Contributor(s): Professor Fawaz Gerges, Professor Charles Tripp | What drives large-scale, popular mobilizations in the Middle East and North Africa? And what are the challenges and prospects for democratic transformation and consolidation in the region? This lecture, ahead of the release of the LSE Middle East Centre’s new book, The New Middle East: Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (CUP, 2013), looks to explore these questions and more. Fawaz Gerges is director of the Middle East Centre at LSE. Charles Tripp is professor of politics at SOAS. Kristian Coates Ulrichsen is the co-director of the Kuwait Programme at LSE. The LSE Middle East Centre opened in October 2010. It builds on LSE's long engagement with the Middle East and provides a central hub for the wide range of research on the region carried out at LSE. LSE Works is a series of public lectures, that will showcase some of the latest research by LSE's Research Centres. In each session, LSE academics will present key research findings, demonstrating where appropriate the implications of their studies for public policy. A list of all the LSE Works lectures can be viewed online.