth-century Ottoman imperial decrees to the constitutional revolutions of the twentieth century, constitutional governance has emerged as a critical feature of debate in the political order of the Middle East during the transition from empire to colonial rule to nation-states.

The workshop will take place over two days on Thursday and Friday, 11 and 12 June 2026. Sessions will be structured around the discussion of individual pre-circulated papers.  These discussions are aimed at providing participants with feedback in order to revise papers for publication as part of a special issue or edited volume arising from the workshop. 

This international conference aims to explore the central role of culture and art in the reconstruction and regeneration of the social fabric, through a reinterpretation of trauma as a driver of creation and preservation of cultural memory (Erll and Nünning, 2008) and as a form of resistance to the politics of erasure. Art, in its many material and immaterial expressions, leads to a reappropriation of space – geographical and symbolic – and time, through a process of “reorganization” of an unspeakable present (Crone and Mollerup, 2024), constantly disrupted by trauma, but which, through its representation, can be “recreated” and pave the way for a different future. 

We encourage papers dealing with the interconnections between trauma, memory and resistance in multiple artistic languages – literature, cinema, theatre, painting, photography, visual arts, sculpture, to name but a few – to highlight the role of art in reinterpreting trauma, making it a source of memory and thus a basis for social change. The focus will be on the artistic production, especially during the 21st century, created by Palestinian artists about Palestine, including those in the diaspora.