Middle East Centre

Dr Basma Al Mutlaq (School of Oriental and African Studies) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series called Women's Rights Research Seminars. As in other parts of the world, women’s empowerment has gained prominence in today’s Saudi Arabia, with a surge in initiatives and leadership projects – all seeking to address the themes of ‘reform’, ‘renewal’ and ‘change.’ Drawing on Michel Foucault’s ‘counter memory’ theory, I examine women’s discourse as a space of identity, power and agency that counters the ‘master narrative’ of a patriarchal and religious culture. Surveying women’s literature between 1960 and 2015, this seminar which is based on my forthcoming book Saudi Women Writers: Gender, Identity and Resistance, examines how women writers are challenging their male-dominated culture and responding to the institutionalization of their womanhood. It begins by discussing women’s struggle for rights in the kingdom, and how the ‘woman issue’ has been used as political bargaining chip by both religious/national and Western discourses. Subsequent chapters discuss themes born out of these women’s work, which are ‘Breaking Taboos’, ‘Globalization, Women and the City’, ‘Violence and Gender’ and ‘Incarcerated bodies’.

Zachary Lockman has taught modern Middle Eastern history at New York University since 1995. His most recent book is Field Notes: The Making of Middle East Studies in the United States (2016). His other books include Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (2004/2010); Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (1996); and (with Joel Beinin) Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (1987). He is a former president of the Middle East Studies Association, chairs the wing of MESA’s Committee on Academic Freedom that deals with North America, and is a contributing editor of Middle East Report.

Jeremy Greenstock is the Chairman of the strategic advisory company, Gatehouse Advisory Partners, established in September 2010, and Chairman of Lambert Energy Advisory, the oil and gas specialists, since January 2012. Born in 1943, Sir Jeremy was educated at Harrow School and Worcester College, Oxford. His principal career was with the British Diplomatic Service, ending his career as UK Permanent Representative at the United Nations in New York (1998-2003) and then, after a suspension of his retirement, as the UK Special Envoy for Iraq (September 2003-March 2004). After three years as an Assistant Master at Eton College, he joined the Diplomatic Service in 1969. The two themes of his career were the Middle East and US/Western European Relations. He studied Arabic at the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, Lebanon (1970-72) and went on to serve in Dubai and Saudi Arabia in the early 1970s and mid 1980s respectively. From 1974-1978 he was Private Secretary to Ambassadors Peter Ramsbotham and Peter Jay in the British Embassy in Washington, starting a total of ten years spent in Washington and New York on US and Transatlantic business. After a spell as Political Counsellor in Paris (1987-90), Sir Jeremy came back to London as Director for Western and Southern Europe, the foundation for a number of years’ work on the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy and in particular on the Balkans, Cyprus and Gibraltar. He returned to Washington as Minister (Deputy Ambassador) in 1994-95, and was then brought back to London as Director General for Eastern Europe and the Middle East (1995) and then Political Director (1996-98). After chairing the European Union’s Political Committee during the UK Presidency in the first half of 1998, he moved to New York as UK Ambassador to the UN in July 1998. As the UK’s Representative on the Security Council up to July 2003, he worked extensively on matters of peace and security in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans and South Asia, but particularly on Iraq. He chaired the Council’s Counter-Terrorism Committee from October 2001 to April 2003. Sir Jeremy left government service in March 2004, after seven interesting months in Baghdad. He became Director of the Ditchley Foundation, the conference centre in Oxfordshire promoting transatlantic dialogue, in August 2004, a position he left in August 2010. He was also a Special Adviser to the BP Group from 2004 to 2010, a Non-Executive Director of De La Rue from 2005 to 2013, a Governor of the London Business School from 2005 to 2008 and Chairman of the UN Association in the UK from 2011 to 2016. He now works concurrently as a Member of the Chatham House Council, as a Special Adviser to the NGO Forward Thinking, as a policy adviser to the International Rescue Committee (UK) and as co-Chair of the European Eminent Persons Group on Middle East issues.

Professor Tariq Ramadan (St Antony's College) launches his new book; Islam: The Essentials on May 9th 2017. Hardly a day goes by without mention of Islam. And yet, for most people, and in much of the world, Islam remains a little-known religion. Whether the issue is violence, terrorism, women's rights or slavery, Muslims are today expected to provide answers and to justify what Islam is - or is not. But little opportunity exists, either in the media or in society as a whole, to describe Islam: precisely the question this short and extremely accessible book sets out to answer. In simple, direct language it will introduce readers to Islam, to its spirituality, its principles, its rituals, its diversity and its evolution.

Dr Reza Zia-Ebrahimi (King's College London) gives a lecture on Iranian nationalis, this is a joint event with the Oxford University Iranian Society. Reza Zia-Ebrahimi revisits the work of Fath-Ali Akhundzadeh and Mirza Aqa Khan Kermani, two Qajar-era intellectuals who founded modern Iranian nationalism. In their efforts to make sense of a difficult historical situation, these thinkers advanced an appealing ideology Zia-Ebrahimi calls "dislocative nationalism," in which pre-Islamic Iran is cast as a golden age, Islam is reinterpreted as an alien religion, and Arabs become implacable others. Dislodging Iran from its empirical reality and tying it to Europe and the Aryan race, this ideology remains the most politically potent form of identity in Iran. Akhundzadeh and Kermani's nationalist reading of Iranian history has been drilled into the minds of Iranians since its adoption by the Pahlavi state in the early twentieth century. Spread through mass schooling, historical narratives, and official statements of support, their ideological perspective has come to define Iranian culture and domestic and foreign policy. Zia-Ebrahimi follows the development of dislocative nationalism through a range of cultural and historical materials, and he captures its incorporation of European ideas about Iranian history, the Aryan race, and a primordial nation. His work emphasizes the agency of Iranian intellectuals in translating European ideas for Iranian audiences, impressing Western conceptions of race onto Iranian identity.

Hemin Hawrami (Senior Adviser to President Masoud Barzani) and Ceng Sagnic (Moshe Dayan Centre, Israel), discuss the prospect of Kurdistan independence. Chaired by Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). Moderatorated by Ari Aziz Mamshae (Blavatnik School of Government)

Professor Laila Parsons (McGill University), gives a talk for the Middle East seminar series. Chaired by Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford). Laila Parsons is a historian specializing in the modern Middle East. She received her D.Phil. from Oxford in 1996, and taught at Harvard and Yale before moving in 2004 to McGill University, where she is currently Associate Professor of History and Islamic Studies. Parsons’ research focuses on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and on the role of narrative and biography in the field of modern Middle Eastern History. She has published widely in this area, including her books The Druze between Palestine and Israel, 1947–1949 (St Antony’s/Macmillan, 2000) and The Commander: Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Liberation, 1914-1948 (Hill & Wang/Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2016), which uses the life-story of an Arab officer and anti-colonial rebel as a prism through which to tell the story of the Eastern Arab World in the first half of the 20th Century. She is currently writing a new book on Palestinian participation in the Peel Commission (1936-1937), with a focus on how the procedures of the commission were determined, and on whether or not the Commission was a space of real political possibility for the Palestinians. 

Rory McCarthy (Magdalen College, Oxford) and Fabio Merone (Ghent University) give a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series. Chaired by Michael Willis (St Antony's College).

Maryam al-Khawaja and Nicholas McGeehan (Middle East Researcher, Human Rights Watch) give a seminar for the MIddle East Centre. The discussant is Toby Matthiesen (St Antony's College). Chaired bt Timothy Garton Ash (St Antony's College).

Jessica Maya Marglin (University of Southern California) gives a talk for the Middle East Centre on 2nd March 2017. Through the experiences of a single Jewish family, this lecture charts how the law helped Jews to integrate into Muslim society. Drawing on previously untapped documents in Hebrew, Arabic, and European languages, Marglin offers a new perspective on Jewish-Muslim relations in the modern Islamic world.