Participants

PhD candidate at the University of Leipzig in the field of law, Islam and anthropology, conducting research on the daily lives of Muslim refugees in the new German states. Researcher at the Law and Anthropology Department of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale. He has studied German Studies, German as a foreign language and Islamic and Arabic Studies at the Universities of Al-Azhar and Ain Shams (Cairo) as well as at Leipzig University.

In 2015, Germany received almost one million refugees from Muslim-majority countries. This provoked different reactions within German society. While a wide group of people perceived welcoming refugees as a humanitarian responsibility and an opportunity to enrich German society, another group considered it as a threat to the values and existence of German society and even to the existence of Europe. In this context, the religious identity of refugees seemed to be given special attention. In this regard, media and political debates were concerned with questions, such as whether Islam and Sharia would pose an obstacle to the integration of refugees. Such discourses have inevitably led to a homogenizing and stereotypical representation of refugees, while neglecting their actual daily lives and the ways they live and practice religion. Furthermore, this approach ignores the diversity of social, cultural, political, and religious backgrounds. Based on an ethnographic study, this paper investigates the daily lives of Muslim refugees in Germany. A particular focus is placed on the ways in which refugees deal with their religion in a minority context. The paper also examines the role of social contexts, customs and traditions in constituting or supporting some religious beliefs and practices.

Researcher in Leadership, Innovation and Stress Management. He received his PhD in Business Administration from Grenoble Ecole de Management-France, where he worked as a Lecturer in Human Resources Management. He has master's degree in public law, and a Project Management Professional certification from Project Management Institute in the US. He is Attorney with nearly ten years of experience in Project Management and HRM in both for profit and humanitarian sectors. He has published book chapters and peer-reviewed research on corporate governance, critical thinking, freedom of expression and hate speech, and communication skills.

The bulk of recent theoretical developments argue that the stimulation of innovative work behaviour (IWB) is a vital issue. This behaviour occupies a much more important place in organizational studies of behaviour. On the other hand, the notion that IWB is circumscribed by a social, and organizational sphere is, sometimes, overlooked. Such a sphere is dominated by many doble-edged variables that can either stimulate or discourage IWB, such as organizational stressors, which begs the question "how can employees innovate under stressors?" This quantitative survey-based investigation attempts to shed light on the association between IWB and organizational stressors. Furthermore, it employs the positive and negative nature of organizational stressors, reported by the Challenge- Hindrance stressor model, to recognize its association, and impact on IWB. It assumes that the strength of such impact depends on the extent of the Leader-member exchange (LMX) as a moderator variable for this association. The pilot study of this preliminary thesis supported these predictions and determined that there is a relationship between organizational stressors and IWB. It also demonstrates that LMX promotes IWB in coping with the positive nature of some organizational stressors. More prominently, LMX alleviates the negative effect of some organizational stressors on the IWB.

Teacher in language integration courses and Coordinator for training workshops and lectures on integration and identity in Nuremberg. He received his PhD from the German University of Nurnberg-Erlangen on literary translation between Arabic and German and holds a master's degree in German Linguistics and Language Teaching from the German University of Bielefeld and a BA in Literature, German Studies and Translation from the University of Manouba in Tunis. He has served as assistant translator for the Encyclopaedia of Basic Concepts of Dialogue between Christianity and Islam and authored of a book in German on Mahmoud Darwish.

The research seeks to extrapolate the concept of integration from the perspective of Aladin El-Mafaalani and Naika Foroutan, by analysing their most prominent writings. The study also describes the methodological and cognitive limitations on which their reading of integration in Germany is based, extracting the most important political and research responses, and defining their concept of proper and successful integration to reveal the extent of their influence in the current political debate on integration. It examines the similarities and differences between Aladin El-Mafaalani and Naika Foroutan in their presentation of the problem of integration. This research seeks to inspire the creation of new research related to the approaches and methods used to address the issue of integration in Germany.

Researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Bremen in Germany. He is a Press Emblem Campaign award laureate and a DAAD Helmut-Schmidt-Program and Chevening Scholar. His articles on Middle Eastern and global politics have appeared on Arabic and international news and academic platforms. Ahmed Elsayed has a Master's in Politics with distinction from the University of East Anglia, UK, and another in Public Policy from Hertie School, Germany.

Despite being an affiliate of a terror-listed organisation, the Democratic Union Party and its armed wing (PYD/YPG) in northern Syria have received impressive western media coverage and been crowned as partners of the United States in the global coalition against the Islamic State (Daesh). This unusual trajectory warrants an enquiry into how the international recognition of PYD/YPG came about and for what reasons. This paper combines in-depth interviews with primary sources in a within-case analysis that adopts a critical junctures framework to identify and analyse the turning points in the PYD/YPG's pursuit of international recognition. The analysis suggests that a combination of major powers' interests and PYD/YPG's self-legitimisation strategies — most notably, the denial of PKK connection and the group's self-depictions, adopted by others, as a proponent of democracy, women rights, religious freedom and plurality — have boosted the PYD/YPG's international diplomatic and popular standing. That success, nevertheless, fell short of 'official' recognition largely due to Turkey's hostility towards the group. The paper concludes with novel insights for the study of non-state actors' politics of international legitimacy.

PhD candidate in the department of International Relations at LSE. Her research explores questions about civilian mobilization within the context of Counterinsurgency campaigns. She received her MA in Israeli studies at SOAS, London and a BA in translation and interpretation from the Lebanese International University. She has worked as a journalist for several TV channels and news websites in English and Arabic.

Why are some individuals more prone to population-centric counterinsurgency strategies than others? Which are the most successful population mobilization tactics that form micro-level civilian allegiances during wartime? An array of rival theories exist that propose different explanations for the aspects that influence people's decision-making process during wartime and violence. Hence, this research proposes an examination of the determinants of people choosing to join the side of counterinsurgents by studying the cases of South Lebanon Army militia (SLA) and Palestinian Authority Preventive Security Forces (PSF). Along with examining primary and secondary resources, I explore these questions by applying a qualitative comparative research method in order to analyse the outcomes of semi-structured interviews conducted with ex-SLA affiliates and Palestinians in PSF.

PhD candidate in political science and Associate Lecturer for the master's Program on Peace and Conflict Studies at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany. He holds a BA in English literature from Damascus University, Syria. Besides the Nubian Issue in Egypt (the main topic of his PhD), his research focuses on studying different protracted social conflicts in the MENA region. He is also engaged in research on refugee and migration issues in Germany.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has seen research interest significantly increase following the Arab uprisings in 2010/2011. Over the last three decades, the MENA region has been explored mostly either from within the scope of democratization studies or autocracy studies. Although the scope of analysis has changed slightly after the Arab uprisings, many studies shared similar patterns (autocracy vs. democracy) or frames (state vs. society) or followed a reductionist approach by focusing on specific variables or issues. Few studies have focused on understanding the underlying causes of the prevailing conflicts and their dynamics by following a systemic thinking and holistic analysis. Drawing on Edward Azar's theory of Protracted Social Conflict (1990) and its adaptation Contemporary Transnational Conflict (2016) by Oliver Ramsbotham et al., the Arab uprisings are the outcome of the prevailing PSCs in the region. The uprising (as an incident) was just the trigger and turning point when covert and latent PSCs became overt and violent. Drawing on the relevant literature and highlighting this multi-faceted model of analysis, this paper provides a comprehensive explanation of the causal factors, process dynamics and outcomes of PSCs in the MENA region.

PhD candidate at Syracuse University working on the political psychology of trauma and exile. He holds a BA from the University of Kansas. His work strives to incorporate experimental methods as well as deep ethnographic sensibilities.

Eleven years after the Arab Spring, the autocratic regimes have returned in full force and the youth exiled, jailed, or killed. In this project, I look at the relationship between victimization by state authorities and political participation. To that extent, the project argues that people's experiences of repression vary and that they have implications on their political participation. Further, that post-victimization mobilization is a factor of perception of the purpose and context of victimization. I posit a two-stage process in which people partake in post-victimization participation. In the first stage, I build on insights by Nugent (2020) that repression in autocracies influences how actors identify themselves. Social identities and their concomitant discourses are shaped in tandem with the coercive apparatus. Victims navigate public discourses on some of their identities to internalize their experiences of it. Secondly, I argue that mobilization is more likely when they perceive a politicized identity is victimized — contact with authorities triggers a process of interpretation of the contact along the lines of social identity. I build on Muldoon's (2019) Social Identity Model of Identity Change (SIMIC) approach and examine these dynamics through semi-structured interviews with Egyptian and Syrian exiles in Turkey.

PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Brown University, with a BA Hons in Political Science from the American University in Cairo. She studies the cultivation of political and ethical Muslim subjectivities – specifically in Egypt and how these are constructed through an engagement with the textual tradition as well as contemporary politics. She seeks to nuance how certain terms like 'modernity', 'Salafism' and 'the secular' are used as analytic tools in the study of Islam.

Salafis are often undertheorised as a one-dimensional monolith. I offer a rereading of Salafi personhood, arguing that Salafism in general is a trans-historical orientation, and modern Salafis are engaged in an intricate project of self- formation. I analyse a group of politically active Egyptian Salafis and argue that their self-understanding and self- fashioning is the product of engaging with eschatological traditions and identifying with a particular group referred to famously as the 'saved sect'. This identification is prompted by their socio-political context and perceived weakness as an ummah, which accordingly structures the way they conceive their 'self', its social responsibility, and the kind of 'care of the self' that is required to live as righteous Muslims. I draw on Foucault's concept of 'technology of the self' to reveal the dynamism and complexity of this process. Analysing the recent scholarship of three intellectuals within this group, I further argue that the unprecedented political repression of post-2013 Egypt triggered a crisis of identification, in which this Salafi group could no longer make sense of themselves as the saved sect. I consider the effect this shift has had on their understanding of Muslim selfhood and socio-political responsibility, thus reconfiguring their political subjectivity vis-à-vis state and society.

EU Marie Curie fellow and research associate at KU Leuven's Center for the study of Islam, Culture and Society (LCSICS) in Belgium. Following a career-long interest in the intersection of Arabic culture with Digitization, he is currently conducting his doctoral research on the digital study of Arab-Orientalist intellectual relations in the colonial era, as part of the European network "Mediating Islam in the Digital Age" (ITN-MIDA).

The paper begins with a comprehensive survey of the available tools and dissemination platforms enabling the digital preservation of cultural heritage, both in international and Arabic contexts, and it will argue the notion of "Digital Democratization" of cultural heritage, side-lining the political connotations towards a pragmatic understanding centred around ease of access and additive modification. To this end, a framework of interconnectivity and interoperability of digital heritage is essential. To substantiate this claim, the paper evaluates the recent collaboration between the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha and Google's Art and Culture initiative, commonly known as the Google Art Project. This research goes beyond the direct benefits of enabling virtual access to the museum's grounds and collections, to discuss the potential in the meaningful connection of these digital representations of artifacts to a wider context of Islamic artifacts and the knowledge produced around them.

Postdoctoral researcher at Philipps-Universität Marburg, researching Syrian cultural practices including music, and literature. He has studied English, Arabic and Comparative Literature in Damascus, Paris, Aix-en-Provence, and Marburg. His PhD centred on Translating the Language of the Syrian Revolution 2011-2012, and he has published articles in both Arabic and English. In 2018, he wrote "When They Cried "Forever": the Language of the Syrian Revolution, after receiving the Award of Sadiq Jalal al-Azm by Ettijahat.

Based on five interviews with Syrian female prisoners imprisoned between June 2012 and June 2014, this paper examines singing as a strategy surviving the horror of imprisonment in Syria under the Assad regime. Singing the familiar, everyday songs in an unfamiliar situation (prison) confirms the song performance and songs themselves to be "Lieux de Mémoire" that connect the present moment with a past memory; a cultural practice represented by singing. In this sense, memory becomes another a parallel line for narrating other remembered historical events that happened after 2011, individual acts of activism in the Syrian protests, remembered in prison through singing and re- narrated in 2020 for the purpose of this paper. I investigate the ways in which singing as a performance gives meaning to the present moment to provide consolation and resist the prison experience. Furthermore, songs and singing activate memory as an archive for storing or replaying memories.

Postdoctoral fellow at Bowdoin College, US. He has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara and has taught Arabic Language, Comparative Literature, and ESL at Various universities and colleges in the United States, including UC Santa Barbara, Bowdoin College, and Middlebury College. His research interests include trauma theory, postcolonial literatures and theory, translation studies, terror fiction, and comparative literature.

This paper discusses several Iraqi and Egyptian works of terror fiction in terms of their treatments of the three famous taboos in the Arab World: religion, sex, and politics. Challenging the socio-political and religious hegemony, terror fiction writers break taboos in order to express their feelings of suffering and to raise an awareness regarding the necessity of change and the importance of self-liberation from the restrictions experienced under totalitarian governments. I argue that by unconventionally addressing very sensitive topics such as religion, politics, and sex, the authors succeed in establishing a new powerful voice that destabilizes the public's beliefs in these long-held notions. Furthermore, using these taboos in the context of terror fiction introduces the traditional treatment of religious, sexual, and political topics as a source of trauma that prevents their countries from healing. Because of the failure of the traditional socio-political solutions to help people overcome their traumatic experiences, authors lose faith in what these values represent. Writing fictional works that violate the sanctity of these taboos, terror fiction authors express their resentment and criticism of the hegemonic, patriarchal, and totalitarian rules that hold them prisoners to their own trauma.

PhD candidate in International Affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa. He holds a master's in International Affairs from Texas A&M University and a bachelor's in Economics from Fez University in Morocco. His research is focused on the impact of populism on democracy. He has several years of professional experience in international organizations, including at the UN and the OIC.

This paper investigates the impact of the electoral rise of populism on democracy indicators in 26 European countries from 2006 to 2019. Both theory and empirical studies suggest that populism may lead to higher levels of democratic representation while it may also undermine important qualities of democracy. By using a panel-data analysis, I test the hypothesis that populism has a negative impact on democracy. The regression result suggests that the impact of populism on democracy depends on the host ideology of populism. Right-wing populism seems to have a negative and significant impact on various democracy indicators. In contrast, left-wing populism seems to have a negative but less significant impact on the same democracy indicators. Among five sub-democracy indicators, the electoral pluralism and civil liberties indicators are most affected by right-wing populism. However, left-wing populism seems to have no significant impact on political participation and political culture. Control variables of GPD per-capita and age of democratic regimes do not seem to have any significant impact on democracy indicators, while electoral turnout is positively correlated with all of them. The overall result is coherent with the theoretical expectations about varying impact of right-wing and left-wing populism on the quality of democracy.

PhD candidate specialized in journalism at Complutense University of Madrid in Spain. She holds a master's degree in strategic communication from the University of Rovira Virgili in Spain and received her bachelor's degree in Islamic studies and mass communication form Qatar University. She is a member of the Madrid Press Association and fluent in Spanish. Her research focuses on political and sporting events, particularly how the perception of Qatar in the Spanish press.

The State of Qatar has made significant efforts to host a successful FIFA World Cup tournament. These efforts include building stadiums, preparing solid infrastructure and much more. This paper focuses on several elements that have been covered the Latin press. It utilises a qualitative methodology to interpret a number of themes reported in the Spanish press and proposes a number of solutions and recommendations. The paper also proposes a strategy for readers to obtain unbiased news coverage.

PhD candidate in Political Science and International Relations at Corvinus University in Budapest, Hungary. He received his master's degree in public policy analysis from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia and a Bachelor's in English linguistics at Moulay Ismail University in Meknes, Morocco. His research interests include social movements, extremism and terrorism, and immigration and migrant integration policy. Hamid is preparing his doctoral thesis on "The Policy of Integrating Maghrebi Immigrants in France."

Mainstream academic literature relates the success of migrant integration to socio-economic inclusion policies that draw include migrants into the job market and secure their socio-economic rights. However, recent upheaval in Europe marked by terror acts in a number of EU countries could compromise the existing integration policies towards non-EU migrants, especially those of Maghrebi origin. This research seeks to fill in the gap within mainstream literature on migrant integration theories – between classical assimilation theory and citizenship theory – identifying signs of failure to integrate, such as: the rise of radicalization amongselected categories ofmigrants, especially secondandthird generation immigrants; overrepresentation of immigrant groups in crime rates, evidenced in the case of France; and alienation and dissonance of immigrant group from society, putting social cohesion at stake. Using qualitative research methods, including in-depth interviews with a sample of immigrants and interviews with migration and integration stakeholders, I make a comparative assessment of the latest integration policy towards Maghrebi immigrants in France, where Maghrebi immigrants face integration difficulties, and Sweden, where Maghrebi (and other) immigrants face significantly less issues. This policy assessment will allow me to explore the impediments of non-EU immigrants' full integration in European societies.

PhD candidate at the Free University of Berlin and a researcher at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies (GIGA). Her research interests revolve around new media and cultural studies. Hayat received an MA in Applied Linguistics from Moulay Ismail University in Morocco and an MA in Media and Cultural Studies from the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar. She was also a Fulbright FLTA alumnus at Mercyhurst University in the US.

The Covid-19 pandemic is undoubtedly a new reality that has affected different aspects of our lives, including religion. In March 2020, mosques were forced to close their doors and suspend their religious activities. Responding to these changes on the ground, this paper examines the role of digital media in the practice of religion among Moroccan Muslims in Germany. It raises a central question: how do Moroccan local mosques use digital and social media for religious purposes? Drawing on an ongoing hybrid ethnography, preliminary findings revealed that the pandemic has shaped the mosques' communicative approach. Some mosques have fostered their online presence on their pre-existing social media platforms, whereas others have tried new ones for the first time. This resulted in the emergence of new media-religious practices in this specific context. While the target mosques converged in resorting to the virtual sphere during the lockdown, they tended to diverge in how they used digital technology and social media platforms. Additionally, interviews revealed that although online communication is considered important and even necessary at times of crisis, it is mainly seen as a tool to support offline communication, if not a temporary alternative when in-person communication is not possible.

Researcher and PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Toronto. His research investigates the possibility of politics without sovereignty and the appropriate models of political membership that correspond to this arrangement. Mohamed earned an MA in the Social Sciences from the University of Chicago in 2018, and a BSc in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 2016.

This paper relies on an ethnographic study of expatriates born or raised in Qatar to make two unique but interrelated arguments. The first is that the dominant theoretical framework for studying how identity is formed among people experiencing high levels of cultural diffusion and transnational mobility — namely, cosmopolitanism — limits our ability to appreciate the continued relevance of national identity for such individuals. The second is that cosmopolitan sociology, by focusing primarily on the patterns of flexibility and openness observed among expatriates in metropolitan cities, fails to critically examine the conditions that allow these orientations to appear as naturally fluid and global. For scholarship on the region, this contribution sheds light on a grossly understudied population of the Arabian Gulf — second-generation expatriates — highlighting in particular how they are receiving and responding to state-funded cosmopolitan projects that are often targeted at non-citizens. The paper concludes by reflecting on how this segment of Qatar's majority foreign population demonstrates that a critique of concepts like cosmopolitanism, but also citizenship and nation, has the capacity to rethink the boundaries of these terms without necessarily compromising on their productive value and potential for meaningful work.

PhD candidate at the department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Her PhD research is titled "Debating Marx Post-2011: Revolutionary Socialists and the Theory and Political Practice of Marxism." She completed her master's degree in Political Theory at Goethe University Frankfurt in cooperation with the Technical University Darmstadt.

The phenomenon of left melancholy has preoccupied the global political Left for decades. How the Left can practically escape its relative marginality has become even more relevant in the current era marked by continuous imperialist warfare. Although Marxism is a global phenomenon that has travelled and long been pivotal for emancipatory movements worldwide, academic work on Marxism frequently centers the former Soviet Union or Europe. Movements from the global South, and in the MENA region specifically, are often side-lined when it comes to a global history of socialism or what Marxism means today. Simultaneously, a tendency exists to reduce Marxism to an abstract assemblage of theories gathering dust. This denies the imperative of practice for Marxist theory. Marxism is always changing as the practical experiences of the working class are analyzed, leading to new theoretical implications. I argue that anthropological analyses on how Marxist social actors from the global South – who have experienced revolutions, state repressions, worker's struggle up to exile – practically translate, negotiate, and grapple with Marxism (and the left melancholy that is intertwined with it) can help reassess previous theoretically-focused debates on the relevance of Marxism in an age of global unrest characterized by a rise in calls to break with capitalist status quo.

PhD candidate at the department of Philosophy in the University of Liège, Belgium. Her thesis, "The limit: Frame of the Architectural utterance: Semiotic studies of daily practices in the Medina of Kairouan" is under dual supervision (ULiège - ENAU). Helali is an architect, graduating from the National School of Architecture and Urbanism (ENAU) University of Carthage (Tunisia) in 2005 and obtaining a Master of Research in Architecture in 2012.

This research explores the establishment of the limits around and within the space of the medina of Kairouan in Tunisia by its inhabitants. How does each inhabitant engage their own interpretation of space? Conversely, how, by the same topological element (the limit), do they divide and frame the space each time differently? In this context, I employ three approaches tin view of the heuristic aim regarding the architectural statement under construction. First, the theory of enunciation, theorized by Émile Benveniste, provides accounts for appropriation and subjectivity. Second, since the 70s, Jacques Fontanille has established what is considered as an extension of semiotics, the semiotics of practices with six levels (signs, text-utterances, objects, practical scenes, strategies, and forms of life), Finally, I discuss the linguistics of interaction, more specifically as pertains to the city, to deal with the description of spaces as "interacting knowledge".

Palestinian journalist and PhD candidate in anthropology and sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. His work centres around reproduction politics and practices, and statistical violence in the settler colonial context of Palestine. He has a master's degree in Israeli studies from Birzeit university in Ramallah, and a bachelor's degree in sociology and anthropology from the same university.

This paper seeks to understand Palestinian experiences around sperm smuggling from Israeli prisons - a practice that has emerged over the past ten years, allowing dozens of Palestinian couples, otherwise denied conjugal visits, the ability to conceive. It has become implicated in the national rhetoric of resistance, with much of the conventional focus being on the male prisoner. This research asks about the meanings of sperm-smuggling has come to acquire for the wives of prisoners. It aspires to understand how the experience of sperm smuggling reflects the profound inequalities regarding reproductive rights and family togetherness in a settler colonial reality. It also explores how women articulate their experiences as smugglers, mothers, wives of prisoners, members of the Palestinian collective, and actors of representation. Inspired by recent scholarship on reproduction and carcerality, it looks at this practice as a space for both domination and counter domination.

PhD candidate in the History and Hebrew and Judaic Studies joint program at New York University. His research focuses on the intellectual history of Arab and Palestinian writings on Zionism and the Jewish question during the first half of the twentieth century. Currently Education and Policy Coordinator at the Palestine Activism Program of the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago. His writings on Palestine, Gaza and the Arab uprisings have been widely published in Arabic and English.

This paper examines the work of Palestinian intellectual and legal scholar Saʻdi ̄Bisisū _ especially his book Al-ṣahyūniȳah: Naqd Wa-Taḥlil : Dirāsah ʻilmiȳ ah Siyāsiȳ ah Tārikhiȳah Qānūniȳ ah Lil-Ṣahyūniȳ ah Wa-Al-Intidāb Al Bariṭ̄ āni ̄(Zionism: Critique and Analysis: A Scientific, Historical and Legal Study of Zionism and the British Mandate). Written in Gaza, and published in Jerusalem in 1945, this book represents one of the most comprehensive intellectual and scholarly engagements by a Palestinian intellectual treating Zionism as an idea and as a project. By looking at Bisisū's work, my paper highlights how Palestinian intellectuals understood and analysed Zionism, approached the Jewish question in Europe, and responded to Zionist claims through the lens of a modern, secular, and legal discourse. Moreover, in his work, Bisisū provides a vision for peace in Palestine – one that called for halting Jewish immigration but did not seek to expel or displace Palestine's Jewish community. This paper analyses how Bisisū and other intellectuals tried to reconcile their vision for an independent Arab Palestine with a significant Jewish population. It also examines how Palestinian scholars and leaders envisioned national independence while holding to ideas of inter-faith and inter-sectarian coexistence established during the late Ottoman era.

PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg, Germany, currently working on his thesis on state-building in Iraq and Syria and the Kurdish response. He holds a bachelor's degree in intentional studies from the American University of Sulaymaniyah, Iraq, and obtained his master's at the Free University of Berlin. He has published his writing on Syria and Iraq for various outlets.

State-building is a heated topic in social sciences, with extensive interdisciplinary contributions, which requires a unified global perspective on state-building. Following the ongoing civil war in Syria, literature on state-building has taken a security studies trajectory as scholars reverted to the basic Weberian definition of a strong state as a ''monopoly over territory and means of violence.'' Iraq and Syria are both products of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the territorial hegemony of the British and French empires, viewed ever since as incapable of functioning as legitimate sources of authority and as weak states by their populations and scholars. Both countries have taken different paths towards more state-building and institutionalization in recent decades but have confronted consecutive failures for various reasons. Scholars suggest a range of factors behind fragility in these countries from the oil curse to ethnic conflicts. The Kurdish issue has long been considered a crucial factor in both countries, contributing to the ups and downs of the process, whether positively or negatively. Considering state-building literature on Iraq and Syria, this research digs deeper into the determinants of state-fragility in Iraq and Syria, examining the Kurdish response to state-building.

Senior PhD candidate at Queen's University. She is a recipient of the Robert Sutherland Fellowship, Senator Frank Carrel Fellowship, Queen's Graduate Award, Ontario Graduate Scholarship. Her main foci are diaspora studies, the political mobilization of ethnic and religious minorities, and social movements studies. Lilian's current research seeks to explain the political mobilization of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Community in Canada and the United States. Estafanous has taught a wide range of classes at Queen's University and the Royal Military College of Canada.

Copts in Canada and the US, the two largest Coptic communities outside of Egypt, are excellent examples of religiously defined and conflict-generated diasporas that still identify as part of their homeland's national population and feel a responsibility for its well-being. This research seeks to better understand the Coptic community's mobilization in Canada and the US and the patterns of its action as it represents collective group interest. Thus, how do Copts in Canada and the US as a diaspora of a religious minority organize and mobilize? Moreover, what factors facilitate or constrain the success of their political mobilization? The paper draws on two existing theoretical streams of diaspora literature: the literature on religion and diaspora as well as the literature on diaspora political behaviour and mobilization. It also utilizes the social movement theory (SMT), its constructivist and structural streams, and its analytical tools. These streams of literature and theories will be used as a foundation to argue that it is the interaction between the constructivist and the structural facets that tends to matter most in explaining the Copts' patterns and direction of political activism, as well as the degree of their political mobilization's success.

PhD candidate and IsDB scholar at the Architecture Department in Cambridge University. Her research explores evolving sociotechnical entanglements that have contributed to escalating energy demand in Jordanian middle-class housing, investigating how cooling practices stem from three sources: marketing, architects, and building users. She is especially interested in exploring the potential knowledge contribution of visual research methods such as video diaries and documentary content analysis to building and energy research.

Building decarbonization policies predominantly adopt the technoeconomic view that assumes technological efficiency improvements, economic incentives and sanctions, and education will result in the desired change. Despite these efforts, little has been achieved to reduce energy consumption, warranting a review of what may have been excluded in the dominant paradigm. With the looming climate emergency and predicted cooling energy demand tripling by 2050, this thesis seeks to discern visible socio-cultural factors shaping cooling energy demand in Jordanian middle- class housing. It draws on theories in practice to uncover evolving sociotechnical entanglements that contributed to escalating energy demand. The research investigates the norms and values attached to the materialities of housing that have been shaping domestic cooling practices, such as windows and air-conditioners (AC), by asking: How were they marketed? How have they been designed? How are they interacted with domestically? Data from three sources are collected through advertisement analysis; semi-structured interviews with building experts; and video diaries shared by households in Amman. Using visual research methods such as documentary content analysis and videos capturing user interactions with windows and AC, the research contributes new findings that can inform more nuanced and localized interventions in both building and energy policies.

PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Minnesota. Her dissertation explores fragmented advocacy on behalf of Middle East Christians in US foreign policy. Her research focuses on the transnational politics, meaning, and memory of violence and suffering at the intersection of religion and rights.

Authoritarian regimes in the Middle East purport supporting Christians as a way to claim that their counterterrorism strategies are justified because they advance religious freedom. Yet counterterrorism strategies have been widely used to suppress human rights mobilization. This security- democracy nexus has placed Middle Eastern Christians in a predicament. Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Washington, DC, I examine how rights and democracy-promotion advocates push back against the instrumentalization of Copts by advancing a counter- narrative of rights that frames Copts, foremost, as citizens. They do so through two discursive strategies: First, by identifying the root causes of sectarianism as a responsibility of the State rather than Islam and Muslims; Second, by illustrating how Copts, as citizens, suffer under entrenched authoritarianism. This paper contributes to the literature on the Middle East, and specifically Egypt, by exploring how non-minority activists explore the question of sectarianism and minority belonging within broader national concerns.

PhD candidate in the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at Georgetown University (GU), Washington DC, USA. He received his BA and MA in linguistics from Mohammad V University in Rabat, Morocco, and another BA and MA in religious studies from Dar al-Hadith al-Hassaniyya in Rabat. His research interests include socio-political theories in premodern and modern Islamic thought, theories of religion and secularity, and the development of the sciences in Islamic intellectual history.

In Islamic history, al-Māwardī's writings, in various disciplines, have been received with keen interest. In the modern and contemporary scholarship, al-Māwardī has also been the subject of important academic studies both in the Western and Arab academic contexts. Many aspects of his thought, nonetheless, remain ambiguous, mostly due to a lack of scholarly attempts to offer an account of the character of his project as a whole. His famous treatise in constitutional and administrative jurisprudence, al-Aḥkām al-ṣulṭāniyya, has been the dominant focus of scholarship, while the project that he aimed to achieve through his socio-political writings is largely neglected. This paper suggests the question of method as the key to grasping the character of al-Māwardī's socio-political project. It argues that al-Māwardī seeks to systematize adab as a practical science that is concerned with the study of human behaviour and the rules of social grouping. He, therefore, defines adab as both an inductive and deductive discipline which combines realism and normativity, as it both seeks to describe lived society as it presents itself but then prescribes ways to reform it. As al-Māwardī re-defines it, the discipline of adab contains the themes of practical philosophy but remains different both in its method and epistemological sources.

Researcher in Media and Political Communications at SOAS, University of London. He provides tuition on writing essays and dissertations. He has run many courses providing media training in countries that include the UK, Kuwait, Bahrain, Mauritania, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, and Gaza. He has more than 25 years of experience in working in media; Newspapers, Radios, News Agencies, and TVs including the BBC Arabic TV.

This paper presents an ethnography experience of how the BBC responded to the Covid-19 pandemic. Through ethnography, interviews and management procedure analysis, I provide a panoramic idea on how the BBC dealt with the crisis. The paper concludes that, in contrast to traditional newscasting, technology has progressed to facilitate media organizations to provide hybrid news coverage, allowing employees to work remote keep the audiences informed, orientated and entertained.

PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are mainly centred on the Arab world and in the fields of social movements studies, environmental justice, critical theory and political economy.

Crises' ('azmat) have been such defining features of everyday life, political discourse and scholarly framings of Lebanon that the term 'crisis' itself has become a historical 'super-concept,' taken as a priori rather than undergoing examination. Oscillating between institutional and structural breakdown and crisis action, lies an essential yet undertheorized dimension of crisis: 'the struggle over interpretation'. The interpretation of crises is a fraught terrain of power, where well-established interests and ruling regimes confront forces for change. Rather than take 'crisis' as a starting point for sociological analysis, this paper bypasses the epistemological impasse crisis narratives reproduce by unpacking how competing narrativizations of crisis can either enable or preclude protest and critique. Using ethnography and archival research, it explores how structuring of interpretations of reality as 'crises' alter perceptions of civic choices and actions. Tracing everyday discursive and non-discursive patterns and experiences helps conceptualize the relationship between epoch-shaping crises and the opening and foreclosure of liminal spaces of political contestation. Contributing to interdisciplinary debates from across social movement studies, political economy, and economic sociology, this research challenges the veneer of objectivity surrounding classical economic accounts of 'crisis,' and advances a more substantive understanding of 'crises,' as 'subjective historical processes'.

PhD candidate in the Faculty of History at Cambridge University who defended his PhD in January 2022. He has a Diploma in African Studies Institute of African Research and Studies and an MPhil from the history department at Cairo University and a bachelor's degree in history from Assuit University in Upper Egypt. He also completed one year of postgraduate studies in 2016 the Graduate Institute in Geneva. He recently published a book in Arabic titled Colonial Exploitation and Economics of Rubber in the Congo Free State, 1885-1908. After completing his PhD, Mostafa will join Cairo University as Assistant Professor of African History.

Immediately after independence, Zambian expectations that they would reap the benefits of their resource-rich economy reached a peak. After a promising economic performance between 1964 and 1969 induced by state participation in various economic projects, the Zambian government executed state-led policies to control the economy. Thus, policy shifted from state partnership in major economic activities towards a state takeover of mining and manufacturing companies. However, this state- led action proved unfruitful after it failed to achieve economic diversification (particularly for manufacturing industries) or social welfare for a significant segment of the Zambian people. What went wrong? Did the country's dependence on the mono-commodity of copper restrict industrial growth and diversification? Were the external shocks sufficient explanations for these economic challenges? Was the national government's response to develop a resource-rich country flawed, consequently leading to economic stagnation? The paper relies on new and diverse quantitative and qualitative archival research that has been conducted in the National Archives of the United Kingdom, Zimbabwe and Zambia and other archival collections from the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Mining Companies' archives in Ndola, and the SOAS archival collection.

PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield. He earned his master's degree from Monash University, Australia in 2009. He taught English language between 2005 and 2018 at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman and has participated in several local and international conferences and published a number of papers both in English and Arabic. He has also edited and translated some books in both languages. His main interests are language teaching, socio-cultural issues, identity, intercultural communication, and mobile learning.

As a global language, English is taught by foreign language teachers who travel worldwide and may face challenges adapting to other cultural contexts where English language teaching and its accompanying packages may or may not be contextualized to fit the local cultural environment. This qualitative case study explores how six expatriate teachers (from the UK and USA) perceive, manage, and interact with this distinctive co-educational context in the Omani Arab, cultural, religious, and political context at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), in Oman. It also investigates how this specific context has impacted their professional identity as English teachers and, practically speaking, how they teach English accordingly considering the cultural context, the religious considerations, and the cultural institutional policies. To understand in-depth their perceptions, practices and justifications of the cultural issues that they had in their daily life on one side and to highlight issues that play a role to influence teachers' attitudes and practices on the other side, these teachers have been interviewed and observed while giving classes. This study will be of interest to ELT institutions, educators and policy makers who share similar cultural contexts to Oman, such as the Gulf States.

PhD candidate at IHE-Delft institute for water education, the Netherlands, where he was nominated as a member of PhD Association Board (PAB). Aklan is a civil engineer and researcher in the field of water and environment. He has 15 years of professional and academic experience. He worked with a number of official institutions, universities, and international organizations and has published number of scientific papers. He holds a master's degree in IWRM from Cologne University, Germany.

It is believed that the water scarcity problems led earlier generations to develop and employ a variety of indigenous rainwater harvesting (RWH) techniques. This paper reviews the current status and impact of widely practiced indigenous RWH systems with references to different archaeological case studies from various agro-ecological areas. The results of this review demonstrate that Indigenous RWH systems are in state of decline due to several factors, mainly related to groundwater use and changes in polices. The paper explores several experiences that reveal indigenous RWH systems can continue to play an important role and alleviate the increased water scarcity problems and sustain livelihoods of people in many dry and developing areas. While new technologies have affected a number of indigenous RWH systems, they could significantly improve the indigenous RWH practices, make them more efficient and productive.

Presidential fellow and PhD candidate of political science in Georgia State University, US. He is an ABD (All but Dissertation) PhD, in Middle Eastern Studies, Marmara University, Istanbul (and fluent in Turkish). Holds an MA and BA in political science from the American University in Cairo.

Revolutions have a strong international component that is seldom examined in academic literature. It is observable that neighbouring states do interfere in the domestic politics of countries during a revolution or resist them once they have taken place. Revolutions occur in the context of an international structure of competing states and alliances. The outcomes and external effects of revolutions are potentially detrimental to the security and interests of the actors in this international structure. Through deductive reasoning and the scarce literature available on the international relations of revolutions; this paper creates a theoretical framework for understanding international state led interventions in states with ongoing revolutions. The generalizable framework will enable a prediction of which states are most likely to intervene against a revolution. The paper will focus on international counter revolutionary intervention and categorize the ways in which such interventions manifest, using Egypt's 2011 revolution attempt as a case study to test the hypothesis.

PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Chicago. His dissertation aims to destabilize the scholarly boundaries between the study of civil war and civil peace by foregrounding the on-going effects of civil war violence on subjects and their political worlds. Safadi works predominantly with qualitative, interpretive and ethnographic methods, and his empirical research is anchored in contemporary Lebanon, where he theorizes questions pertaining to civil war, political violence, empire, and sexuality. His work focuses on the relationship between historic violence and the reproduction of political division.

On 17 October 2019, hundreds of thousands of people poured into the streets of Lebanon demanding an end to the sectarian- clientelist regime. The promise of collective action, however, soon buckled under the weight of social violence, state repression, economic collapse, and global pandemic. Two years later, many believe the revolution has failed to accomplish a change in the political structure of the nation. Interestingly, this disillusionment condemns collective politics for even trying to transform a country that was and will always be controlled by foreign powers. For most, politics is imagined as only existing in an international realm where the material interests of interested great powers are executed within Lebanon through the sectarian regime. This paper argues that Lebanon's proxy status is one that is lived and imagined in the everyday, constraining possibilities for political action in the country, while producing a myriad of effects and discourses through which subjects experience their political helplessness. Proxy politics is not only a state of geopolitical interventionism, but proxy empire manifests in problems around truth and deceit, agency and consciousness, control and its loss. Ultimately, the study theorizes Lebanon's "proxy condition" as a particular, 21st century manifestation of empire in globalization.

PhD candidate in the Faculty of Arts/English and Comparative Literary Studies Department at Warwick University, UK. Her thesis title is "Contemporary Arab Women Writers, Filmmakers and Artists in a Transnational Frame," and her research interests surround sexuality, gender, feminism and war. She has published two literary papers on women's issues in the Bridges Journal at Leicester University, a comparative literary study on women's suffering and struggle to achieve freedom across three centuries.

Sexuality is a literary phenomenon in the Arabic novel that has preoccupied many Arab women writers as an avenue to criticise society and power. This study explores Ghada Alsamman's literary representations and her role in revolutionizing prevailing notions of gender and sexuality in a patriarchal society. The main research question of this paper is: How can the gap between literary images and women's real social conditions be explained? Beirut '75, which is a social realism novella, is a short, yet harrowing exposé of the political reality of Beirut that prophesies the Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990). It addresses crucial social and political issues and mirrors the hostilities and struggles in Arab society, which oppresses and exploits the poor, particularly women. The study utilises a methodology consisting of critical analysis of the primary literary work in terms of sexuality. It also draws upon feminist theory and psychoanalysis and on a wide variety of historical writings and cultural studies. One main outcome of the analysis is that both genders need to be liberated because the Arab woman's real enemy is represented in the unjust society, and not in the man himself. The other outcome is that sexual freedom should be incorporated and achieved in consistency with other liberation, which is requires liberating Arab men from their outmoded traditional ideologies.

PhD candidate in Educational Technology who recently defended his PhD thesis at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. He holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and a master's degree in Business Economics and Management. He currently provides consultancy for the Palestinian Museum on the development of an interactive educational platform. His research interests and contributions include digital collaboration, Social Media use in science communication and employing digital technology in formal and informal learning.

Fast-growing advances in digital technologies have increased the opportunity of investing in these technologies in education. Research reveals different factors influencing technology use for teaching and learning; with local culture playing a significant role in accepting and adopting technologies developed for other cultural contexts. Several studies suggest that it is necessary to critically examine the cultural appropriateness of any technology used in education. This paper explores the influence of culture on technology use in education in the Palestinian context. Siemens's theory of Connectivism and Hofstede's Cultural Dimensions theory provided the theoretical framework for the research. The findings reveal nine cultural aspects that influence academics' perceptions of social media and its use for educational purposes, also demonstrating the influence of culture on some connectivist practices in the Palestinian context. The study reveals cultural aspects that are not directly connected to Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions theory, which serves to underline that it only provides a partial or incomplete understanding of how culture influences educational technology use in the Palestinian context. The study provides a foundation for future thinking about decolonising research methods, developing modern pedagogies and appropriating some global concepts within the Arab context.

PhD candidate in North American Studies, Doctoral School of Literary and Cultural Studies, University of Debrecen. She conducts research on US policy toward the Middle East, focusing on the neoconservative rhetoric on Iran and has published on this topic in several European academic journals. She has a master's degree in American Studies and bachelor's degree in International Relations. In her native Jordan she is a published poet and a women's rights activist. She is member of the Hungarian Association for American Studies, Oslo Women's Rights Initiative and a Leader for Democracy Fellowship alumna (Syracuse University, NY).

Following the Tehran agreement of 1971, the October war of 1973, and the declaration on establishment of the New International Economic Order by the UN General Assembly in 1974, the neoconservative movement in the United States shifted its focus from domestic affairs to foreign policy. To examine the evolution of neoconservative foreign policy, the paper analyses neoconservative publications' reports about major political and economic events that impacted US-Iranian relations during the Nixon-Ford administrations, and the records of the Ford administration — in particular, Presidential correspondence with the shah and the Saudis as well as the memorandum of conversations among leading US officials. It argues that the emergent neoconservative foreign policy perceived the close relationship with the shah as a liability rather than as an asset and, henceforth, shifted the US Persian Gulf Strategy away from Iran. Furthermore, the paper suggests that the economic crisis instigated by the Saudis that hit Iran in 1976 was the first implementation of this new strategy.

PhD candidate in International Relations at the Eastern Mediterranean University. She holds an MA in International Studies from Birzeit University and a BA in Media and Political Science from the same university. She will conduct her thesis on China's foreign policy toward the Middle East. She has written two short articles about Sino-Israeli relations and China's role in the Ukraine crisis.

This paper discusses the evolution of Chinese foreign policy towards the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after the advent of Xi Jinping to power in 2013. In 1979, China adopted a pragmatic policy that abandoned ideological thought and supported liberation movements in the world against what it considered US imperialism. The first step it made was to adopt the position of the United Nations on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and abandon the rhetoric calling for the liberation of all of Palestine from Israel, which it described as a "tool of American imperialism." Since that time, the Chinese discourse towards Israel also changed as it adopted a policy supporting the the two-state solution. In the last decade of the 20th Century, China normalized its relations with Israel, and the circle of cooperation between the two sides began to expand and went beyond the economic field to reach the intellectual and scientific aspects. This paper attempts to answer two major questions: What is China's role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? How has the Chinese- Israeli rapprochement affected the Palestinian side?

PhD candidate at King's College, Cambridge. He received a BA in political science in 2014 and Bachelor of Laws in 2017. After practicing law for two years in Jordan, Samir went on to complete his MPhil in Middle Eastern history at the University of Cambridge in 2020. His doctoral research examines the political history of civil legislation in the Ottoman Empire, Syria, and Jordan between 1865 and 1976.

The Majallat al-Aḥkām al-ʿAdliyya, an Ottoman code on the rules of Ḥanafī fiqh which had been enacted as far back as 1876, was at the center of the Jordanian codification debates of the 1960s. Throughout the debates, there was consensus on the need for a more contemporaneous civil code. Yet the interlocutors were at loggerheads. Whereas some favoured a Sanhūrī-style law, which could ultimately be united with the civil laws of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt into one Arab civil code, others insisted on a disparate code centred on the Majalla. Wary of Nasserist Arab unity, which had imposed itself on Sanhūrī's codes, the Jordanian rule intervened in the law-making process and gave orders for the drafting of a Majalla-inspired code. To justify its intervention, it underscored the Majalla as a sacred code. Historically speaking, this use of the Majalla, a code with civil aims, to advance political motives was not unique. There are instructive precedents in which the Majalla was similarly used. To understand the Jordanian monarchy's legislative intervention, the paper explores three historical precedents in which the Majalla was similarly used for political objectives: in the Ottoman Empire between (1865 to 1876); in Syria (1918-1920); and Transjordan (1921-1929).

PhD candidate at Danube University Krems in Austria. Her research is focused on refugee aid and protection policy in Jordan, Ethiopia and Turkey with a particular focus on nationality-based discrimination between refugee groups. She has conducted research across refugee and migration through the lens of social protection, decent work, migrant labour and climate migration across the MENA region. She holds an MSc in Migration, Mobility and Development from SOAS, University of London and a BA Economics from the American University of Sharjah.

This paper argues that refugee policies in Turkey following the most recent influx of Syrians has shifted to be differentiated depending on the nationality (and thus, the registration status) of refugee groups. The research uses a case study method and assesses changes in aid access, livelihoods and social protection policies undertaken in Turkey post Syrian influx and EU-Turkey deal and critically analyses the treatment of different refugee groups, specifically Syrians and Afghans through aid access and inclusion policy. The research addresses the reasons for distinct refugee admission/inclusion policies for different groups, as well as the de jure and de facto policies that resulted. This begins with the issuance of refugee status prima facie, but also looks at differences between refugee groups in provincial registration policy, and access to programs, assistance and labour markets, and how these were re-enforced by EU-led negotiations and aid programs that focused on Syrian inclusion. It examines the inclusion and exclusion of different refugee groups in varying assistance and protection policy modalities and focuses on the unfolding of policies and an analysis of differentiation and distinction of Syrian refugee groups, against other refugee groups, as part of the response to the influx.

Primary school educator in Bristol. He earned in his BA (Ed), MA (Ed) and (doctoral) EdD degrees from the University of West of the England, Bristol, UK. The title of his doctoral thesis was "Developing Somali Heritage Language Through Extra- Curricular Activities: A Case Study Exploring Perceptions of Somali Origin Primary Pupils and Their Parents." His research interests include teaching, first and second languages, the role of identity in education, and equity in education.

Immigrant pupils beginning to learn a second language (L2) at school face challenges in maintaining their mother tongue whilst acquiring L2 for academic purposes. As their mother tongue becomes weak due to classroom instruction, which is in the form of L2, they are likely to underperform academically. This qualitative case study (based on my doctoral thesis) investigates ways to mitigate this dilemma. 13 KS2 pupils and 7 parents from an English primary school participated in the study. The research sought to answer the central research question: In what ways can the learning of mother tongue literacy, Somali language, be beneficial for Somali pupils and their parents in a primary school in England? Semi-structured interviews, surveys, a reflective diary, language assessments and intervention sessions were used. The semi-structured interview data was analysed using thematic analysis and the emerged three themes suggest that pupils believe that learning mother tongue literacy is important for 1) identity; 2) cognition; and 3) communication. The themes from parents' interviews mirror this with an addition of theme: 4) strategies and barriers to maintaining mother tongue literacy.

PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK and a researcher at the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies. She holds a master's degree in Sociology and Anthropology from the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies (DI) and a master's in Arabic language, literature and Civilization from the University of Humanities of Sousse, Tunisia.

The "interior" (al-Dakhil) and the "shadow zones" (manatiq al-dhil) both name and describe specific regions in Tunisia. These regions have always been seen as a development/ economic problem, as zones difficiles ("difficult zones," Labiadh, 2016, 7). Historically, they also formed spaces for the cultivation of political contestation, including the anti-colonial struggle. In a popular countermove, the term manatiq al-dhil has been discursively replaced with manatiq al-thil – "humiliation zones." The two terms are differentiated by only one consonant, rendering manatiq al-thil both cynical and comedic. This study characterises "humiliation zones” as prison spaces that confine their inhabitants in specific locations for the sake of control, surveillance and oppression. The "map of humiliation" that it draws facilitates an understanding of space/power dynamics in Tunisia in general. The research suggests this space/power geography is based on a specific archetype of prison. This study will thus seek to answer the major question: How can Tunisia's Manatiq al-Thil be understood as a prison space? This question is followed up by asking: How are these prison spaces generated, sustained and developed? What is the prison space complex? What are its working dynamics? How do people navigate prison space geography inside and outside the humiliation map of Tunisia?

PhD candidate in Gender and Politics, a pioneer in educational and cultural volunteerism and mainly interested in women's political participation. She holds a fellowship from the former United Nations Secretary Ban Ki-moon Center for Global Citizenships, a master's degree in Women's and Gender Studies from the University of Hull, UK, and a master's degree in International Relations from Lodz University, Poland. She is currently working as an International Relations Specialist at UNESCO NatCom.

This paper seeks to answer two central questions: How can the dynamics and relationship between the state as political power and the society be determined and defined in Oman? And how has the State succeeded in creating and promoting a sense of 'particularism' or 'imaginative qualities' of nationalism in Oman? Furthermore, it is important to identify multifaceted obstacles to women's political empowerment that need to be addressed despite the persistence of the authoritarian system. Moreover, to explore what could contribute to women's substantive representation, a closer examination of the relationship between the state-led political efforts to reshape citizens and their perception of modelling female leadership is needed, especially given that women's political representation accounts for only 9% of the parliament seats during the period 1991-2019'. Subsequently, Oman is ranked 150 globally (out of 153 countries) in the "political empowerment" sub-index of the Global Gender Gap Index. The primary outcome of this study is an analysis of the state feminism strategies in Oman, applying existing state feminism literature despite being limited to predominantly western and liberal-democratic contexts. The paper also challenges the dominant narrative of Arab women's political participation in the Arab world and will offer credible alternatives by using diverse theoretical lenses together with empirical data.

PhD candidate in political sciences at Central European University, is a researcher, environmentalist, and community engagement facilitator. Her research focuses on how rural communities cope with natural resource stresses related to livelihood practices. She is particularly interested in how formal and informal institutional dynamics, and development strategies, influence vulnerability, livelihood practices, and marginalization patterns, and how state and tribal/ community relationships, impact access and control over critical natural resources and livelihood and coping strategies.

Coping with economic and environmental stresses does not occur in an institutional vacuum. Both formal and informal institutions shape community vulnerability, resilience, and their coping strategies and related outcomes. Rural communities especially rely on a mix of formal and informal institutions to organize their socioeconomic activities. Central to this is the role of and coordination between institutions mediating environmental stresses and livelihood challenges and shaping the different strategies adopted as a response. Thus, to understand household and community strategies, it is also important to comprehend the influence of institutions, both formal and informal and the dynamics within them. This allows for improved policies and projects that strengthen community response. This paper focuses on one of my dissertation's central research questions: How do rural and tribal communities cope with environmental and natural resource stresses and livelihood struggles? To answer this, I develop a typology of the existing institutions, projects, and strategies (IPS) in 2 key localities in Jordan and analyse how they relate to each other and to the communities. Through a combination of document analysis and informal interviews, I assess the types of IPS, their implementation, gaps, and beneficiary perspectives.

PhD researcher at University of Exeter. His thesis title is "Socialising Hamas: Evaluating the Structural Political Developments in the Islamic Palestinian Movement between 2006-2017". His research interests focus on international relations and Palestine studies, specialising in Hamas. Founder of the Action Group for Palestinians of Syria, a watchdog organisation, and current Chairman of the Palestinian Return Centre (PRC) in London, an NGO in consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council.

While social scientists seek to understand the social drives of violence as an essential step in dealing with the phenomenon, peacebuilding theorists seek peace based on the responses of potential actors in the political process. Based on this differentiation, the proscription of both the political and military wings of Hamas by the West despite a broad understanding of the social context behind the movement's emergence, serves as an outstanding example of the imbalance between academic definitions and political applications. The UK had distinguished itself by using a "constructive" formula, according to some social scientists, by designating only the military wing of Hamas, which allowed Britain to be more involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. On the other hand, the US designation, along with the Israeli one, is based on an understanding of peacebuilding theories that considers Hamas an obstacle to achieving peace and must therefore be isolated from the political process. After the British re-classification of Hamas in its entirety as a terrorist movement, the viewpoint of some researchers who deny the existence of "terrorism studies" as a field of study has been strengthened. The use of designation is still motivated by politics rather than academic theories.

Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Manchester researching non-violent civil disobedience in contemporary Islamic thought. She has completed her first book on neo-traditionalist Muslim networks in the West, currently under publication with Edinburgh University Press. She has been a fellow at the University of Birmingham and Istanbul Sehir University. She also received her DPhil from the University of Oxford at the Faculty of Oriental Studies. Her research interests include Muslim political subjectivities, popular political theology, theodicy, spirituality, and traditionalism and modernism in contemporary Islamic thought.

The permissibility of civil disobedience in Islam is a highly contested question, particularly in authoritarian contexts. Muslim scholars – from different denominational affiliations – and activists have engaged passionate arguments on the contours and limitations of the exercise of political agency in the face of repression. Of these methods, hunger strikes are the most controversial. This research seeks to understand how religious positions both in favour of hunger strikes and against were formulated by religious scholars and former political prisoners in Palestine and in Egypt. In doing so, I raise an essential question: how do prisons – and particularly political prisons – transform fatwa production and religious understanding – if at all? The paper will examine themes of popular political theology and non-violent resistance in Islam. I take an ethnographic approach combining both legal anthropology and sociology of religion, which relies on semi- structured interviews with scholars and former political prisoners.

PhD candidate in Building Art and Urban Planning at the University of Liège in Belgium and member of the research team of the "City Territory Landscape" laboratory (LabVTP) and of the Architecture research unit (URA). He is also a higher education assistant and supervises students on various. His research interest and projects relate to urban planning, architecture and regional planning. He is Founding member of the International Association for Global Sustainability (IAGS), headquartered in Brussels.

In recent years, many cities around the world have been suffering from the growth of automobile mobility, bringing with it many problems, such as air pollution and the increase in obesity and related diseases (WHO). Urgent scientific solutions are needed, and researchers are increasingly interested in the study of soft mobility by trying to understand the factors that need to be analysed and to find the most appropriate methods to ensure sustainable mobility in urban spaces. This present research seeks to understand the concept of walkability, then determine the role played by elements of the urban environment in the improvement of urban walking, by studying the way in which these influence the perceptions and behaviour of residents and their methods of transport. It is particularly important to determine how walking can be encouraged in an urban environment by acting on this type of element. The study relies on representative field samples, selected mainly from the urban fabric of the hyper-centre of the city of Bejaia (Algeria) and an example from the city of Liège (Belgium).