Lse Middle East Centre Podcasts

Speaker: Roland Dannreuther, University of Westminster Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE When there are shifts in distribution of power in international politics, energy security emerges as a salient concern. Professor Dannreuther considers the implications of two shifts: first, the flow of energy from east to west (oil and gas) and the increasing links between Asia and energy-producing regions; and secondly, the flow from consumers of energy to producers of energy with the rise of resource nationalism. Recorded on 11 March 2013.

Speaker: Hazem Kandil, Cambridge University Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE Hazem Kandil explains why Egypt's popular uprising has so far failed to overthrow the regime through exploring the positions of the main players in the revolt: the military, security, and the various political factions. Recorded on 4 March 2013.

Speaker: Fawwaz Traboulsi, American University of Beirut Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE With few comprehensive histories of Lebanon, Professor Fawwaz Traboulsi's 'A History of Modern Lebanon, which weaves together more than five centuries of the country's social, political, cultural and economic history, has become a go-to reference for anyone who wants to understand the country. In this lecture, Traboulsi shares the problems he has faced in writing the history of Lebanon and how he has dealt and proposes to deal with these challenges. Recorded on 18 February 2013.

Speaker: Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies Chair: Fawaz Gerges, LSE While US policy towards Israel remains unchanged, the long-standing assumption that most Americans – even most Jewish Americans – agree with that policy no longer holds. In the media, in popular culture, in universities and particularly within the Jewish community, there are signs of major shifts. In conversation with Fawaz Gerges, Phyllis Bennis discusses these changes with reflection on her own political evolution from Zionist youth leader to anti-war internationalist and Palestinian human rights activist. Recorded on 8 February 2013.

Speakers: Lulu al-Sabah, Abolish Article 153; Hatoon al-Fassi, Qatar University Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme A great deal of misinformation exists about women's rights in the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). In an effort to dispel outdated notions of women's places in such societies, top experts from the Gulf states will speak about the extent to which women today in the GCC face legal restrictions in everyday life and how women in the region are endeavouring to change the status quo. Recorded on 22 March 2017. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speaker: Shafeeq Ghabra, Kuwait University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Shafeeq Ghabra discusses some of the major political changes that the Arab world has undergone since 2011, focusing on power shifts, sectarianism, the role of youth groups and the challenges of reform in the region. He focuses in particular on the Gulf’s role in the Arab Spring and its aftermath, tracing GCC monarchies’ efforts at domestic reform and their involvement in the overarching political changes in the Middle East. Recorded on 12 January 2016. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speaker: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Muslim Brotherhood affiliates in the Gulf are greatly discussed yet little understood. This lecture, based on findings from extensive field work in Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE, examines the historical and current political role of the Ikhwan in states traditionally considered impenetrable to Islamist movements due to their status as wealthy rentier states. Recorded on 11 November 2015. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speaker: Michael Herb, Georgia State University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Despite recent setbacks, Kuwait's parliament remains the strongest amongst the GCC states. Michael Herb delves into Gulf history to explain why Kuwait's political system differs from those of its neighbours. Recorded on 18 March 2015. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speaker: Kristin Smith Diwan, American University Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE MEC In November 2014 Bahrain held parliamentary elections which took place under an election boycott by the political opposition. This talk will explore the implication of these elections for Bahrain's political development and stability. It will also draw upon Kuwait's own recent experience with an opposition boycott to reflect more generally on the evolving political order in the Gulf states, in the context of the the failure of the 2011 Arab uprisings and the emergence of the threat of the Islamic State. Recorded on 20 January 2015. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme Event.

Speaker: Anastasia Nosova, LSE Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme When applied to the Gulf region in general and Kuwait more specifically, rentier state theory stipulates that the political relations between state and business are determined by rents, and therefore that business ceases to represent a strong political force and withdraws from the formal political field in exchange for wealth provided by the state. However, the evidence from Kuwait’s recent history suggests that there is great variation between the patterns of political engagement in Kuwait’s merchant families. Anastasia Nosova defines which factors explain why some merchant families engage in parliamentary politics, while others do not, and why at times the merchant community allies with the opposition, and at other times with the government. She also examines what impact this political engagement by business has on the country’s economic reform policies. Recorded on 17 January 2017. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speaker: Aisha Al-Sarihi, LSE Kuwait Programme Discussant: Michael Mason, LSE Chair: Dr Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme The entry of the Paris Agreement into force in November 2016 coincides with the Gulf states’ acceleration of economic diversification strategies driven by the pressure to adjust fiscal deficits as a result of low oil prices. Aisha Al-Sarihi explains how economic diversification strategies create a window of opportunity for Gulf countries to progress towards the goal set in the Paris Agreement. Capturing these two challenges in a single policy could bring about ‘win-win’ outcomes that ensure both long-term benefits for climate and development. Using specific examples from Oman and the UAE, Aisha discusses the drivers of climate change action in the GCC, and potential challenges to including climate change in economic diversification strategies. Recorded on 25 April 2017. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speaker: Michael Stephens, RUSI Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme As the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen moves into its eighth month, the country shows little sign of returning to stability. GCC operations in the country have swung the tide against the Houthi militias and their backer Ali Abdullah Saleh, however there appears little ability to connect military action to political reconciliation. The talk will focus on the ability of the GCC coalition to forge a political consensus in Yemen, on the back of a highly controversial military operation. Recorded on 17 November 2015. This is an LSE Kuwait Programme event.

Speakers: Nadje Al-Ali, SOAS; Latif Tas, SOAS Chair: John Chalcraft, LSE Horizontal organising within social movements is not necessarily sensitive to gender-based and other intersectional forms of inequalities and hierarchies. Nadje Al-Ali and Latif Tas present their paper on 'the Feminist Turn in the Kurdish Political Movement', in which they critically explore the attempts by political activists and elected representatives of the Kurdish political movement in south-eastern Turkey (northern Kurdistan) to challenge patriarchal and masculinist ideology and practices. Recorded on 7 March 2017. This seminar forms part of the Social Movements and Popular Mobilisation in the MENA Research Network.

Kuwait Programme Seminar Speaker: Lolwah Alkhater, University of Oxford Chair: Courtney Freer, LSE Kuwait Programme Since the turn of the century, many GCC states have undertaken ambitious economic and social reforms, informed by international think tanks and consultancies. Lolwah Alkhater explores the role played by consultancies and think tanks in the GCC through the lens of "policy borrowing", looking specifically at Qatar's education reforms - the most ambitious of any Middle Eastern country - which were designed and led by American think tank RAND Corporation. Recorded on Monday 13 November. Image credit: Northwestern University in Qatar, Wikimedia Commons.

Speaker: Karl Sharro aka Karl reMarks Chair: Dina Matar, SOAS The Middle East is the mysterious land of veils, minarets and Orientalist clichés. Karl Sharro, aka Karl reMarks, talks about his six year journey of satirising how his enchanted native land is represented in Western media and punditry. From the Arab Spring to the rise and decline of ISIS, Sharro discusses how his online alter ego tackled those delicate topics in tweets, blog posts, memes, animations and badly-drawn cartoons. From a more realistic James Bond movie that depicts him delivering a shipment of tear gas to a repressive regime to his 'one sentence explanation of the rise of ISIS', the talk will cover an eclectic range of subject matter. It closes with Sharro's Occidentalist work, as he returns the favour to the West in the aftermath of Brexit and Trump. Recorded on 6 November 2017. Video podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auXQdzoAlPU

Speaker: Michael Willis, University of Oxford Chair: William Sinton, Society for Algerian Studies Algerian history has received a significant amount of scholarly attention but almost exclusively focused on its time under French colonial rule and especially the struggle to end this rule. Comparatively little attention has been drawn to Algeria’s independent postcolonial history despite its richness. Michael Willis looks at how, and possibly why, this is the case and discusses the controversies, challenges and rewards of researching and writing Algeria’s modern history, focusing in particular on the civil conflict of the 1990s. Recorded on 18 October 2017. Image credit: OMAR-DZ, Flickr.

Speaker: Joost Jongerden, Wageningen University Chair: Robert Lowe, LSE Middle East Centre In its 1978 manifesto, the PKK declared the establishment of an independent state to be the most important political goal of any national liberation movement. Twenty years on, the party’s leader Abdullah Öcalan changed this when he developed an ideological framework based on the idea of self-governing, stateless societies as the best way of addressing socio-economic and socio-cultural injustices. Joost Jongerden explains this paradigm shift, which reoriented the PKK as well as other Kurdish movements in the Middle East. Recorded on 12 October 2017. Image credit: Nora Miralles, Flickr.

Speaker: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre Chair: Richard Saull, QMUL In this lecture, Toby Dodge examines the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East, specifically its policy towards Iraq, the fight against the Islamic State, and the Gulf Cooperation Council. He also looks at the ideological and organisational divisions within the White House that have exacerbated President Trump’s own very distinctive style of leadership to deliver a set of contradictory and destabilising policies in one of the world’s most unstable regions. Recorded on 11 October 2017. Image credit: Shealah Craighead / Official White House, Wikimedia Commons.

Speakers: Toby Dodge, LSE; Nussaibah Younis, Chatham House; Christine van den Toorn, IRIS In this event, Toby Dodge, Nussaibah Younis and Christine van den Toorn discuss the final report of the Task Force on the Future of Iraq. The Task Force gathered the world's leading Iraq scholars under the chairmanship of Ambassador Ryan Crocker to develop a strategy for stabilizing Iraq in the long-term, beyond the immediate liberation of Iraq's territory from ISIS. The Task Force traveled to Iraq, Europe, and the US and met with dozens of Iraqi political leaders and Western policy-makers to determine the challenges that Iraq will continue to face and to propose ways in which the international community can continue to support the country. Recorded on 27 June 2017.

Speaker: Mark Fitzpatrick, International Institute for Strategic Studies Chair: Toby Dodge, LSE Middle East Centre With a framework agreement on the future shape of Iran's nuclear programme reached after marathon talks, the world powers and Iran now aim to draft a comprehensive accord by 30 June, resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis. However, the impending deal is still under heavy attack in both Washington and Tehran. Mark Fitzpatrick assesses the political and strategic ramifications of a resolution to the crisis as well as the technical and diplomatic issues involved. Recorded on 5 May 2015. Image credit: Bundesministerium für Europa, Integration und Äusseres, Flickr. Nuclear Talks between the EU+3 and Iran.