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The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies will co-host a meeting on the progress and development of the Arab popular uprisings over the last five years. Held in cooperation with the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut from January 21-23 at the AUB's Beirut campus, the meeting will provide scholars from across the region and beyond to explore the ways in which the Arab popular uprisings, commonly referred to as the "Arab Spring", have impacted the host societies and Arab society more broadly.

Full details of the event can be found in the conference agenda, as well as the event page.

Five years after the landmark eruption of the Arab Spring revolutions, the conference aims to digest and contextualize events that undoubtedly represented a pivotal moment in the history of the region; witnessing peaceful protests where massive numbers of people articulated their right to citizenship within societies based on democracy, justice, and equality. The revolutions and their aftermath initiated a new period in the region, the meanings of which researchers and scholars in the human and social sciences must debate; and whose varied economic, social, and political elements they must study.

In this context, the conference aims to present in-depth studies that re-read the events and morphology of the revolutions, deconstruct structures of the state and of power in the Arab countries as they were before the revolutions and as they remain, and consider what effect power had on the revolutions themselves. The conference also aims to investigate factors that impeded and inhibited the completion of the revolutions, or stymied the realization of aspirations as they were raised in 2011.

Following overwhelming interest from researchers and attendees (with more than 250 research proposals received, and 110 completed peer-reviewed papers) the top 57 papers and projects were chosen for presentation at the conference.

The top-tier research papers set to be presented at the conference discuss the key issues raised during the Arab revolutions, look into the transitional periods and the processes of democratization that followed, gauge their level of success or failure, and draw comparisons between different experiences. The papers also deal with questions of social repercussions of the revolutions, including regional and international polarizations and the effects of these on the course of the revolutions.

The first day of the conference will present trends and developments in Arab public opinion vis-à-vis the revolutions using data from the Arab Opinion Index collected during 2011-2015, it will continue via two parallel sessions that include general lectures as well as discussion groups including with young activists who participated in the Arab revolutions.