This book launch highlighted the economic, social and political rise of the Justice and Development Party (JDP) as well as its political resilience over the last sixteen years. Speaker - Sevinc Bermek Sevinc is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies and a teaching fellow at the department of International Development at King’s College London. She is also part-time teaching fellow at the department of Government at London School of Economics. She completed her PhD in political and social studies at the University of Warwick in 2013

King's College London Middle East & North Africa Podcast

Book Launch: The Rise of Hybrid Political Islam in Turkey

Professor Laleh Khalili reflects on the lives and bodies of modern seafarers in the western Indian Ocean.

British Society For Middle East Studies Annual Lecture: The Corporeal Life of Commerce at Sea

This panel examines the consequences of surrogate warfare for local conflicts in the Middle East, looking at how Iran, Arab Gulf states and the United States externalize the burden of conflicts to surrogates. What drives surrogate warfare in the region, what can patrons really achieve and what are the long-term effects trained, equipped and empowered in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere? Speakers: Dr. Andreas Krieg is an assistant professor at the School of Security at King’s College London currently seconded to the Royal College of Defence Studies. In his research Andreas has combined his regional expertise of the Middle East with the wider field of Security Studies. He has looked at violent non-state actors and unconventional means of warfare in the twenty-first century. As an expert for Middle East security more generally and Gulf security in particular, Andreas has employed his regional and subject-related expertise providing strategic and operational risk consultancy to a variety of commercial and governmental organizations operating in the MENA region. He most recently published a book with Georgetown University Press titled ‘Surrogate Warfare – The Transformation of War in the 21st Century’. Anas El Gomati is the founder and current Director General of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute, the first public policy think tank in Libya’s history established in August 2011. Anas is also the research director for the security & governance programme at the institute. He has held several positions across the Middle East and Europe, as a visiting fellow at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, Lebanon and visiting lecturer at the NATO Defence College in Rome, Italy. He is a frequent commentator on Libya & the MENA region in the media. His research focuses are primarily on the security sector, foreign policy, and violent extremism Michael Stephens is the Research Fellow for Middle East Studies and Head of RUSI Qatar. From March to June 2017 Michael was seconded into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, serving as the Senior Research Analyst for Syria and Lebanon. His research has recently focused on Iraqi Kurdistan, and the Kurdish regions of Syria, as well as UK national security policy in the Middle East.

Book Launch: Surrogate Warfare in the Middle East

Listen to Dr Camelia Suleiman discuss how the Arabic language became a site of struggle over legitimacy, silencing and exclusion of the Palestinian citizens of Israel who constitute roughly 20% of Israel’s population.

The Linguistic Landscape of Arabic in Israel: Hybridity and the Nation-State

This is a recording of the IMES Inaugural Conference titled 'The Media, Politics and Dissent in North Africa Since the Arab Spring' which took place on 25 September 2019. 00:00 Introductions: Fatima El-Issawi and Jonathan Hill 13:30 Panel #1: The media and authoritarian resilience Chair: Jonathan Hill Speakers: (1) Francesco Cavatorta; (2) Kjetil Selvick; (3) Hendrick Kraetzschmar. 1:23:45 Panel #2: The media and political accountability since the Arab Spring Chair: Dina Mattar Speakers: (1) Roxane Farmanfarmaian; (2) Boubaker Jamaei; (3) Fatima el-Issawi. 2:50:50 Panel #3: New medias, new dissent? Chair: Charis Boutieri Speakers: (1) Christina Moreno-Almeida; (2) Chaima Bouhel; (3) Omar Radi. 4:24:20 Closing address: Omar Belhouchet

The Media, Politics And Dissent In North Africa Since The Arab Spring

A public lecture delivered by Dr Nimer Sultany (School of Law, SOAS) at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King's College London on 30 January 2018. What is the effect of revolutions on legal systems? What role do constitutions play in legitimating regimes? How do constitutions and revolutions converge or clash? This talk address these and other constitutional questions about the Arab Uprisings by drawing on the findings in the speaker's recently published book. The book, Law and Revolution: Legitimacy and Constitutionalism After the Arab Spring (Oxford University Press, 2017), urges a rethinking of major categories in political, legal, and constitutional theory in light of the Arab Spring. It offers a novel and comprehensive examination of the constitutional order that preceded and followed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Oman, and Bahrain. It also provides the first thorough discussion of the trials of former regime officials in Egypt and Tunisia. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, including an in-depth analysis of recent court rulings in several Arab countries, the book illustrates the contradictory roles of law and constitutions. It also contrasts the Arab Spring with other revolutionary situations and demonstrates how the Arab Spring provides a laboratory for examining scholarly ideas about revolutions, legitimacy, legality, continuity, popular sovereignty, and constituent power. The book is a novel and comprehensive examination of the constitutional order that preceded and followed the Arab Spring in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Morocco, Jordan, Algeria, Oman and Bahrain: http://bit.ly/2AAeSf8 NIMER SULTANY is Senior Lecturer in Public Law at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He holds a Doctor of Juridical Science degree from Harvard Law School, and was the recipient of the British Academy Fellowship. His book “Law and Revolution: Legitimacy and Constitutionalism After the Arab Spring” was published by Oxford University Press. He also published extensively on constitutional theory, Islamic constitutionalism, and Israeli jurisprudence.

Law & Revolution: Legitimacy and Constitutionalism After the Arab Spring

"Neoliberal Development, Protests and Mobilizations Between the Urban and Rural: Reflections on the Tunisian Revolution and its Aftermath" A public lecture delivered by Prof. Sami Zemni (Ghent University) at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King's College London on 7 November 2017. This presentation engages in the debate on urban contentious politics by returning to the Tunisian revolution. I reflect on how movements, provoked by neoliberal restructurings, emerged, and show how these ultimately came together to form a mass movement demanding radical political change. By analyzing the socio-spatial roots of the Tunisian revolution and by sketching the classes, social groups and movements that coalesced against authoritarian rule in early 2011, I will argue that new urban social movements have deployed new strategies of action, repertoires of contention, created new networks of solidarity and activism and how, in the end, new forms of collective mobilization and claim making are shaping the urban. However, to understand these trends I will also argue that we must re-conceptualize the urban from a relational perspective, that is, an approach that sees the urban as a relational space where movements connect and develop in relation to developments of the rural space. The interplay between urban and rural dynamics of contention seems crucial to understand the nature of unfolding events. SAMI ZEMNI is the coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa Research Group at the Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Ghent University, Belgium. His area of expertise is politics within the Middle East and North Africa region, with special reference to political Islam. He focuses mainly on developments in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, democratization in the Arab World as well as conflict in the Arab world. He also writes on issues of migration, integration, racism and Islamophobia.

Reflections on the Tunisian Revolution and its Aftermath

In this talk delivered at King's on 10 October 2017, Dr Rory McCarthy (University of Oxford) asks how competitive electoral contests have transformed an Islamist movement by looking at the internal debates and struggles that have shaped Tunisia’s al-Nahda since 2011. Drawing on a year’s fieldwork in a Nahdawi community in the provincial city of Sousse, he argues that Islamist politicization during a transition dislocates the relationship between political ambitions and the religious social movement. He identifies three specific points of tension, over ideology, political strategy, and organization, which triggered sharp differences among al-Nahda activists. DR RORY MCCARTHY is a Fellow by Examination (Junior Research Fellow) in Oriental Studies at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he works on social movements, contentious politics, and Islamism in the Middle East and North Africa. He wrote his doctorate on the evolution of the Islamist movement Ennahda in one Tunisian city, and is now working on a new long-term project on the politics of protest in the Middle East after the Arab uprisings. He also wrote Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated: Stories from the New Iraq (Chatto & Windus, 2006) and co-edited Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2016). Previously, he spent a decade as a foreign correspondent with the Guardian, with postings in Islamabad, Baghdad, Beirut, and Jerusalem.

When Islamists Lose: The Politicization of Tunisia's al-Nahda

Activists discuss how the pervasive issue of gender inequality manifests itself in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This podcast was recorded in connection with a joint event organised by the British Council and the King's College London Department of Middle Eastern Studies on 7 March 2017, and is chaired by Gillian Cowell, Head of Gender and Inclusion at the British Council. It features Hajer Sharief (Co-founder, Together We Build It), Sussan Tahmasebi (Director of the MENA/Asia region program, ICAN) and Reem Wael (Gender Consultant)

Women’s Political and Economic Empowerment in the MENA

A public lecture delivered by Dr Adeel Malik (University of Oxford) at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King's College London. This lecture seeks to develop a broader political economy narrative on violence in the Middle East. Using the recent ISIS-related violence in the Levant as a hook, I probe the deep political and economic factors underpinning violence in the region. Recent violence does not easily lend itself to empirical evidence. Beyond popular representations in the media, the social scientist has little knowledge of real actors on the ground, their control over means of violence and access to the supply chain of war. In light of this, I make four key propositions and situate them in the political economy analysis of violence. First, violence is not just a random or spontaneous generation: it is linked with the rational logic of power and formal state structures. Second, violence directly emerges from a power vacuum generated by ill-advised foreign interventions. Third, violence is often only a temporary instrument that seeks to postpone emerging challenges to the prevailing power structure. Fourth, the ISIS-related conflict also constitutes a trade shock and a fundamental re-drawing of the economic boundaries of the Middle East. The paper concludes by developing futuristic perspectives on imagining a peaceful and prosperous social order in the Middle East. ADEEL MALIK is Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies and a University Research Lecturer in Development Economics at the University of Oxford. He is also a Research Fellow of St. Peter’s College, Oxford, and a Research Associate of the Oxford Centre for the Analysis of Resource-Rich Economies. Having completed his doctorate in economics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 2004, his previous research affiliations have included: the Department of Economics, Oxford University (2004-05); Merton College (2002-03 and 2005-06); Center for International Development, Harvard University (2001), and Mahbub ul Haq Human Development Centre, Islamabad (1997-1999). Malik is an empirical macroeconomist with a strong multi-disciplinary orientation. He is trying to develop a broader research lens on the political economy of the Middle East. His most recent contribution to the field was an article on “The Economics of the Arab Spring”, which was published in World Development and formed the basis for a dedicated story in the Economist magazine. Malik’s research on Middle Eastern political economy has featured in the CNN, Fortune Magazine, The Times London, Financial Times, Guardian and Gulf News. He has also engaged with a wider audience on this subject by contributing op-ed pieces to The New York Times, Project Syndicate, Al-Jazeera, Huffington Post, Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs Magazines.

Understanding the Political Economy of Violence in the Middle East

A public lecture delivered by Christopher Barrie (University of Oxford) at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King's College London. Prevailing understandings of labour protest and strikes take as their focus stable democratic settings where autonomous trade union structures are an established component of the organizational resources available to workers. We extend the analysis of labour mobilization to a radically different context: Egypt in the year of the 25th January Revolution, when workers mobilized en masse in the absence of union leadership. For this, we use a catalogue of 4,912 protest events reported in Arabic-language newspapers. State-level signals of opportunity and aggregate shifts in economic conditions are poor predictors of labour activism in this context. Instead, local and national mobilization advancing both labour and non-labour demands is shown to inspire subsequent labour protest. These findings speak to the value of understanding labour protest and strikes not as delimited domains of action but as parts of a wider universe of contentious politics. CHRISTOPHER BARRIE is a DPhil Candidate in Sociology at Nuffield College, University of Oxford.

Labour Mobilization in Egypt after the 25th January Revolution

A public lecture delivered by Dr John Chalcraft (LSE) at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, King's College London in February 2017. This lecture aims to develop conceptual understandings of the relationship between mobilization and the political environment. It presents an alternative to conventional social movement theorizing on political opportunity. A political extension of Gramsci’s writings on hegemony provides the conceptual framework. Research on movements in the Middle East and North Africa provide the main empirical base. Hegemonic incorporation is understood to be a process whereby established political institutions, procedures and norms win consent among the subordinated members of a given political community. This article identifies and elaborates five incorporation mechanisms: participation, delegation, legitimation, nesting, and co-optation. These mechanisms are enabling conditions for consent and contained contention; they drive forward hegemonic incorporation, thickening and stabilizing hegemonic political structures. When these mechanisms breakdown, disincorporation follows, a process which destabilizes hegemonic structures, and provides enabling conditions for either withdrawal or transgressive mobilization. This analysis aims to get theorists beyond instrumental, static, and deterministic concepts of political opportunity structure, without accepting existing alternatives rooted in culture, attribution, or relationality. These constructionist alternatives do not give political power and structure its due, and they suffer from subjectivism, voluntarism, excessive interactionism, and a too a-structural use of mechanisms. This article aims to open up a new way to understand and research the relationship between the political environment and shifts between transgression, consent, contained contention, and withdrawal. JOHN CHALCRAFT is an Associate Professor in the History and Politics of Empire/Imperialism at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Previous posts include a Lectureship at the University of Edinburgh and a Research Fellowship at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. His research focuses on labour, migration and contentious mobilisation in the Middle East. He is the author of The Striking Cabbies of Cairo and Other Stories: crafts and guilds in Egypt, 1863-1914 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), The Invisible Cage: Syrian migrant workers in Lebanon (Stanford University Press, 2009), and Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2016). His current research focuses on protest and hegemony.

Understanding Protest Environments beyond Opportunity and Threat

Established in September 2018, the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies draws together staff and students from across King’s College London working on the Middle East and North Africa. Based in a dozen departments, its over 30 faculty members produce world-class research on every country in the region. They are routinely asked by policy makers, civil society groups and media outlets both in the UK and elsewhere to provide expert analysis on events and developments in this important part of the world. www.kcl.ac.uk/imes http://fb.me/KingsMiddleEasternStudies twitter.com/KingsMiddleEast

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King's College London Middle East & North Africa Podcast

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