Modern Syria has seen violence, repression, and autocracy, suffering through tragedy after tragedy over the past century. Yet the history of Syria is not just a tale of dictators and generals. From the 1800s to the 2020s, the Syrian people have engaged in a passionate struggle for justice, equality, and a better future. Whether fighting for national independence from French colonial rule, battling local landowning elites to share the country's wealth, or rising up against the Assad regime, the Syrian people have fiercely clung to their right to live with respect and dignity. Theirs is a story of protest and perseverance in the long fight to reshape the political destiny of their nation. Daniel Neep’s new book, A History of Modern Syria, offers a gripping narrative of how Syrians have navigated the events of the last two centuries. Never losing sight of the fates of ordinary people, it provides a comprehensive account of how a nation born in conflict sustained a rich, complex, and diverse society that after the fall of Assad will chart a new path into the uncertain future.

Daniel Neep is Non-Resident Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University, and Senior Editor at Arab Center Washington DC. He has taught Middle East politics at George Washington University, Georgetown University, and the University of Exeter. He was previously Research Director (Syria) at the Council for British Research in the Levant and spent several years living in Syria and Jordan. He is also the author of Occupying Syria under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space, and State Formation (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and articles in journals including International Affairs, Journal of Democracy, New Political Economy, and the Journal of Historical Sociology.

Meet our discussant and chair

Charles Tripp FBA is Professor Emeritus of Politics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. His research interests include the nature of autocracy, state and resistance in the Middle East, the politics of Islamic identities, and the role of art in the constitution of the political. He is currently working on a project on the politics of memory in Tunisia.

Jasmine Gani is Assistant Professor in International Relations Theory at LSE. She specialises in anti-colonial theory and history, and the politics of empire, race and knowledge production. She is author of 'The Role of Ideology in Syria-US Relations: Conflict and Cooperation' (2014), and co-editor of 'Actors and Dynamics in the Syrian Conflict's Middle Phase' (2022).

'Governance of Resistance in North and East Syria' examines the momentous development of the Kurdish-led autonomous administration since 2012. The creation of this unprecedented, ideologically radical entity is of immense significance in Kurdish, Syrian and Middle Eastern history and for discourses of nationalism and identity. This book presents new research from the expanding scholarship to interrogate Rojava as a political and social idea and explain the resistance narrative that underpins the ideology and governance structures. The contributions examine key aspects of the condition of the autonomous government, its successes, failures and impact, including the theory and nature of the political structures, their application in Arab areas, identity, education, gender and foreign relations. The findings demonstrate that North and East Syria has been revolutionary, that resistance there is resilient, and that there are constant and dynamic tensions between ideology and pragmatism in the evolution of this remarkable political and social project. The speakers at this event will also discuss fast-moving developments in north and east Syria.

Meet our speakers

Stephen Knight is a doctoral student at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford. His ethnographic research explores the application of international humanitarian law by the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. Outside of the field of law Stephen's research also looks at the interaction between mythology and political movements. Stephen also practises as a barrister, specialising in the interactions between criminal law, protest law, immigration law, and public law. He has forthcoming works in the fields of trafficking law and Kurdish mythology.

Thomas McGee is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of legal and social studies of the Middle East, with particular emphasis on Kurdish dynamics in the Syrian context. He is a Max Weber fellow at the European University Institute in Florence, and completed his PhD on “Syria’s Changing Statelessness Landscape: 2011 as Critical Juncture” at Melbourne Law School’s Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness. Thomas has been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre and Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. He has previously published on a wide variety of topics in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, International Migration Review, Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, Genocide Studies International and the Kurdish Studies journal. Currently, Thomas is developing his PhD for publication as a monograph.

Dastan Jasim is a Research Engineer at the Dauphine University in Paris and an Associate Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. Her research focuses on political culture, democratization and security studies.

William Smith is an analyst and researcher whose work has focused on Syria since 2013. He was worked as an independent adviser on a number of U.K.-government and EU funded peacebuilding and stabilisation projects, including as the lead for a ‘Track 2’ initiative in northeastern Syria in 2021-22 that brought representatives of the SDF and Autonomous Administration together in dialogue with local civil society. He currently provides conflict analysis for a Syria humanitarian project.

In this first episode of season 4, Hamidreza Vasheghanifarahani speaks with Azadeh Sobout and Rindala about how transnational solidarity networks can strengthen efforts towards social change. While both Azadeh and Rindala focus their discussion on Syria and the 2011 Revolution, the conversation explores broader approaches and challenges to political organising and revolutionary politics that can be applied globally.

Hamidreza Vasheghanifarahani an Iranian researcher, activist and an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. Currently, he works at the LSE International Inequalities Institute as a researcher. He has worked with and for civil society organisations and communities as a researcher, project manager and trainer, with a focus on civil society and community mobilisation, children’s rights, and disability.

Azadeh Sobout is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast. She is an Iranian activist, writer, and educator rooted in refugee justice, indigenous solidarity, Palestinian liberation, anti-racist, feminist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist movements for over a decade.

Rindala is a Syrian member of the People’s Want transnational network and a co-founder of the cooperative space Darna in Montreuil, France.

To learn more about the Atlantic Fellows for Social and Economic Equity: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/

The Peoples Want: https://thepeopleswant.org/en/about_us

Hamidreza Vasheghanifarahani: https://afsee.atlanticfellows.lse.ac.uk/fellows/2022/hamidreza-vasheghanifarahani

In September, a wave of protests emerged in Morocco led by the country's youth, known as GenZ 212. Since September, 3 people have been killed and 400 arrested according to Amnesty International. Triggered by the deaths of women in an Agadir hospital, the protest movement’s demands come against the background of widespread unemployment and a lack of funding in health and education sectors.

With King Mohammed VI's latest speech announcing budgetary increases and promises of reform, will this be enough to meet the movement’s demands, and does the movement have enough momentum to continue? This panel of experts will take a look at the current protests, how they have been organised and their capacity to gather widespread support. Panellists will also provide broader political and historical analysis on the country, analysing how capacity for reform can be understood in light of the Kingdom's governance systems and political institutions.

Meet our speakers and chair:

Miriyam Aouragh is Professor of Digital Anthropology at the University of Westminster with a specific focus on West Asia and North Africa. She studies the contradictions of capitalism shape the modes and meanings of resistance in the era of revolution and digital transformations. Her analyses is grounded in the complex revolutionary dynamics in the Arab world. In what she calls "techno-social politics" she studies a political temporality marked by revolution and counter-revolution. She wrote about the paradoxical context of online-revolution and cyber-imperialism. Throughout her academic projects she conducts extended fieldwork (Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco), in order to relate participant observation and interviews to media analyses. Miriyam is author of Palestine Online (IB Tauris 2011); (with Hamza Hamouchene) The Arab Spring a decade on (TNI 2022); Mediating the Makhzan about the (r)evolutionary dynamics in Morocco (forthcoming CUP) and (with Paula Chakravartty) Infrastructures of Empire (forthcoming).

Mohamed Daadaoui is professor and chair of Political Science, History, and Philosophy & Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. He is the author of Moroccan Monarchy and the Islamist Challenge: Maintaining Makhzen Power and The Historical Dictionary of the Arab Uprisings. He is a specialist of North African Politics. Mohamed’s articles have appeared in Middle East Critique, The Journal of North African Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, The British Journal of Middle East Studies, the Journal of Middle East Law and Governance, the Hudson Institute, the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, the Huffington Post, SADA of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Middle East Institute, Jadaliyya and Muftah. Mohamed has provided commentary to local and international media outlets such as: C-Span, al-Jazeera English, the BBC, El Pais, and The Irish Times.

Michael J. Willis is King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. His research interests focus on the politics, modern history and international relations of the central Maghreb states (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco). Before joining St Antony’s in 2004, he taught politics at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco for seven years. He is the author of Algeria: Politics and Society from the Dark Decade to the Hirak (Hurst, 2022); Politics and Power in the Maghreb: Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from Independence to the Arab Spring (Hurst and Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Islamist Challenge in Algeria: A Political History (Ithaca and New York University Press, 1997) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Richard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His research is on contemporary international approaches to peacemaking, and why peace processes fail or succeed, with a particular focus on Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan, and considering Libya, Syria and other examples.

With hardening authoritarianism and state capture by militias exacerbating the challenges faced by providers of development and political aid across the Middle East and North Africa, how can aid be made more effective? Can donors overcome the limitations of their outdated assistance playbooks? Analysing the fraught relationships between Western aid providers and MENA recipients, the authors of Making Aid Work suggest innovative, practical approaches for overcoming the chronic limitations—and disappointing results—of assistance aimed at encouraging economic development and political reform in the region.

Meet our speakers and chair

Guilain Denoeux is professor of government at Colby College. His areas of expertise include: Middle Eastern and North African politics, terrorism, insurgency and counter-extremism programming and democracy-building strategies and activities.

Robert Springborg is nonresident research fellow of the Italian Institute of International Affairs and adjunct professor in the School of International Studies at Simon Fraser University.

Greg Shapland is a Research Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre and Principal Investigator and UKRI FCDO Senior Research Fellow on the project, ‘The Political Economy of Water in the MENA Region: A Cross-Regional Assessment’.

This event was the launch of 'Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran' by Amina Tawasil.

This groundbreaking ethnography on Iranian howzevi (seminarian) women reveals how ideologies of womanhood, institutions, and Islamic practices have played a pivotal role in religiously conservative women's mobility in the Middle East.

This event was co-organised with the Department of Anthropology at LSE.

Meet the speaker and chair:

Amina Tawasil is an anthropologist serving as a Lecturer in the Programs in Anthropology at Columbia University's Teachers College since 2017. She has published several articles from her fieldwork in the Islamic Republic of Iran on seminarian women, and has recently published a book entitled, 'Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran' through Indiana University Press. Previously, she taught at the International Studies Institute, University of New Mexico after serving as the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in the Middle East and North African Studies program, with courtesy appointment in the Department of Anthropology at Northwestern University. She is particularly interested in ethnographic and theoretical framings of anonymity, slow labor, time, urban situations, and performance. She is currently completing her fourth year of ethnographic fieldwork among graffiti writers in New York City, Philadelphia and urban New Jersey, which she has published a chapter on in the 'Ethnography of Reading at Thirty' edited volume.

Yazan Doughan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at LSE. Yazan is an anthropologist whose work straddles the linguistic and socio-cultural branches of the discipline, with close engagements with social and legal theory, conceptual and social history, and moral philosophy. His work blends ethnography, genealogy, and history to shed light on the question of social justice in contemporary postcolonial contexts, with Jordan as a primary field site.

This keynote lecture delivered by Professor Hamit Bozarslan took place during the Kurdish Studies Conference organised by the LSE Middle East Centre and the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Sheffield.

An expert in the Middle East, Turkey and the Kurdish question, Hamit Bozarslan has been director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris since 2006. A doctor of history and political science, he now focuses his research on the historical and political sociology of the Middle East, the revolutionary fact and violence present in the Arab world, and the formation of anti-democracies in the 21st century. Bozarslan is a regular contributor to French media such as Le Monde and is the author of a long list of works, including the essay 'Crisis, violence et dé-civilization' (2019), 'Révolution et état de violence: Middle East 2011-2015' (2015), 'History of Turkey: From the Empire to the Present' (2013), 'A History of Violence in the Middle East: From the End of the Ottoman Empire to al-Qaeda' (2008), 'From Political Struggle to Self-Sacrifice: Violence in the Middle East' (2004) & 'The Kurdish Question: States and Minorities in the Middle East' (1997).

This event was chaired by Dr Zeynep Kaya. Zeynep is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Sheffield and a Visiting Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. Her main research areas involve borderlands, territoriality, conflict, peace, political legitimacy and gender in the Middle East. She is author of 'Mapping Kurdistan: Territory, Self-Determination and Nationalism' with Cambridge University Press. Zeynpe is co-convenor of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre.

This talk delivered by Professor René Provost explored important lessons on the promises and limits of non-state justice in conflict zones, specifically looking at the Kurdish-dominated Democratic Autonomous Administration of North East Syria.

Zones of armed conflict are spaces of disorder, which state and non-state belligerents alike aim to curtail through law. Starting in 2014, the Kurdish-dominated Democratic Autonomous Administration of North East Syria established its own courts and enacted its own laws, in civil as well as criminal matters. For a decade, this unrecognised system of administration of justice has struggled to bring social order to this war-afflicted territory.

Meet our speaker and chair

René Provost Ad.E. FRSC is the James McGill Professor of Justice Beyond the State at the Faculty of Law of McGill University. He joined the Faculty of Law of McGill University in 1994, where he was Associate Dean (Academic) from 2001 to 2003 and the founding Director of the McGill Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism from 2005 to 2010. Professor Provost teaches Public International Law, International Human Rights Law, International Humanitarian Law, International Environmental Law, Legal Anthropology, and various courses in legal theory. His latest book is 'Rebel Courts – The Administration of Justice by Armed Insurgents' (Oxford University Press 2021), winner of the 2022 ICON-S Prize for Best Book in Public Law and the 2023 American Society of International Law Certificate of Merit for Creative Scholarship.

Robert Lowe is Deputy Director of the LSE Middle East Centre and Co-Convenor of the Kurdish Studies Series at the LSE Middle East Centre. His main research interest is Kurdish politics, with particular focus on the Kurdish movements in Syria. He is Co-Editor of the Kurdish Studies Series, published by I.B. Tauris.

This event celebrated the work of Professor Charles Tripp through a new edited volume by Toby Dodge, Daniel Neep and Ali Ansari.

The work of Charles Tripp – professor at SOAS University of London for over three decades – has shaped a distinct approach to the study of Middle East politics: an analytical sensibility that is empirically rich, theoretically insightful, and historically sensitive. This edited volume brings together contributions from ten political scientists and historians from across Europe, the United States, and the Middle East, each of whom takes Tripp’s work as the intellectual point of departure for studying politics in the region.

Speakers:

Ali M. Ansari is Professor of Iranian History and founding Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews.

Eberhard Kienle is Directeur de recherche (Research Professor) at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) in Paris and teaches politics at SciencesPo Paris.

Daniel Neep is a political scientist who works on conflict and state-building in the Middle East, with a focus on Syria.

Evaleila Pesaran is Senior College Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge.

What does Yemen’s political, economic and social history and experience tell us about what is realistic for the coming decade and beyond? This keynote lecture delivered by writer and researcher Helen Lackner discussed the main socio-political transformations since the 1960s, and addressed the most relevant features for the country's future. Lackner's presentation drew on her personal experience in different sectors throughout the country.

Meet our speaker and chair

Helen Lackner has been involved with Yemen for more than half a century, working in all three Yemeni states which have existed since the 1960s. She has worked as a consultant in social aspects of rural development in over thirty countries in the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Europe. Her two most recent books on Yemen are 'Yemen in Crisis, Devastating Conflict, Fragile Hope' (Saqi, 2023) and 'Yemen: Poverty and Conflict' (Routledge, 2023). Lackner was the Sir William Luce Fellow at Durham University in 2016, an associate researcher at SOAS from 2016 to 2022. She edited the Journal of the British-Yemeni Society for eight years and writes regularly for the Arab Digest and Orient XXI and has contributed longer academic papers to numerous books and other institutions.

Richard Barltrop is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the LSE Middle East Centre. His research is on contemporary international approaches to peacemaking, and why peace processes fail or succeed, with a particular focus on Yemen, Sudan and South Sudan. He is the author of 'Darfur and the International Community: The Challenges of Conflict Resolution in Sudan' (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury, 2011/2015).