Leftist-Islamist cross-ideological opposition and cooperation in Morocco14th Mar 2023In 2019, the then vice-president of the National Council of the Moroccan Islamist ‘Justice and Development Party’ (hizb al-‘Adala wa-l-Tanmiyya, henceforth the ‘PJD’), Abdelali Hamieddine, appeared in court accused of the murder of a leftist...Read More
Managing the Political: The Case of Iran7th Mar 2023A guest blogpost by Dr Samuel Mace, University of Leeds Managing politics in the modern day remains a complex task. Polities are made up of diverse groups with differing agendas that are ever changing ensuring institutional management of the political...Read More
What the UN can do to revive the political process in Libya?13th Feb 2023By Sultan Al-Khulaifi, Walid AliPolicy RecommendationsThe Libyan crisis is multidimensional. Thus, we advise that the UNSMIL need to coordinate between two levels: regional and domestic.
The agreement between the main regional actors...Read More
Remember the blockade?: Gulf Geopolitics and the 2022 World Cup10th Jan 2023Not much time has passed since the period when the viability of Qatar’s World Cup was in question due to virulent differences with its ‘brotherly’ neighbours. Football has often been the showcase for evolving political relations in the Gulf. The...Read More
Conference Links13th Dec 2022Here's the conference programme and links to the streaming version. Please note carefully the two distinct links (A and B) which correspond to the two parallel panel streams.
15th December – Day 1
0830-0900 Welcome...Read More
Social Theory: Sara Ahmed6th Dec 2022By Konstantin Rintelmann
In 2009, Margrit Shildrick panegyrically wrote: “Few academic writers working in the UK context today can match Sara Ahmed in her prolific output, and fewer still can maintain the consistently high level of her theoretical...Read More
Social Theory: bell hooks 6th Dec 2022
Now when I ponder the silences, the voices that are not heard, the voices of those wounded and/or oppressed individuals who do not speak or write, I contemplate the acts of persecution, torture—the terrorism that breaks spirits, that makes creativity...Read More
World Cup Shorts: No country for old men. Urban renewal in downtown Doha6th Dec 2022The destruction of the urban fabric of downtown Doha is one of the side effects of the preparation for the World Cup. The event has bolstered a process of urban renewal that has made Qatar spend more than any other host country in previous editions of...Read More