This keynote lecture took place at the Gramsci in the Middle East & North Africa Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre in cooperation with Ghent University from 9-10 May, 2022. The conference explored, through empirically-grounded research, how Gramsci’s work can help us make sense of our contemporary moment in the region marked by a significant expansion in resistance and uprising.

Patrizia Manduchi is Director of the GramsciLab and Associate Professor of History of the Contemporary Arab World at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Cagliari. She has published numerous works on the topic of Islamic radicalism,

such as: 'The fury of Allah' (Quaderni di Orientalia Karalitana); 'From pen to mouse: Dissemination tools of the concept of jihad' (curated by Franco Angeli); 'This world is not a place for rewards: Life and works of Sayyid Qutb, martyr of the Muslim Brothers' (Aracne) and

'Voices of dissent: Student movements, opposition politics and democratic transition in Asia and Africa' (Aracne).

Brecht De Smet is a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Middle East and North Africa Research Group at Ghent University, where in 2012 he completed his PhD. Brecht's research interests entail prefigurative and hegemonic class politics, marginalization, and political economy in Egypt, the MENA region, and beyond. He has published articles, opinion pieces, and two books on the politics of revolution and counter-revolution in Egypt (2016). He is now working on the 'Understanding political change from the Margins: Social and Environmental Justice in Morocco and Tunisia' project sponsored by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research.

This conference was supported by the Departments of Government, Sociology, and the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity programme based at the International Inequalities Institute, LSE.