How can art complicate claims of progress, innovation and the use of rapidly developing emerging technologies in MENA? In this episode, Cima Chehab speaks to visual artist Nadim Choufi about how he incorporates technology into his artwork both as subject matter and as medium. In the conversation, they discuss Nadim’s own artistic practice, his use of “lecture performances” and the question of whether life is truly enhanced by progress and technology, which is one of the main questions that underpins his work. Nadim also explores emerging art in the Middle East and how technology has transforme ..read more

Majd Al-Shihabi of 'Palestine Open Maps' and Sana Yazigi of the 'Creative Memory of the Syrian Revolution' talk to us about how they have centered their archiving processes around maps, and what digital archiving can do for Palestinian and Syrian community-building. This episode also features comment from Dr Sara Salem and Dr Mai Taha of LSE, who explore the importance of creative archiving through their project 'Archive Stories'. Note: this episode was recorded before October 7, 2023. Majd Al-Shihabi is a technologist turned urban planner, turned technologisturbanplanner. Majd is co-founder o ..read more

This event was the launch Zoe Hurley's new book 'Social Media Influencing in the City of Likes: Dubai and the Postdigital Condition'. Evaluating the cases of multiple influencers, from local to transnational content creators, Hurley reveals how residents, non-citizens and migrant workers survive as influencers in the city of ‘likes.’ Providing de-Westernising perspectives of Dubai’s social media influencing industry within the broader context of global platform capitalism, the book offers an important contribution to the field of social media through illustrating visible economies in a city ci ..read more

This event was co-organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the LSE Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa. This panel explored the crisis in Sudan through the prism of ‘disconnection’, exploring the various disconnects and discordances that have formed between Sudanese popular groups, state institutions and international institutions. Stopping the violence and addressing Sudan’s trauma will ultimately require domestic and international actors to align formal policy-making processes with popular realities on the ground. Speakers explored this notion of disconnection and consider how the sudden dis ..read more

This event was the launch Eylaf Bader Eddin's new book 'Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution' published by De Gruyter Press. For activists, researchers, and journalists, the Syrian Revolution was primarily a revolution in language; a break with the linguistic oppression and rigidity of old regimes. This break was accompanied by the emergence of new languages, which made it possible to inform, tell, and translate ongoing events and transformations. This language of the revolution was carried out into the world by competing voices from Syria, by local and foreign researchers, activi ..read more

What kind of advancements have we seen in artificial intelligence in the Middle East and North Africa in the contemporary period, how has this technology been used for good and where has it maintained structures of inequality? In this talk by Nagla Rizk, Professor of Economics at the American University in Cairo, the potential opportunities and challenges of artificial intelligence were explored, with an emphasis on the future of work and questions of knowledge production in relation to development. This webinar was also the launch of the latest season of the LSE Middle East Centre's podcast s ..read more

Smartphones, food-only debit cards, biometric data checks at border crossings, these are some of the ways refugees and migrants interact with technology in their daily lives both in the region and the diaspora. This episode unpacks the benefits, ambivalences and concerns surrounding these technologies. Our guests, Dr Reem Talhouk and Dr Yener Bayramoğlu discuss refugee-centered design technologies for humanitarian aid as well as smartphone usage amongst refugees and migrants and how it has given them control over their own lives and narratives as they cross borders. Reem Talhouk is an Assistan ..read more

The Abbasid and British Empires are the nexus through which our two guests, Dr Ahmed Ragab and Dr Katayoun Shafiee explore technology, knowledge production and power. This episode charts medieval paper production and Abbasid-era hospitals to the "discovery" of oil by foreign entrepreneurs in southern Iran, exploring the different ways technological knowledge production developed across empire. Ahmed Ragab is Associate Professor of the History of Medicine and the Chair of the Medicine, Science and Humanities Programme at Johns Hopkins University. Ahmed works primarily on the history of medieval ..read more

What kinds of obstacles are people in MENA facing with regards to access to technological opportunity and concerns around digital rights abuses? How are they tied to global challenges? Dr Nakeema Stefflbauer, tech executive, investor and digital rights advocate shares her thinking. This episode also features comment from Kassem Mnejja and Marwa Fatafta of Access Now, a digital rights advocacy group. They discuss these issues in relation to Tunisia, Sudan and Palestine. Find out more about Nakeema here: https://www.nakeema.net/ Find out more about Access Now here: https://www.accessnow.org ..read more

This event, as part of the LSE Middle East Centre's Kurdish Studies Series, was the launch of 'Voices That Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey' by Marlene Schäfers, published by the University of Chicago Press. In Turkey, recent decades have seen Kurdish voices gain increasing moral and political value as metaphors of representation and resistance. Women’s voices, in particular, are understood as a means to withstand patriarchal restrictions and political oppression. By tracing the transformations in how Kurdish women relate to and employ their voices a ..read more