Opportunities

Workshop, University of Liverpool, 1-2 June 2023

The Europe and the World Centre at the University of Liverpool, invites interested scholars to apply for this interdisciplinary workshop investigating how the gig economy has transformed labour relations in the Middle East and North Africa. It focuses on the challenges and opportunities that digital platforms offer to labour markets in the region while precarity and informality jeopardise workers.

The workshop calls for papers that broaden the analysis of the so-called “gig economy” beyond a mere economic lens, by bringing together multi-disciplinary insights and approaches from politics, sociology, political economy, digital anthropology, and development studies.

The Malek Sghiri Scholarship is a full tuition scholarship for a semester-long group course at the Taa Marbouta Language Centre in Tunis, Tunisia. The scholarship is only available for the Arabic language but the student does not need to have any experience with the Arabic language; they can join classes at the beginner, intermediate, or advanced level. The grant covers language classes and internship/research support costs. Please note that accommodation, travel & living costs are not included. We welcome applicants from any country or background.

More information about the Taa Marbouta Language Courses can be found here: https://taamarbouta.com/

Arabic courses are combined with internships to help students make their first steps in the world of international affairs.

Hybrid Conference, University of Konstanz, 21-23 March 2024

By exploring the complex and much-studied topic of Christian-Muslim relations through the changing lens of methodologies, this conference aims to foster an interdisciplinary debate that, through comparison and collaboration between scholars from different fields, bridges rigid geographical and temporal frameworks. Early career scholars and all others interested in participating are thus invited to help demonstrate the historical value of new or nuanced methodologies by applying them to specific case studies.

AHM Annual Conference, University of Amsterdam, 21-23 June 2023

This conference also aims to explore discourses of diasporic heritage, which correspond to the plethora of media, museological, political, historical and journalistic narratives and literary texts that structure a public and common understanding of identity. The conference organisers are particularly interested in papers focusing on the Middle East as a diasporic space and Middle East diasporas within the the UK. The AHM Conference offers researchers the unique opportunity to be published (open access) by Amsterdam University Press (AUP) and all attendees and contributors will leave the conference with the paper edition of the publication. 

Submissions for the GINGKO Grants Programme for 2023 are now open. Gingko awards two kinds of academic research grant: the Gingko Research Grant and the Werner Mark Linz Memorial Grant. Both these grants support academic research, conferences or symposiums in one or more of GINGKO’s academic subject areas – the history, art history or religions of the MENA region. The Research Grant is a small-scale grant; up to three are awarded each year. The Werner Mark Linz Memorial Grant (WMLM) is a medium-scale award; there is only one WMLM Grant awarded per year.

The Gingko Encounter Grant is a small-scale award to fund interfaith and/or intercultural encounters that bring together people from MENA and the West. The Encounters can be but need not be academic in nature. They must aim to improve mutual understanding between MENA and the West. Gingko awards up to three Encounter Grants per year.

Summer School, The Centre for Lebanese Studies, 6-9 June 2023 

As part of the British Academy-funded Bilateral Research Chair in Education Research in Conflict and Crisis, The Centre for Lebanese Studies in Collaboration with LERRN (Local Engagement Refugee Research Network) based at Carleton University is organising their first summer school under the title: ‘Unpacking the industry of refugee education and research: towards equitable theory and practice’. This is a three-day residential summer school that will take place in Beirut - Lebanon. The summer school will be fully funded.

Applicants from around the world are encouraged to apply, particularly those living and working in conflict affected areas. 

Candidates should be studying, researching, and/or working in the field of refugee education, education in emergencies, refugee studies, and other related fields.

The Journal of North African Studies is currently recruiting for a Co-Editor. This role is a great opportunity for an academic with a strong research background in North African studies (social sciences and/or history), and who also has the commitment, drive and ability to help develop the journal. As part of this role, you will be responsible for the oversight and administration of a rigorous and proper peer review process that delivers an agreed amount of content of suitable scope and quality within an agreed publication timeframe.

Workshop, The Arab Political Science Network and the Center for Lebanese Studies, 6 March 2023

The Arab Political Science Network (APSN) and the Center for Lebanese Studies (CLS) are pleased to announce a call for a virtual book proposals workshop. The workshop is aimed at recent PhD graduates and early career scholars in social science from the Arab world who are working on their first book project focusing on the region. The workshop is divided into two parts and will be in English.

Prospective applicants should be writing their first book and scholars, based in the Arab world, are encouraged to apply. The book workshop welcomes research and proposals focusing on the politics of the Middle East and North Africa.

The Department of Languages, Cultures & Film at the University of Liverpool wishes to appoint to a permanent Lectureship (Teaching and Research) in Arabic Translation Studies. You will maintain and enhance our growing research expertise in translation and interpreting, and contribute to the design, development and delivery of our new MA in Translation Studies.  You will have a PhD in Arabic Translation Studies or a relevant related discipline, and an emerging track-record of producing research and publications of international excellence, as well as evidence of, or potential for, attracting funding from research councils or other external bodies. You will be expected to recruit and provide co-supervision for a rapidly expanding cohort of PhD students in Arabic Translation Studies and cognate subjects relating to Arabic, and will also play a central role in building strategic international partnerships with Arabic-speaking institutions.

The LSE Middle East Centre is offering a full (£33,333) scholarship for a national of the Middle East or North Africa (Arab League member states, Iran, Israel and Turkey) to support the costs for any taught LSE Master's degree programme in the 2023/24 session. The applicant’s undergraduate degree should have been taken in a MENA state, an element of the Master's programme should be relevant to the study of the MENA region, and the applicant must be accepted to the programme to be eligible for funding.

Conference, Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, Doha, Qatar, 27-29 January 2024

The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies and the Institute for Palestine Studies are pleased to announce the second round of the Annual Palestine Forum. The call for papers is open to researchers, scholars, and PhD candidates from all over the world. The “Palestine Forum”, is an academic conference, organized by the two institutions, to provide an interactive academic space for Palestinian and non-Palestinian researchers from all over the world, to present new and innovative approaches and to exchange views and ideas related to the study of Palestine. It is an opportunity for researchers who are already working on papers related to Palestine, to present and discuss their work, and to learn about and benefit from new research trends.

Protest,a Brill journal, invites submissions that engage with the most recent theoretical, methodological, and empirical advances in the study of protest. It serves as a forum for capturing the expanding global phenomenon of protest. To this end, Protest invites contributors to interpret the evolving nature of power and power dynamics and relations across various terrains of protest, including but not limited to the Middle East. The journal champions the diversity of ontology, epistemology, and methodology of knowing protest, undertaking to reflect it in the “writing” of protest. 

The journal welcomes contributions about communities, people, ideas, institutions, and processes, all within the context of protest.

For editorial queries and proposals, please contact the Editor (lsadiki@mecouncil.org).

As part of its educational mission, the British–Yemeni Society offers a grant of up to £1,000 annually to assist with academic study related to Yemen. Applications are invited from anyone carrying out research in, or on Yemen, at a university, preferably one that is based in Britain or Yemen. Applicants' nationality is irrelevant. Applications may be made to assist with study in any subject or field, so long as it is concerned with Yemen, and is for a specific qualification (e.g., BA, MA, PhD etc.). Post-Doctoral researchers may apply but will only be considered should no more junior applicant approach the Committee.

The normal deadline for applications is 31 May. However, because of the variability in the number of applications received every year and current conditions in Yemen anyone interested is encouraged to contact the Secretary in the first instance, even after the annual deadline.

This issue of Critical Times probes the question of solidarity—its subjects, horizons, difficulties, and limits. In some social-theoretical accounts, solidarity is a force that coheres subjects, holds them together in one community, and coordinates their aspirations, sympathies, or interests in perfect unity. Solidarity, in other words, transcends differences to generate unity; indeed, it converts difference into sameness. And when such differences persist or reappear in new forms, solidarity is said to be in danger or to have failed. Yet this is neither the only archive nor the only horizon of solidarity. Other historical and contemporary practices of solidarity offer distinct grammars and horizons: from anticolonial solidarity to contemporary migrant solidarity, solidarity emerges as less a given social force and more an incomplete, imperfect challenge of attaching and connecting subjects, predicaments, and struggles in ways that move beyond inclusion and point to radical transformation.

I.B.Tauris and the British Institute at Ankara are seeking book proposals for the Contemporary Turkey academic book series. The Contemporary Turkey monograph series is a joint initiative by the British Institute at Ankara (BIAA), internationally renowned for its support of independent academic research, and leading publisher of Middle East and Turkish Studies I.B. Tauris, an imprint of Bloomsbury Academic.

The series publishes cutting-edge research monographs and edited collections from a new generation of scholars working on modern Turkey across the social sciences and humanities. In bringing to light new data and insights directly from the field, this series is distinguished by its emphasis on innovative approaches that challenge established ways of examining Turkey.