On October 9, 2017, Waleed Zahoor, Publications Intern at Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS), and a senior student at Georgetown University in Qatar, was invited to hold a rabab recital, a stringed instrument known as the lion of instruments played mainly in Afghanistan, Iran, and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Santosh Kulkarni,…
On October 15-16, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held a working group under its research initiative on “Water and Conflict in the Middle East.” Over the course of two days, experts engaged in group discussions aimed at identifying a series of original research questions related to competition and cooperation over water in…
The Arab world today is experiencing “its second great fragmentation and reconfiguration of the past century,” according to respected journalist and Middle East analyst Rami G. Khouri. Acknowledging that there is not really an “Arab world,” and the Arab League only exists “on paper” anymore, he used the term "the Arab region" as a geographic…
A new book manuscript by Jeremy Koons, associate professor of philosophy at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar (GU-Q), was featured recently in a CIRS Faculty Research Workshop. The manuscript The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars was studied and discussed by specialist scholars from Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia during a full day…
In an October 13, 2017 speech, US President Donald Trump rejected the 2015 Iran nuclear deal—the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the arrangement made between Iran and the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany. The agreement had lifted economic sanctions on Iran and placed strict limits on its nuclear program, and…
The education achievement gap between ethnic minorities and majority populations is persistent and even widening in the United States and Europe, according to Mongoljin Batsaikhan, Assistant Professor in Economics at Georgetown University in Qatar. At a Center for International and Regional Studies talk on November 12, 2017, Batsaikhan explained that the leading explanations for the…
Mehran Kamrava and Gerd Nonneman, both Professors of Government at Georgetown University in Qatar and experts on Middle East politics, gave a talk entitled “Tensions in the Middle East: A…
On November 29, 2017, CIRS convened a one-day roundtable meeting to bring together scholars of the region with extensive experience in carrying out social science research, to have an in-depth…
On December 10-11, 2017, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held the second working group under its research initiative on “Mobility, Displacement, and Forced Migration in the Middle…
On January 10, 2018, CIRS screened There Be Dragons, a short experimental film by Suzi Mirgani, Managing Editor at CIRS. The film premiered at the Doha Film Institute’s Ajyal Youth Film Festival…
On January 21-22, 2018, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) convened a working group on “Nation Building in Central Asia.” The working group took place under the larger…
In February, 2018, CIRS convened a one-day roundtable meeting to bring together scholars, scientists, experts, and business practitioners with extensive experience on science and scientific production in the Middle East.…