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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250410T173000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250410T183000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20250327T071343Z
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SUMMARY:Khalid Albaih: Sudan in Ink: Politics\, Protest\, and Art
DESCRIPTION:During this CIRS dialogue\, Khalid Albaih (the 2025 GUQ Artist-in-Residence) was in conversation with Suzi Mirgani\, contextualizing the history of Sudanese art through times of conflict. At the Georgetown University in Qatar campus\, CIRS installed two exhibitions of Khalid’s artwork. An exhibition of Khalid’s political cartoons on Sudan was curated by Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann\, and another exhibition on Khalid’s political cartoons depicting international affairs was curated by GUQ students Noon Elsharif and Ayah Ahmed. \n\nKhalid Albaih is a Sudanese independent political cartoonist renowned for his incisive human rights advocacy\, shared globally under the name “Khartoon.” His cartoons have been exhibited worldwide\, and his writings have appeared in major international publications. Albaih was the central figure in The Guardian’s short documentary *The Story of Civil Rights is Unfinished* (2016) and has published two influential books: Khartoon! and Sudan Retold\, an art book he co-edited\, featuring contributions from 31 Sudanese artists documenting Sudan’s rich history. His work extends beyond drawing\, with installations like Bahar\, a poignant video piece using found footage of refugees at sea; The Walls Have Ears (Documenta 15)\, and Shahid (Mathaf\, Qatar\, 2024)\, Season of Immigration to the North (Brescia Musei\, Italy\, 2024)\, all exploring themes of displacement and social justice. In 2024\, he broadened his influence by hosting Alhasil Shino? on AJ+. Albaih is also the editor-in-chief of KhartoonMag.com\, a platform for displaced Sudanese cartoonists\, and creator of the award-winning Doha Fashion Fridays\, which amplifies marginalized voices. Albaih remains a vital force in art activism\, championing global social justice and freedom of expression. \n\nKhalid is a participant in the CIRS Sudan Research Project. 
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/sudan-in-ink-politics-protest-and-art/
LOCATION:Education City\, Al Luqta St\, Ar-Rayyan\, Doha\, Qatar
CATEGORIES:Panels,Sudan
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/03/Khalid-Albaih_Publicity-official-scaled.jpg
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250430T080000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250430T170000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20250427T111746Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260224T074812Z
UID:10001557-1746000000-1746032400@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:(إعادة) جمع السودان: ورشة عمل أرشيفات الفن والثقافة الأولى
DESCRIPTION:في الفترة من 11 إلى 12 أبريل 2025، عقد مركز الدراسات الدولية والإقليمية (CIRS) أول ورشة بحث ضمن مبادرته البحثية حول السودان. تناولت الورشة بعنوان “(إعادة جمع السودان: أرشيفات الفن والثقافة” تقاطعات التعبير الثقافي والصراع، وأجرت مسحا واسعا ومعمقا لأرشيفات الفن والثقافة بجميع أشكالها. كان هدف الاجتماع الذي استمر يومين هو مناقشة وتقديم ملاحظات حول مجموعة من مسودات المقترحات المقدمة للمشروع. \n\nبدأ النقاش بإلقاء نظرة على “الأرشفة العرضية”، وهو موضوع رئيسي يفحص كيف أنشأت الممارسات الفنية السودانية أرشيفات قيمة أثناء الصراع. تأملت ريم الجيالي وكاتارزينا غريبسكا في جهودهما التعاونية لتوثيق الفن السوداني باستخدام أدوات رقمية غير رسمية مثل وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي، وورش العمل، ومواقع المشاريع. هذه الأرشيفات العفوية، التي صنعت من الضرورة وسط الحرب، تصبح مستودعات حيوية للذاكرة والتجربة الجماعية. ركز النقاش على التحديات المتعلقة بملكية الأرشيفات والغرض وسهولة الوصول إليها خلال الأزمات التي تتعطل فيها الأرشفة التقليدية، مما يبرز الدور العميق للارتجال في الحفاظ الثقافي. \n\nاستكشفت جلسة سها حسن كيف تحافظ الأرشيفات المجزأة على الذاكرة الجماعية، رغم الاضطرابات والدمار. وركزت على الأرشيفات المنتشرة عبر عدة دول بالقرب من ملتقى النيل، وصورت الأرشيفات كمساحات ديناميكية مترابطة تتيح إعادة تفسير مستمرة لتاريخ السودان وهويته. سلطت الضوء على عدم حيادية الأرشيف، الذي تشكل بفعل المعايير المؤسسية والثقافية، ووصفت كيف أن القطع الأثرية الصغيرة على ما يبدو، مثل البطاقات البريدية، تفتح سرديات أوسع حول التراث المعماري السوداني والنقاشات حول إعادة الثقافة إلى الوطن. \n\nبعد ذلك، مشروع إيمان حسين وإريكا كارتر (الذي شارك في تأليفه مع طلال عفيفي) هو دراسة جماعية ذاتية الإثنوغرافية لأرشيف الفنان السوداني حسين شريف. تسلط أبحاثهم الضوء على كيف تعزز اللقاءات الأرشيفية الحوار وصنع المعنى خلال الأزمات الثقافية. من خلال محادثات مسجلة وتحليل موضوعي، استكشفوا كيف يؤثر القرب والمسافة على عمليات الأرشفة وسرد القصص. يبرز هذا العمل الأرشيفات كمواقع علاقية تمكن بناء العالم التعاوني والوصاية الأخلاقية للمجموعات الشخصية. \n\nحللت سلمى أمين تطور ممارسات الأرشيف السوداني وسط الاضطرابات، مع التركيز على المنصة الرقمية “أنداريا” التي أطلقت في 2015، والتي شاركت في تأسيسها مع أمية شوكت. تعد الأندرية مساحة حيوية لتوثيق وتفاعل مع الثقافة السودانية على الإنترنت وخارجه، ومراعاة التكيف مع الرقابة والعنف والنزوح. أكد أمين على أن الأرشفة الرقمية التي تقودها القاعدة الشعبية ضرورية للحفاظ على الذاكرة الجماعية، مع معالجة تحديات مثل أمن البيانات، والاستدامة، وإمكانية التحريف. تكشف رؤاها عن التفاعل المعقد بين التكنولوجيا وجهود المجتمع والمرونة الأرشيفية في سياقات غير مستقرة. \n\nفي الجلسة التالية، استكشفت لاريسا-ديانا فورهمان كيف يستخدم الفنانون السودانيون إنستغرام كأرشيف نشط للحفاظ على السرديات الشخصية ومواجهة سرديات الدولة. فحصت التوترات بين الحرية الإبداعية، وسياسات المنصات، والرقابة، والقيود الخوارزمية. باستخدام التحليل البصري والمحتوى إلى جانب الإثنوغرافيا الرقمية والمقابلات، تكشف أبحاثها عن إنستغرام كموقع للمقاومة وبناء الذاكرة الجماعية تحت القمع السياسي. تسلط هذه الدراسة الضوء على الدور الناشئ لوسائل التواصل الاجتماعي في توثيق التاريخ وتعزيز المشاركة السياسية في السودان. \n\nثم تحول النقاش إلى الحفاظ على التراث السوداني وأرشفته في ظل التدهور المؤسسي والصراعات المستمرة. ركز بنتلي براون وحنين سيد أحمد على الحفاظ على التراث السوداني من قبل المجتمعات وسط انهيار المؤسسات والصراع، مع التركيز على التقاليد الشفوية ومشاركة الشتات. استكشفوا “الأرشفة العاطفية”، حيث ترتبط الذاكرة بالعاطفة والنزوح، حيث تبني مجتمعات الشتات أرشيفات لامركزية وتقوم بصنعها، خاصة عبر الإنترنت. يستخدم عملهم المقابلات والتوثيق المرئي لفهم كيف تخلق الموسيقى والقصص والتجارب الحياتية السودانية تراثا ذا معنى. تؤكد أبحاثهم على أن الوكالة المجتمعية أساسية للبقاء الثقافي في السياقات المجزأة. \n\nبعد ذلك، استعرض أحمد سيكاينغا الثقافة الشعبية النابضة بالحياة في الخرطوم عبر القرن العشرين، مع التركيز على الموسيقى والرقص والموضة والرياضة. باستخدام السجلات الاستعمارية والتاريخ الشفهي والصور الفوتوغرافية، حلل كيف أثرت العرقية والهوية والصراعات على الحياة الاجتماعية الحضرية في شمال السودان. تسلط هذه الأعمال الضوء على التفاعل بين التعبير الثقافي والديناميكيات الاجتماعية والسياسية، مما يثري فهم الهوية الحضرية المتطورة للسودان خلال الفترتين الاستعمارية وما بعد الاستعمار.  \n\nسلطت مارلين ديغان والوهبي عبد الرحمن الضوء على العمل التحولي لمشروع ذاكرة السودان منذ عام 2013 في رقمنة وحماية التراث الثقافي السوداني المهدد. قامت المبادرة بتركيب معدات رقمنة في جميع أنحاء البلاد، بما في ذلك في جامعة وادي النيل، للحفاظ على المخطوطات والصور والأفلام والقطع الأثرية. رغم التحديات، درب المشروع مئات الأشخاص، والتقط حوالي 300\,000 صورة، وأطلق أرشيفا إلكترونيا قويا.  تعمل ذاكرة السودان الآن كشريان حياة ثقافي حيوي، تعزز دور الذاكرة الثقافية في الهوية الوطنية السودانية. \n\nمواصلة الحوار حول ذاكرة السودان، مثل قطوف إلعبيد ورند العربي مجموعة لوكال، وألقيا الضوء على مشروع يتفاعل نقديا مع الأرشيفات الرقمية لذاكرة السودان لتحدي السرديات التاريخية السائدة وإبراز التواريخ السودانية التي تم تجاهلها. درس مشروعهم مواضيع مثل الإرث الاستعماري، وتواريخ الحب، وتقاطعات التصميم والسياسة، والتأثيرات الصناعية. من خلال تحليل المواد الأرشيفية المتنوعة، تدعو المبادرة إلى أن تكون الأرشيفات مواقع نشطة للبحث، تكشف الأصوات المهمشة وتطرح التساؤلات حول بنى الهوية بعد الاستعمارية. يوسع عملهم التأريخ السوداني، مما يعزز إعادة تفسير أكاديمية وعامة تنعش الخطاب الثقافي والتاريخي السوداني.  \n\nثم استكشف علاء خير الدور الحيوي للتصوير الفوتوغرافي في توثيق الاضطرابات الاجتماعية والسياسية الأخيرة في السودان. تتبع تطور التصوير الفوتوغرافي من الحقبة الاستعمارية إلى العصر الرقمي، مؤكدا على مساهمات المصورين المحترفين والهواة في سرد المقاومة. ناقش تحديات مثل الرقابة والمخاطر الشخصية، إلى جانب فرص جديدة من الصحافة المواطنة عبر التكنولوجيا. تجمع أبحاثه بين المقابلات وتحليلات وسائل التواصل الاجتماعي لتسليط الضوء على تأثير التصوير الفوتوغرافي على الرأي العام والسياسات والذاكرة الجماعية، ويدعو إلى بناء أرشيف فوتوغرافي شامل للحفاظ على تاريخ السودان المعاصر. \n\nدرس رحيم شداد السياسات الثقافية السودانية خلال الستينيات والسبعينيات، مع التركيز على مؤسسة مصلحة الثقافة، وهي مؤسسة تأسست عام 1971 لتعزيز تعبيرات فنية متنوعة تتجاوز السرديات العربية الإسلامية السائدة. قيم عمله كيف  عزز مشروع الثقافة الشمولية وشكل هوية وطنية واسعة من خلال مجموعة متنوعة من البرامج. وباستخدام البحث الأرشيفي، والتواريخ الشفهية، والمقابلات، تسلط أعماله الضوء على هذه الفترة التي غالبا ما يتم تجاهلها من صنع السياسات الثقافية، مقدمة رؤى للنقاشات الحالية حول الهوية الثقافية والسياسات في السودان.  \n\nفي الجلسة التالية، ناقشت ربا الملك وريم عباس كيف استخدمت النساء السودانيات الموضة والشعر و”أغاني البنات” لتوثيق الأحداث الاجتماعية والسياسية في السودان، خاصة في ظل تدمير الأرشيف الوطني والبنية التحتية الفنية على يد النظام الإسلامي. وقد عرضوا أدوار النساء كمؤرخات وأمينات أرشيف من خلال تواصلهن اليومي وملابسهن، محافظين على التراث الثقافي من خلال التأمل في القضايا الاجتماعية والتجارب الشخصية ومكانتهن في المجتمع السوداني. سلط المؤلفان الضوء على القماش السوداني (الطوب) من عصور سياسية مختلفة، وصور، وموسيقى، وشعر، ليبرزان كيف بنت النساء أرشيفا عضويا من خلال نهجهن في الحياة اليومية، مؤكدين على مرونة وحيوية جهود النساء السودانيات في جهود التأريخ. \n\nفي مشروع تمثيل التراث الحي السوداني (SSLH) والمؤلفتين المشاركتين زينب جعفر وهيلين مالينسون، أكدت أمنة الإدريسي على التفاعل بين نقل التراث التقليدي والأرشفة المعاصرة في السودان خلال الأوقات السلمية والمضطربة. وبينما تسلكت مشاريع مثل متحف المجتمع في غرب السودان ومنصة SSLH الإلكترونية، ناقشت تطور المتاحف إلى مساحات مجتمعية تشاركية تدعم النقل الثقافي المستمر. تتكيف هذه الجهود مع الحفاظ على التراث مع النقل عبر تقنيات الاتصال الحديثة، مما يضمن بقاء التراث الثقافي ممارسة حية ومتطورة بدلا من أن يكون أثرا ثابتا، حيويا للمرونة وسط تحديات مثل التحديث والصراع. \n\nركزت الجلسة الأخيرة على تجارب العمال السودانيين المهاجرين في بيروت، لبنان، من خمسينيات القرن الماضي وحتى الوقت الحاضر. نظرت آنا رومير في كيفية استبعاد هؤلاء المهاجرين من السرديات التاريخية الرسمية رغم مساهماتهم الكبيرة في المجتمع اللبناني. من خلال التاريخ الشفهي، والأرشيفات الشخصية، والأفلام المستقلة، شرحت كيف خلق هؤلاء المهاجرون إطارا موازيا للذاكرة العامة اللبنانية، موثقين حياة المهاجرين السودانيين وشاركوا في تضامن سياسي عابر للمناطق. تفحص أعمالها تطور المجتمعات السياسية المهاجرة السودانية، وتفاعلها مع النضالات الأفريقية والمناهضة للاستعمار، وتأثير التحولات السياسية في السودان، بما في ذلك ثورة ديسمبر 2018 والحرب المستمرة، على شعورهم بالنفي وآفاق العودة. \n\n\nلعرض جدول أعمال مجموعة العمل، اضغط هنا\n\n\n\nلقراءة سير المشاركين الذاتية، اضغط هنا\n\n\n\nاقرأ المزيد عن هذه المبادرة البحثية\n\n\nالمشاركون والمناقشون: \n\n\nريم عباس، باحثة مستقل\n\n\n\nوهبي عبد الرحمن، جامعة وادي النيل، السودان\n\n\n\nAhmأحمد أبو شوق، جامعة قطر\n\n\n\nآيه أحمد، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nرند ألعربي، مدرسة الشتادلشوله (Hochschule für Bildende Künste)، ألمانيا\n\n\n\nسارة العطية، متاحف قطر\n\n\n\nخالد البايه، فنان مقيم، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nمعز علي، إرثنا  Earthna: مركز المستقبل المستدام في مؤسسة قطر\n\n\n\nريم الجيلي، استوديوهات ميوز متعددة\n\n\n\nسلمى أمين، أندارية\n\n\n\nزهرة بابر، مركز الدراسات الدولية والاقليمية، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nمسبا بهاتي، مركز الدراسات الدولية والاقليمية ، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nبنتلي براون، الجامعة الأمريكية في الشارقة\n\n\n\nإريكا كارتر، كلية كينغز\n\n\n\nمارلين ديغان، كلية كينغز\n\n\n\nعلا دياب، مجلة 500 كلمة\n\n\n\nأمنه إلإدريسي، حماية التراث الحي في السودان (SSLH)\n\n\n\nربا الملك، باحثة مستقلة\n\n\n\nقطوف إلعبيد، محلي\n\n\n\nنون الشريف، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nلاريسا-ديانا فورمان، معهد أبحاث السلام فرانكفورت\n\n\n\nZزينب جعفر، حماية التراث الحي في السودان (SSLH)\n\n\n\nكاتارزينا غرابسكا، جامعة جنيف\n\n\n\nسها حسن، موانه\n\n\n\nآية حسن، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nنور حسين، ، مركز الدراسات الدولية والاقليمية ، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nإيمان حسين، كلية الملك\n\n\n\nليندا إيرولو، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nعلا خير، باحث مستقل\n\n\n\nديل مينيزيس، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nسوزي ميرغاني،  مركز الدراسات الدولية والاقليمية ، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nفرات أوروج، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nآنا سيمون روميرت، المدرسة الجديدة، الولايات المتحدة\n\n\n\nنادية سبيتي، جامعة جورجتاون في قطر\n\n\n\nرحيم شاداد، معرض وسط المدينة\n\n\n\nأمنية شوكت، أنداريا\n\n\n\nحنين سيدحمد، أرشيف أشرطة السودان\n\n\n\nأحمد سيكاينغا، جامعة ولاية أوهايومقال بقلم محللة أبحاث، بمركز الدراسات الدولية والاقليمية ميسبا بهاتي
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/recollecting-sudan-art-and-culture-archives-workshop-i/
LOCATION:Education City\, Al Luqta St\, Ar-Rayyan\, Doha\, Qatar
CATEGORIES:Sudan
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/04/2025_04_11-CIRS_Re-Collecting-Sudan-Art-and-Culture-Archives-43.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250529T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250529T193000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20250424T084406Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250616T101658Z
UID:10001556-1748541600-1748547000@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:The Evolution of Basketball in the Middle East
DESCRIPTION:The CIRS Panel on “The Evolution of Basketball in the Middle East\,” was held on May 29\, 2025\, at Georgetown University Hilltop Campus in Washington\, D.C.\, and is an extension of the CIRS research initiative on “America’s Game in the Middle East: the 2027 Qatar Basketball World Cup.” Missionaries\, merchants and military brought the game of basketball starting in the early 20th century to the Middle East\, making it the only American sport that successfully spread throughout the region. In this panel\, we are going to discuss the history and today’s popularity of basketball across the Middle East\, and American-Middle Eastern engagements in basketball such as NBA pre-season games in Abu Dhabi\, Gulf sponsorships of American teams\, and Middle Eastern players at U.S. college teams.  \n\nSpeakers:– Danyel Reiche\, Georgetown University in Qatar– Sebastian Sons\, Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO)– Nadim Nassif\, Notre Dame University – Louaize (NDU)– Onur Yıldırım\, Middle East Technical University– Misba Bhatti\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar (Moderator)
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/the-evolution-of-basketball-in-the-middle-east/
LOCATION:Education City\, Al Luqta St\, Ar-Rayyan\, Doha\, Qatar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-05-15-130942.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250805T080000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250805T170000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20250622T092941Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20250622T092943Z
UID:10001560-1754380800-1754413200@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:America’s Game in the Middle East: The 2027 Qatar World Cup| Roundtable Meeting II
DESCRIPTION:On May 29 and 30\, 2025\, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted its second research workshop as part of the initiative on America’s Game in the Middle East: The 2027 Qatar Basketball World Cup. Over two days\, participating scholars and experts engaged in dynamic discussions that addressed a range of critical themes\, including basketball diplomacy\, the experiences of female basketball players\, the influence of social media\, the concept of “sportswashing\,” Saudi Arabia’s sports strategy\, and the evolving landscape of US college basketball and the National Basketball Association (NBA). \n\nOnur Yildrim opened the workshop by examining the role of American military bases in Cold-War era Turkey\, specifically the Karamürsel Air Base\, in facilitating cultural exchange through basketball. He argued that such bases primarily served military purposes\, but they also introduced American customs and goods to local communities\, albeit with limited direct social interaction. Basketball\, however\, emerged as a significant conduit for cross-cultural engagement\, particularly following the establishment of the Karamürsel Youth Sports Club in 1969. American soldiers\, some of whom joined the team as licensed players\, contributed to the development of local talent\, and the team’s regional success sparked a newfound passion for basketball in a community previously oriented toward traditional Turkish sports. Yildrim’s analysis underscores the enduring impact of grassroots efforts in fostering genuine intercultural connections. \n\nNadim Nassif assessed the global popularity of basketball and evaluated how Qatar’s hosting of the 2027 FIBA World Cup could enhance the country’s international standing and geopolitical influence. Employing the World Ranking of Countries in Elite Sport (WRCES) and the World Sport Power Index (WSPI)\, Nassif demonstrated that basketball consistently ranks as the world’s second most popular sport after football. He argued that\, although the Basketball World Cup does not match the prestige of the Olympics\, hosting the event provides significant global visibility for Qatar. Nassif contended that Qatar’s strategic use of sport\, particularly through hosting high-profile events\, is central to its soft power ambitions\, even as its national basketball team’s achievements remain limited. \n\nLindsay Krasnoff and J. Simon Rofe presented a paper highlighting basketball’s unique capacity to serve as a vehicle for diplomacy and social transformation in the Middle East\, drawing on examples from NBA’s Basketball Africa League and other regions. They emphasized basketball’s global reach and adaptability\, which allow the sport to bridge divides\, foster cultural exchange\, and address issues such as gender equality\, migration\, and integration. The authors identified four key takeaways: basketball as a means of representation and negotiation; its potential to promote gender equality; the importance of local context; and the sport’s ability to forge a global identity that transcends national boundaries. They argued that locally driven initiatives\, rather than externally imposed models\, are most effective in leveraging basketball for diplomatic purposes. \n\nAshraf ELmidani\, on behalf of his coauthors Kamilla Swart and Gerard Akinde\, explored Egypt’s historically prominent role in African and Middle Eastern basketball. Egypt’s legacy is marked by early institutionalization\, significant achievements in regional and international competitions\, and leadership within FIBA Africa. Despite recent challenges related to infrastructure\, funding\, and competitiveness\, Egypt continues to demonstrate resilience through club development\, regional diplomacy\, and international collaborations\, including partnerships with the NBA. The study also highlighted Egypt’s commitment to youth\, women\, and para-sports\, as well as its regional support for Palestine\, while noting persistent systemic obstacles to reclaiming the country’s former dominance in the sport. \n\nMisba Bhatti presented Nida Ahmed’s research on how women basketball players from the SWANA (South West Asia and North Africa) region utilize Instagram to navigate cultural expectations and challenge stereotypes. Through digital ethnography of athletes from Egypt\, Lebanon\, Saudi Arabia\, and Türkiye\, Ahmed introduced the concept of the “athletic labour of SWANA femininity\,” illustrating how these athletes balance athleticism with culturally specific expressions of femininity while resisting Western media’s sexualization of women athletes. Social media emerges as a platform for empowerment and visibility\, countering dominant narratives and highlighting the agency of non-Western sportswomen. \n\nAssile Toufaily examined the development of women’s basketball in Lebanon and the critical influence of the US collegiate system. Her research demonstrated that Lebanese athletes with US college experience significantly contribute to the sport’s growth in Lebanon\, despite persistent social\, cultural\, and economic barriers. Toufaily underscored the importance of social media for scouting and recruiting\, the impact of the Lebanese diaspora\, and the need for greater institutional support to advance women’s sports development in the country. \n\nJung-Woo Lee analyzed the diplomatic implications of Qatar hosting the 2027 FIBA Basketball World Cup within the broader context of US-China-Qatar relations. He argued that Qatar’s investment in global sports aligns with the country’s economic diversification and image enhancement strategies\, as articulated in the Qatar National Vision 2030. The World Cup is positioned as a platform for both American cultural diplomacy and Chinese economic engagement\, reflecting the complexities of contemporary geopolitical rivalries. \n\nClaudia Kozman investigated Qatari and international media coverage of the 2027 FIBA Basketball World Cup\, focusing on journalistic roles and sourcing practices. Her findings indicate that sources―primarily athletes\, coaches\, and politicians―significantly shape journalistic approaches\, with Qatari media tending toward infotainment and loyal-facilitator roles\, while international outlets often adopt more critical or watchdog stances. The research highlights the hybrid and culturally contingent nature of sports journalism in the region. \n\nDanyel Reiche reviewed the academic literature on sportswashing\, noting its association with soft power and information manipulation\, but argued that not all foreign sports investments constitute sportswashing. He examined the Qatar Investment Authority’s 2023 acquisition of a stake in Monumental Sports & Entertainment\, emphasizing that the move was primarily a business decision aimed at revenue diversification\, rather than an attempt at narrative control or prestige enhancement. \n\nSebastian Sons explored Saudi Arabia’s evolving engagement with basketball as part of its broader sports diplomacy and economic diversification strategy under the country’s Vision 2030. While football\, motorsports\, and tennis have received greater attention\, basketball is gaining prominence through increased infrastructure\, youth training\, and female participation\, as well as the hosting of major events such as the 2025 FIBA Asia Cup. Sons argued that basketball advances Saudi objectives in nation branding\, identity construction\, and international leverage\, though its potential remains underutilized compared to other sports. \n\nCraig LaMay concluded the workshop by discussing the NBA’s near-monopoly on global basketball broadcasting revenues and its aggressive expansion into Europe and the Middle East in pursuit of new talent\, fans\, and revenue streams. The NBA’s evolving media strategy\, including a landmark partnership with Amazon\, reflects its efforts to reduce reliance on regional broadcasters and tap into underserved markets. LaMay also noted the potential for Gulf states\, particularly Saudi Arabia\, to emerge as competitors through the potential creation of a global basketball super league\, signaling a new era of alliances and rivalries among the NBA\, FIBA\, Euroleague\, and Gulf investors. \n\n\nFor the roundtable agenda\, click here.\n\n\n\nFor the participants’ biographies\, click here.\n\n\n\nFor the research initiative\, click here.\n\n\nParticipants and Discussants: \n\n\nZahra Babar\, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nMisba Bhatti\, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nAshraf ELmidani\,\n\n\n\nNoor Hussain\, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nClaudia Kozman\, Northwestern University in Qatar\n\n\n\nLindsay Sarah Krasnoff\, New York University\n\n\n\nCraig LaMay\, Northwestern University\n\n\n\nJung Woo Lee\, University of Edinburgh\n\n\n\nNadim Nassif\, Notre Dame University\n\n\n\nDanyel Reiche\, CIRS – Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nJ Simon Rofe\, University of Leeds\n\n\n\nSebastian Sons\, Center for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient (CARPO)\n\n\n\nAssile Toufaily\, PhD candidate\n\n\n\nOnur Yildirim\, Middle East Technical University in Ankara\n\n\nArticle by Misba Bhatti\, Research Analyst at CIRS
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/americas-game-in-the-middle-east-the-2027-qatar-world-cup-roundtable-meeting-ii/
LOCATION:Education City\, Al Luqta St\, Ar-Rayyan\, Doha\, Qatar
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/06/Basketball-write-up-feature.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250901T130000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250901T143000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20250909T094628Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251008T093701Z
UID:10001579-1756731600-1756737000@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:CIRS Open House
DESCRIPTION:On September 1\, 2025\, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) held an open house for GU-Q students\, faculty\, and staff to learn more about CIRS\, the CIRS Undergraduate Research Advancement (CURA) program\, and the different ways students can be involved in the Center’s work. Over 25 attendees met CIRS staff members and listened to presentations by Misba Bhatti\, Research Analyst at CIRS\, and Noor Hussain\, Research Program Specialist at CIRS\, alongside valuable contributions from Professor Firat Oruc and GU-Q’s Author in Residence\, Kamila Shamsie. \n\nIn the presentation\, Misba outlined the Center’s work in academic research\, policy analysis\, and its broader thematic clusters. She emphasized the ways in which CIRS organizes its projects under sustained themes\, drawing attention not only to long-standing clusters such as regional and environmental studies\, but also to new areas of inquiry including race and society\, as well as the Center’s growing engagement with the Hiwaraat conference series\, an initiative of the Dean’s Office that is closely connected to CIRS’s intellectual mission. She further highlighted the Center’s extensive publications program. Aside from the web-based projects that feature interactive content\, CIRS has produced over forty academic publications since 2005\, many of which are available in the GU-Q Library and bookstore\, with additional titles freely downloadable from the CIRS website. \n\nNoor then expanded on the CURA program\, which remains one of the ways for undergraduate students to connect directly with the Center’s work. The CURA program revolves around three interlinked components: student research presentations\, research skills workshops\, and the Beyond the Headlines series. In research presentations\, students are invited to present findings their research findings ranging from honors thesis to class papers to the GU-Q community. These sessions\, held as open lunch talks\, provide a valuable opportunity for students to practice the art of presenting complex research clearly and concisely\, while learning to respond to questions and critique in a professional and intellectually engaged setting. \n\nThe CURA workshops introduce students to the craft of research itself\, giving them hands-on experience with foundational skills that can be applied across disciplines. Noor drew attention to the upcoming workshop led by Khalid Albaih\, GU-Q’s Artist in Residence\, on making political art across mediums. This workshop\, at once artistic and political\, reflects CIRS’s ongoing commitment to expand the boundaries of how research and public engagement are conceived\, understood\, and practiced on campus. \n\nMisba Bhatti spoke about the Beyond the Headlines series\, which provides students with a space to examine current events in greater depth. Panels bring together GU-Q faculty and students to interrogate the historical and cultural contexts behind the news\, encouraging dialogue that goes beyond immediate coverage. In these conversations\, students consider pressing global issues alongside GU-Q faculty\, interrogating the historical context\, the silences\, and the wider implications that lie beneath the surface of headlines. Students are invited to propose topics and join discussions. Professor Firat Oruc\, who moderates the series\, also spoke at the open house. He emphasized how Beyond the Headlines offers students a platform to connect their perspectives with faculty expertise and to situate global events within broader intellectual debates.  \n\nProfessor Oruc also introduced the upcoming Hiwaraat conference\, Seeing Sudan: Politics through Art\, organized by CIRS. He stressed how the Center is cultivating critical spaces where conflict\, displacement\, and questions of politics can be interrogated not only through the lens of international relations\, but through the textures of culture\, art\, and literature. He noted how art and cultural production often provide unique avenues to understand the lived experiences of war and authoritarianism\, and why they remain central to grasping Sudan’s present and imagining its possible futures. This point was echoed by Kamila Shamsie\, GU-Q’s distinguished Author in Residence\, who reflected on how poets and writers have historically been among the first voices silenced in times of repression. She drew from her own experiences and authorship and highlighted how listening to artists and poets offers a raw and urgent interpretation of political crises that cannot be captured by official discourse alone. \n\nThe event concluded with an open reception\, during which students and faculty continued their conversations with CIRS staff\, asked questions about the CURA program\, and explored concrete ways to become involved in the work of the Center. \n\n\n\n\n\nArticle by Maryam Daud\, CIRS Administrative Coordinator
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/cirs-open-house-2/
CATEGORIES:Student Engagement
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/09/cirs-final-2-scaled.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250911T123000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250911T150000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251007T125641Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260105T095004Z
UID:10001584-1757593800-1757602800@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:CURA Research Workshop: From Idea to Impact: Making Political Art Across Mediums
DESCRIPTION:On September 11\, 2025\, the Center for International and Regional Studies hosted a CURA research workshop titled “From Idea to Impact: Making Political Art Across Mediums.” The session took place at Georgetown University in Qatar and was led by Khalid Albaih\, Artist in Residence at Georgetown University in Qatar. The workshop guided students from identifying a political idea to creating a focused visual study rooted in drawing and interpretation. \n\nWhere do political artworks come from\, and where can they go? In this interactive workshop\, Khalid Albaih guided students through the creative process of transforming political ideas into visual expression. The session began by exploring the origins of political art and how it often emerges from personal experience\, social memory\, or the emotional weight of a headline or online post. Through discussion and hands on exercises\, participants reflected on issues that resonated with them and developed those ideas into drawings and visual interpretations. \n\nUsing simple multimedia materials\, students experimented with symbolism\, visual metaphors\, and narrative framing to communicate their perspectives. The workshop encouraged participants to think critically about how political art functions as both commentary and resistance\, and how a single image can invite reflection\, dialogue\, or change. By the end\, many participants had produced captioned cartoon studies\, poster style compositions\, and small panel sequences that translated reflection into clear visual messages. \n\n\n\nAbout the Artist\n\nKhalid AlbaihArtist-in-Residence \n\nKhalid Albaih is a Sudanese independent political cartoonist renowned for his incisive human rights advocacy\, shared globally under the name Khartoon. His cartoons have been exhibited worldwide\, and his writings have appeared in major international publications. Albaih was the central figure in The Guardian’s short documentary The Story of Civil Rights is Unfinished (2016) and has published two influential books: Khartoon! and Sudan Retold\, an art book he co-edited featuring contributions from 31 Sudanese artists documenting Sudan’s rich history. \n\nHis work extends beyond drawing\, with installations such as Bahar — a poignant video piece using found footage of refugees at sea — The Walls Have Ears (Documenta 15)\, Shahid (Mathaf\, Qatar\, 2024)\, and Season of Immigration to the North (Brescia Musei\, Italy\, 2024)\, all exploring themes of displacement and social justice. In 2024\, he broadened his influence by hosting Alhasil Shino? on AJ+. Albaih is also the editor-in-chief of KhartoonMag.com\, a platform for displaced Sudanese cartoonists\, and creator of the award-winning @DohaFashionFridays\, which amplifies marginalized voices. Through his work\, Albaih remains a vital force in art activism\, championing global social justice and freedom of expression.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/cura-research-workshop-from-idea-to-impact-making-political-art-across-mediums/
CATEGORIES:Student Engagement,Sudan
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/10/Workshop-Khalid-Albaih_Digital-Signage-2-2.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250917T123000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250917T130000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251007T140438Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260105T094943Z
UID:10001585-1758112200-1758114000@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Sudan: Past Lives/New Stories
DESCRIPTION:As part of GU-Q’s Seeing Sudan: Politics Through Art Hiwaraat Conference\, CIRS collaborated with Qatar Musuem’s General Collection department to showcase some their Sudanese jewelry collection and original archival photographs. Curated by Ala Kheir\, Nisreen Kuku\, and Tatyana Mirghani\, the exhibition is an endeavour to reconnect\, reclaim\, and reimagine the Sudanese archive. Born from a shared desire to unify a scattered archival diaspora\, the works presented here reflect the living nature of archives—not as static records\, but as continuous expressions of culture\, memory\, and identity. This exhibition is just a fragment of a much larger\, collective archive—one that holds the layered past\, contested present\, and imagined futures of Sudan. Through art\, we breathe new life into old stories\, reasserting ownership over our histories and forging new pathways forward. \n\nThe exhibition reflects on how Sudan’s past continues to shape its present. Historical images are placed alongside contemporary works to surface voices that have often been overlooked. Trade beads that once moved along regional and transcontinental routes appear here as objects of identity and ceremony. Hebron glass beads\, Venetian millefiori\, and Bohemian glass are shown for their craft and for the meanings they gathered in Sudanese life\, including protection\, social status\, and memory. \n\nA selection of traditional jewelry reveals how aesthetics\, belief\, and community practice come together. Viewers will find pendants inspired by palm frond boxes associated with blessing and protection\, drum shaped ornaments marked with a five pointed star\, and a coin based necklace that recalls the long circulation of British gold coins in Sudanese adornment. The display also introduces the shawshaw hairpin\, crafted in silver or gold with a ring\, bead\, red thread\, and delicate chains. It has been worn in late pregnancy within protective rituals and speaks to women’s roles in carrying heritage forward. Collectively\, these objects illustrate how Sudanese makers transformed materials into symbols that hold memory\, faith\, and social meaning. \n\nArchival photographs and contemporary images deepen this story. Early twentieth century pictures\, often produced through foreign lenses\, sit in dialogue with work by Sudanese photographers who document everyday gatherings\, streets\, and moments of political change. The result is a layered view of Sudan that centers community knowledge\, artistic practice\, and cultural resilience. \n\nMemories of a Changing Sudan\n\nCurated by Ala KheirGU-Q Brown Wall Photography Exhibition \n\nComplementing the library exhibition\, Memories of a Changing Sudan presents an evocative collection of photographs by Sudanese artists. On view on the GU-Q Brown Wall until October 6\, 2025\, the exhibit features intimate portraits\, street scenes\, and revolutionary moments that capture the pulse of Sudanese life\, from everyday gatherings to the historic sit-in of 2019. \n\nSudan has long been photographed through outsider perspectives\, often shaped by colonial curiosity or distance. Over the past two decades\, however\, a generation of self-taught Sudanese photographers has reframed this narrative\, documenting their communities with empathy\, immediacy\, and authenticity. Their work forms a living archive\, a collective act of witnessing that preserves the spirit of Sudan through its people\, homes\, and histories. \n\n\n\n\n\nArticle by Maryam Daud\, CIRS Administrative Coordinator
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/sudan-past-lives-new-stories/
CATEGORIES:Sudan
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/10/QM-Exhibition_Landscape-3-1-scaled.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250917T130000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250917T140000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20250929T100630Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260105T094914Z
UID:10001582-1758114000-1758117600@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Sudanese Culinary Anthropology by Omer Al Tijani 
DESCRIPTION:As part of GU-Q’s Seeing Sudan: Politics Through Art Hiwaraat Conference\, CIRS hosted a community lunch led by pharmacist-turned-chef Omer Al Tigani. The lunch talk was an exploration of how Sudanese food serves as an archive of memory\, identity\, and cultural continuity in times of upheaval. Omer will walk us through the history and origins of Sudanese cuisine\, reflecting on its role in sustaining communities\, narrating histories\, and everyday practices that carry the memory forward. He is also the author of the The Sudanese Kitchen book and “Humble Salt: Archiving the Sudanese Kitchen\,” essay which appeared in After Memory: Essays on the Sudanese Archive.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/sudanese-culinary-anthropology-by-omer-al-tijani/
CATEGORIES:Sudan
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/09/Omers-LT.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250918T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250920T180000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20250903T113017Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260105T094904Z
UID:10001578-1758218400-1758391200@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Hiwaraat | Seeing Sudan: Politics Through Art
DESCRIPTION:In Sudan\, a war too often ignored has torn apart lives\, crippled institutions\, and forced more than thirteen million people from their homes. A humanitarian crisis ravages the present and threatens both past and future\, jeopardizing a rich cultural legacy. SEEING SUDAN: POLITICS THROUGH ART will convene a historic gathering of academics\, artists\, and activists to examine the relationship between sociopolitical dynamics and cultural production. This conference\, the tenth installment of Georgetown University in Qatar’s acclaimed Hiwaraat series\, will generate critical insights into Sudanese creativity and resilience in the face of violence and displacement. \n\nLocation: Four Seasons Hotel\, Doha \n\n\nabout the conference
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/hiwaraat-seeing-sudan-politics-through-art/
CATEGORIES:Regional Studies,Sudan
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/08/Hiwaraat_Sudan_Approved_Web-Banner_5120x2512_1_Small-scaled.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250919T190000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250919T200000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20250917T063938Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260105T094828Z
UID:10001580-1758308400-1758312000@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Sudan Retold Exhibition & Book Launch
DESCRIPTION:As part of GU-Q’s Seeing Sudan: Politics Through Art Hiwaraat Conference\, CIRS inaugurated the second edition of Sudan Retold exhibition and book launch on September 19\, 2025\, in partnership with Almas Art Foundation and Alhosh Gallery. Curated and edited by Suzi Mirgani\, Khalid Albaih\, Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann and Rahiem Shaddad\, the project explores Sudanese intellectual achievement and cultural wealth\, bringing Sudanese artistic endeavors into conversation with space\, memory\, and community. It explores how artistic and cultural production offer new ways of understanding Sudan\, challenging dominant narratives and creating space for alternative stories. \n\n\nsee more details
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/sudan-retold-exhibition-book-launch/
CATEGORIES:Sudan
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=application/pdf:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/09/SudanRetold-Exhibition_Cover.pdf
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250921T090000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20250921T170000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251001T125551Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260218T105357Z
UID:10001583-1758445200-1758474000@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:(Re)Collecting Sudan: Art and Culture Archives Workshop II
DESCRIPTION:On September 21\, 2025\, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted its second workshop for the “(Re)Collecting Sudan: Art and Culture Archives” research initiative. ​This workshop served as a platform for project contributors to engage in detailed discussions and receive constructive feedback on their submitted papers.  \n\nTo ensure a thorough review process and provide robust feedback for all submissions\, the workshop was organized into five thematically focused sessions. These sessions included Historical Archives\, Digital Archives\, Art Archives\, Lyrical Archives\, and Archives of Exile. This strategic segmentation allowed for in-depth engagement with each paper\, ensuring that discussions were contextualized within their specific scholarly domains and fostering specialized insights. \n\nThe “Historical Archives” section initiated the discussions\, featuring two prominent papers. Eiman Hussein\, Talal Afifi\, and Erica Carter’s paper “Experiencing Hussein Shariffe: Encounters with the Archives—A Collective Auto-Ethnography\,” offered a unique\, shared exploration of historical interactions. This was followed by Ahmad Sikainga’s “The Archives of Leisure and Popular Culture in Colonial and Post-Colonial Khartoum\,” which meticulously examined the cultural nuances preserved within these historical records. \n\nTransitioning to contemporary approaches\, the “Digital Archives” session showcased three insightful papers. Amna Elidrissy\, Zainab Gaafar\, and Helen Mallinson co-authored “Live Museums: An Ecosystem for Safeguarding Heritage\,” highlighting innovative digital platforms for cultural preservation. Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann and Aya Hassan then explored modern archiving in “Instagram as Archive: Sudanese Artists and Political Memory\,” demonstrating the role of social media in capturing historical narratives. The session concluded with Marilyn Deegan\, Wahbi Abdalfattah Abdalrahman\, and Locale’s “Sudan Memory: Building and Narrating the Digital Archive\,” detailing efforts in constructing comprehensive digital repositories. \n\nFurther expanding the scope\, the “Art Archives” session addressed the intersection of art and historical documentation through two compelling papers. Reem Aljeally and Katarzyna Grabska’s “Accidental Archiving? Questioning Curation and Research as Forms of Archiving in the Midst of Political Violence and War in Sudan” critically examined spontaneous archiving practices during conflict. Rahiem Shadad then presented “What Can We Learn from Sudan’s Collective Image-Making History?” emphasizing the value of visual cultural heritage.  \n\nThe “Lyrical Archives” session highlighted the power of oral and poetic traditions\, featuring Qutouf Elobaid’s “Songs of the Barracks: Sudanese Poetic Archives of the 2018 December Revolution\,” and Ruba El Melik and Reem Abbas’s “Women Archiving Sudan: How Women Use Fashion\, Songs\, and Poetry to Preserve History\,” both illustrating the profound role of lyrical expression in documenting historical events.  \n\nThe workshop concluded with the “Archives of Exile” session\, which explored the preservation of cultural memory in diaspora. Bentley Brown’s paper\, “Despite the Distance Between Us: Attempts to Preserve Cultural Memory through Filmmaking-in-Exile\,” showcased cinematic endeavors to bridge geographical divides. Finally\, Anna Reumert’s “An Archive of Exile: Sudanese Migrant Labor and Political Solidarity in Lebanon” shed light on the archival significance of migrant experiences and collective action. \n\nThe final revised drafts will be collected by CIRS with an aim of publishing either an edited volume or a special issue of a journal in the future. \n\n\nTo view the working group agenda\, click here\n\n\n\nRead more about this research initiative\n\n\nParticipants and Discussants:  \n\n\nWahbi Abdulrahman\, Nile Valley University\, Sudan\n\n\n\nRund Alarabi\, The Städelschule (Hochschule für Bildende Künste)\, Germany\n\n\n\nMuez Ali\, Earthna: Center for a Sustainable Future at Qatar Foundation\n\n\n\nReem Aljeally\, The Muse Multi Studios\n\n\n\nZahra Babar\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nMisba Bhatti\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nBentley Brown\, American University of Sharjah\n\n\n\nErica Carter\, King’s College\n\n\n\nMarilyn Deegan\, King’s College\n\n\n\nAmna Elidrissy\, Safeguarding Sudan’s Living Heritage (SSLH)\n\n\n\nRuba El Melik\, Independent Researcher\n\n\n\nQutouf Elobaid\, Locale\n\n\n\nNafisa Eltahir\, Locale\n\n\n\nLarissa-Diana Fuhrmann\, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt\n\n\n\nKatarzyna Grabska\, University of Geneva\n\n\n\nSuha Hasan\, Mawane\n\n\n\nAya Hassan\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nNoor Hussain\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nEiman Hussein\, King’s College\n\n\n\nAla Kheir\, Independent Researcher\n\n\n\nHelen Mallinson\, Safeguarding Sudan’s Living Heritage (SSLH)\n\n\n\nSuzi Mirgani\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nAnna Simone Ruemert\, The New School\, US\n\n\n\nRahiem Shadad\, Downtown Gallery\n\n\n\nAala Sharfi\, Locale\n\n\n\nOmnia Shawkat\, Andariya\n\n\n\nHaneen Sidhahmed\, Sudan Tapes Archive\n\n\n\nAhmad Sikainga\, Ohio State University\n\n\n\nSabreen Taha\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\nArticle by CIRS Research Analyst Misba Bhatti
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/recollecting-sudan-art-and-culture-archives-workshop-ii/
CATEGORIES:Sudan
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251021T180000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251021T190000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251009T093108Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251103T063749Z
UID:10001586-1761069600-1761073200@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Book Talk: Remittance as Belonging
DESCRIPTION:The Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted a thought-provoking book talk with Professor Hasan Mahmud\, author of Remittance as Belonging: Global Migration\, Transnationalism\, and the Quest for Home (Rutgers University Press). Moderated by Zahra Babar and Professor Amanda Garrett\, the conversation delved into the moral\, social\, and emotional dimensions of remittances\, reimagining them as acts of care\, obligation\, and identity that link migrants to their homes across borders. Drawing from ethnographic research with Bangladeshi migrants in Los Angeles and Tokyo\, Professor Mahmud explored how remittance practices challenge conventional understandings of integration\, citizenship\, and belonging\, revealing the deeply human stories behind economic exchange and migration. \n\n\n\n\n\nOpening remarks introduced the book’s core proposition: remittances are not simply economic transfers. Rather\, they are social acts grounded in obligation\, care\, and identity. The event also formed part of a broader CIRS research initiative on migration from the Global South. Drawing on three and a half years of ethnographic fieldwork with Bangladeshi migrants in Los Angeles and Tokyo\, Professor Mahmud advanced a multidimensional conception of “home” as locational\, relational\, and aspirational. He showed how migrants enacted belonging across borders through financial support\, investments\, and gifts\, and he challenged economic models that reduced remittances to altruism versus self interest. Instead\, he located remitting in enduring social relationships and cultural expectations that shaped who sent money\, to whom\, and why. \n\nProfessor Mahmud contrasted incorporation contexts. In Japan\, restrictive legal pathways and persistent social exclusion encouraged migrants to imagine their stays as temporary; remittances there tended to be frequent and oriented toward return\, including investments in land and housing. In the United States\, even with opportunities for settlement\, citizenship\, and family reunification\, migrants continued to remit\, although motives shifted over time: early transfers sustained relatives\, later transfers helped restore status through property investments\, and established professionals often turned to philanthropic giving in home communities. Across both sites\, Bangladesh remained an anchor of belonging. \n\nAudience questions highlighted the emotional labor that underwrote remittances on both sides of the border\, including gendered obligations and intra family negotiations. Participants also raised the phenomenon of reverse remittances\, when families in Bangladesh temporarily supported migrants during periods of precarity abroad. These dynamics complicated policy narratives that instrumentalized remittances as development finance and underscored the limitations of treating money in motion as a simple economic variable. \n\nArticle by Maryam Daud\, Administrative Assistant at CIRS. \n\nSpeakers:\n\n\nHasan Mahmud is assistant professor in residence at Northwestern University in Qatar. He has a PhD in sociology from the University of California Los Angeles\, an MA in global studies from Sophia University in Tokyo\, and an MSS and a BSS in sociology from the University of Dhaka in Bangladesh. He was a visiting faculty member in the Department of Sociology at Ball State University prior to coming to NU-Q. His teaching and research interests include sociological theories\, globalization\, international migration and development\, identity politics\, and global ethnography. His research has appeared in such publications as Current Sociology\, Migration & Development\, Contemporary Justice Review\, and Journal of Socio-economic Research and Development. \n\n\n\nAmanda Garrett is Assistant Professor of Comparative and International Politics at Georgetown University in Qatar. Her research focuses on migration and ethnic diversity in advanced democracies\, including immigration and integration\, ethnic violence\, minority political incorporation\, and Islam in Western societies. Her current book project\, developed from her Harvard PhD dissertation When Cities Fight Back\, examines when religious or ethnic minorities use violence as political expression in France\, the United Kingdom\, the Netherlands\, and the United States. She has held appointments at Harvard University\, New York University\, Sciences Po\, and the German Bundestag\, and received the 2014 APSA Ernst B. Haas Best Dissertation Award. \n\n\n\nZahra Babar is the Executive Director at CIRS at Georgetown University in Qatar. Previously\, she has served with the International Labor Organization and the United Nations Development Program. Her current research interests include rural development\, migration and labor policies\, and citizenship in the Persian Gulf states.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/book-talk-remittance-as-belonging/
CATEGORIES:Dialogue Series
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251027T130000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251027T140000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251109T122341Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251120T125513Z
UID:10001589-1761570000-1761573600@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:CURA Research Presentations
DESCRIPTION:“The Anticipation Gap: South Asian Students in Georgia and the Intersecting Burdens of Discrimination and Aspiration” and “Echoes of Martial Law: Memory\, Politics\, and the Marcos Restoration in the Philippines” \n\nOn October 27\, 2025\, two student researchers who received Georgetown University in Qatar research grants presented their research findings and methodologies as part of CURA Research Presentation series.  \n\nHaala Qamar\, a senior majoring in International Economics with a minor in Arabic and a Student Research Assistant at CIRS\, presented her research titled The Anticipation Gap: South Asian Students in Georgia & the Intersecting Burdens of Discrimination & Aspiration. Haala examined how South Asian international students in Georgia balanced high educational aspirations with perceived and experienced discrimination. Using a mixed method design\, she discussed how anticipation of bias informed academic choices\, employment expectations\, and coping strategies. She highlighted both emotional and structural dimensions of the anticipation gap and showed how discrimination\, whether real or expected\, intersected with ambition\, identity\, and belonging. \n\nJazmaine Simbulan\, an International Politics major with an independent minor in Environmental Humanities and a Research Assistant for both CIRS and the Energy Humanities Department\, presented her research titled Echoes of Martial Law: Memory\, Politics\, and the Marcos Restoration in the Philippines. Simbulan investigated narratives that invoked memory of the Martial Law period and the Marcos regime and explained how those narratives enabled political legitimacy and the subsequent restoration of the Marcos family in government. She situated contemporary discourse within practices of remembrance and forgetting and analyzed how memory shaped national narratives and political outcomes. Through observational analysis Jazmaine noted how museums in Ilocos Norte and Manilla have been sites of sites of political power and historical revisionism. She also reflected on the methodological challenges of working with politicized memory and fragmented archives in the context of state surveillance and authoritarian control in the Philippines.  \n\nThe session concluded with questions from students\, faculty\, and staff that focused on research design\, ethical considerations\, and future directions. \n\nArticle by Maryam Daud\, CIRS Admin Assistant
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/cura-research-presentation-the-anticipation-gap-south-asian-students-in-georgia-and-the-intersecting-burdens-of-discrimination-and-aspiration/
CATEGORIES:Student Engagement
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251030T080000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251101T170000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251124T064414Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260114T085115Z
UID:10001591-1761811200-1762016400@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Sudan in the Picture: Research on Sudanese Cinema Workshop I
DESCRIPTION:From October 30 to November 1\, 2025\, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar (GUQ) hosted a workshop under its research initiative\, Sudan in the Picture: Research on Sudanese Cinema. The gathering brought together a diverse group of scholars\, academics\, artists\, filmmakers\, and practitioners from across the globe to deliberate on the historical trajectory of Sudanese cinema\, as well as emerging cinematic trends amidst the ongoing conflict. \n\nThe workshop commenced with a discussion led by Khalid Ali\, titled “The Wedding of Zein: A Case Study for Remembering the Past\, Informing the Present\, and Shaping the Future of Sudanese Cinema.” He explored the collaborative effort between Sudanese author Tayeb Salih and Kuwaiti filmmaker Khalid Al Siddiq in adapting “The Wedding of Zein” into a 1976 film. He underscored this as a groundbreaking Arab-African artistic partnership\, fusing literature and cinema to portray Sudan’s multi-ethnic cultural heritage. The film centers on Zein’s wedding as a micro-narrative reflecting Sudanese village life\, illustrating the transformations and complexities following Sudan’s 1956 independence\, and engaging with themes such as postcolonial evolution\, feminism\, religion\, and cultural diversity. Despite its critical acclaim and international recognition\, the film’s external directorship sparked debates regarding cultural authenticity; nevertheless\, it remains significant for its role in globally promoting Sudanese culture. His paper aims to connect this film to contemporary Sudanese cinematic works\, emphasizing ongoing efforts to restore and analyze its legacy\, and advocating for cinema as a catalyst for cultural dialogue and peaceful coexistence in modern Sudan. \n\nSamar Abdelrahman then presented “Repairing the Audiovisual Archive: Hussein Shariffe\,” which is rooted in a multidisciplinary project. This initiative focuses on developing practice-based approaches to African audiovisual heritage restitution through transnational collaborations among partners from Sudan\, Egypt\, Germany\, and the UK. She highlighted the severe threats confronting Africa’s cinematic heritage due to historical\, political\, and infrastructural challenges\, particularly in Sudan. She posited a redefinition of restitution as “archival repair\,” characterizing it as a participatory\, justice-oriented process that prioritizes preservation\, creative access\, and the empowerment of affected communities over the mere repatriation of physical artifacts. Utilizing the Hussein Shariffe archive as a central case study\, her work seeks to demonstrate how archival survival is intricately linked to issues of displacement\, diasporic memory\, and intergenerational cultural transmission. The project challenges conventional models of restitution\, instead advocating for innovative forms of access\, engagement\, and collaboration that address current crises while fostering opportunities for Sudanese cinema’s creative future and intergenerational dialogue. \n\nFollowing this\, Abdelrahman Elbashir presented “Sudanese Cinema: A Retrospective Archaeology\,” which investigates Sudanese cinema as a crucial cultural and urban phenomenon that shaped social life and collective identity throughout the 20th century. He emphasized cinema theaters as distinctive architectural forms and civic spaces\, integral to Sudan’s urban fabric and modernist aspirations\, particularly through open-air\, climate-adapted designs. His work documents the decline of this cinematic culture due to political instability\, censorship\, and neglect\, leaving behind deteriorating theaters and fragmented archives that serve as potent cultural artifacts. Methodologically framed as retrospective archaeology\, the paper incorporates photographic surveys\, spatial analyses\, and a 3D digital reconstruction of a pivotal theater to reinterpret these remnants. He underscored the imperative for preserving and critically analyzing cinema heritage within Sudan’s broader cultural history and urbanism\, also stressing the leveraging of this heritage in post-conflict urban restoration\, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue on cinema as urban infrastructure\, architecture as cultural memory\, and the potential role of cultural preservation in rebuilding Sudanese society. \n\nFrédérique Cifuentes presented “Cinema in Sudan and Its Legacy\,” a multimedia project exploring Sudan’s cinematic history through outdoor cinema houses\, pioneering filmmakers like Gadalla Gubara\, and the Sudanese Film Group. Her work\, originating from photographic research of Khartoum’s cinema architecture\, aims to preserve this distinctive cultural heritage. The presentation delved into the colonial origins of photography and cinema in Sudan\, highlighting their role in documenting and shaping national identity\, and underscoring the fragility of these historical archives. She detailed Gubara’s impactful career\, from photographer to a pivotal figure in Sudanese cinema\, whose work transitioned from government roles to independent productions. \n\nHatim Eujayl then discussed “The Mother\, The Farmer\, and the Sheikh: Cinematic Portrayals of Rural Central Sudan\,” which analyzes how four films—The Tomb (1977)\, You Will Die at Twenty (2019)\, Al-Sit (2020)\, and Cotton Queen (2025)—depict life in agricultural villages along the Blue Nile. The paper aims to explore how these films utilize cinematic techniques to construct ideas of regional and national identity through portrayals of gender\, religion\, economy\, and tradition. Eujayl argued that rural central Sudan is frequently presented as the archetype of Sudanese authenticity\, simultaneously idyllic and patriarchal\, where young protagonists challenge entrenched social norms. By examining production contexts\, filmmaker perspectives\, and ideological messaging\, he seeks to uncover how depictions of this region reflect broader political and cultural narratives. Ultimately\, the work aims to establish a framework for analyzing regional representation in Sudanese cinema\, advancing understanding beyond national generalizations toward nuanced regional study. \n\nDanya Elmalik explored “Sudanese Cinema and the Archive of Tomorrow\,” which investigated the fragile relationship between Sudanese cinema and archival preservation\, focusing on the erasure\, loss\, and revival of Sudan’s film heritage. Utilizing Suhaib Gasmelbari’s Talking About Trees (2019) and Sudan’s Forgotten Films (2017) as case studies\, the paper aims to examine how films themselves become archives in the absence of formal preservation systems. Drawing on theories such as Schwartz and Cook’s concept of “archives and power” and Marie-Aude Fouéré’s idea of “film as archive\,” she contended that Sudanese films now function as cultural records and memory keepers amidst political and economic instability. The paper will highlight the importance of access and digitization\, referencing Caroline Frick’s notion of “access as preservation\,” to counteract the marginalization of Sudanese history. Ultimately\, she frames this work as part of a broader endeavor to safeguard and reimagine Sudan’s cinematic and cultural memory—the “archive of tomorrow.” \n\nUmloda Ibrahim’s presentation\, “Return of Sudanese Cinema and its Aesthetics of Resistance\,” traced the historical evolution and political dimensions of Sudanese filmmaking\, from its colonial introduction to its post-independence growth\, decline\, and present-day revival. She elucidated how contemporary Sudanese and diasporic filmmakers express resistance and identity through cinema. Analyzing Our Beloved Sudan (2012)\, Al-Sit (2020)\, and You Will Die at Twenty (2019)\, she argued that diasporic filmmakers employ the concept of “homeplace” as a radical political space\, shaped by displacement\, exile\, and hybrid identity. Drawing on Hamid Naficy’s theory of “accented cinema” and bell hooks’ idea of the home as a site of resistance\, the paper aims to explore how gender\, colonialism\, and cultural memory intersect within Sudanese cinematic narratives. \n\nMamoun Eltlib subsequently traced the rise and decline of Sudanese cinema with his presentation\, “Sudanese Cinema: Intersections of Politics and the Dream of the City.” Using personal interviews and historical research\, he explained how political events such as socialist-nationalist shifts\, Sharia law enforcement\, and suppression under the National Islamic Front\, profoundly shaped film culture and institutions in Sudan. His work will illustrate the distinct histories of El-Obeid and Atbara\, highlighting the cultural vibrancy and civic role of their cinemas before state interventions and censorship began eroding the industry in the 1970s. Interviewees identified the nationalization of film distribution as the onset of cinema’s collapse\, exacerbated by a lack of institutional support and creative freedom. The enduring appeal of Indian popular films offered solace to marginalized groups as local production diminished. The paper will consider how the Sudanese “Dream of the City”—reflected in the symbolic place of cinema—can only be fully realized in a true democracy and remains central to Sudan’s collective aspirations for cultural renewal. \n\nIn a subsequent session\, Raga Makawi and Abubakr Omer analyzed Sudanese image-making in film with their presentation\, “Literal Death or Symbolism\, the Liberalization of Political Meaning-Making in Sudanese Films.” They highlighted the historically obscure and politically charged nature of Sudanese cinema\, examining the sociopolitical context of the 1970s when cultural productivity was dominated by poetry and music\, with film largely absent as a medium for reflecting Sudanese history and future. Since the political opening following the 2005 Peace Agreement\, Sudanese filmmaking has expanded\, particularly in Khartoum\, primarily fueled by donor-funded projects aligned with liberal narratives focusing on conflict and resistance. Using the 2019 film You Will Die at 20 as a case study\, they scrutinized the tension between local meaning-making and international reception\, suggesting that Sudanese filmmakers adapt narratives to conform to dominant global liberal discourses\, often resulting in simplified or orientalized interpretations. The paper proposes the development of oral mapping tools to recover richer local epistemologies in Sudanese cinema\, aiming to balance external influences with authentic cultural expression and political storytelling. The research is scheduled to proceed through workshops\, literature reviews\, and data collection through early 2026. \n\nRoman Deckert investigated Sudanese cinema from the perspective of German-language sources with “Sudanese Cinema Behind the German Language Barrier\,” which highlighted Germany’s historically significant yet often overlooked role in Sudanese cultural relations. His work aims to overcome the “German language barrier” by systematically researching archival materials in Germany\, Austria\, and Switzerland pertaining to Sudanese cinema\, including Cold War-era cultural exchanges between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that involved Sudan. Key foci include the biography of Mahjub bin Adam Mohamed\, an early Sudanese actor in German films\, and the influence of controversial figures such as Leni Riefenstahl on Sudanese film. The paper will also explore German contributions\, such as the establishment of television in Sudan and film education. Additionally\, it will review private archives and rarely seen film footage\, revealing complex layers of Sudanese cinematic history connected to German-speaking countries. \n\nSarra Idris’s presentation\, “Double Vision: From Imperial Gaze to Intimate Knowing in Sudanese Cinema\,” explored how Sudan’s cinematic representation has evolved from colonial distortion to self-authored storytelling. She traced early depictions\, such as Khartoum (1966)\, which glorified British imperialism while dehumanizing Sudanese characters through caricature and erasure. Even later humanitarian films like The Good Lie (2014) perpetuated the “white savior” trope\, centering Western emotional narratives. In contrast\, contemporary Sudanese filmmakers reclaim their image\, crafting works rooted in memory\, resistance\, and authenticity despite censorship and resource constraints. Framed through W.E.B. Du Bois’s concept of “double consciousness\,” she introduced “double vision”—the tension between Western portrayals and her own lived knowledge as a Sudanese raised partly in the West. Her paper aims to bridge academic analysis and personal reflection\, interrogating how film shapes cultural self-perception and exploring cinema as both a site of historical trauma and reclamation. \n\nRoopa Gogineni’s session\, “Politics of Collective Filmmaking and Distribution in Sudan\,” explored how Sudanese filmmakers utilize collective labor and mutual aid (nafeer) to produce and distribute films amidst censorship\, displacement\, and war. Drawing on her experience as a documentary filmmaker and coordinator of a mobile cinema network\, she employed practice-based research combining oral histories\, film analysis\, and field observation. She highlighted grassroots initiatives\, such as the Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement’s mobile cinema club\, which screens films for large refugee audiences and fosters collaborative production. These community-driven practices transform filmmaking into a political and pedagogical act\, creating shared spaces for dialogue and cultural resistance. By comparing Sudanese collectives with similar movements in Nigeria\, Syria\, Brazil\, and India\, she situated them within global traditions of Third Cinema and activist filmmaking. Her work aims to reframe cinema as a collective infrastructure for social movements\, emphasizing collaboration\, mobility\, and cultural self-determination beyond state and market control. \n\nIn the subsequent session\, Leena Habiballa discussed “Gendered Representations in Sudanese Cinema\,” examining how portrayals of gender and the subaltern in Sudanese films from the 1970s to the present mirror the nation’s shifting social and political realities. Early cinema\, exemplified by Gadalla Gubara’s Tajouje (1977)\, reinforced patriarchal ideals of stoic masculinity. In contrast\, recent films such as You Will Die at Twenty (2019) and Goodbye Julia (2023) challenge these norms by presenting emotionally complex male characters grappling with social change and instability. The rise of women filmmakers\, notably Marwa Zein with Khartoum Offside (2019)\, has further transformed representation\, foregrounding agency\, solidarity\, and resistance by subaltern groups against patriarchal and state oppression. She argued that these evolving depictions signify a critical reimagining of gender and the subaltern in Sudanese cinema\, where the voices of these groups increasingly shape national narratives and redefine cultural understandings of identity\, power\, and belonging. \n\nNext\, Taghreed Elsanhouri presented “Our Beloved Sudan: Reflexive Ethnographic Enquiry on the Filming of Sudan’s Partition.” She addressed her ethnographically inspired approach to documenting Sudan’s partition through her film Our Beloved Sudan. The project explores how the 2011 South Sudanese self-determination referendum redefined conceptualizations of Sudan as a nation\, intertwining public and private narratives by engaging political figures and an ordinary mixed-race family experiencing national division. She emphasized a dialogic process\, treating filmic inquiry as an ethnographic encounter\, examining how Sudanese people articulate nationhood\, memory\, and identity at a historical crossroads. Drawing on theoretical frameworks from Edward Said and Bakhtin\, she investigated how different voices\, both dominant and marginalized\, participate in constructing or challenging national identity\, emphasizing situated\, often contradictory\, perspectives. \n\nMohanad Hashim explored the historical and contemporary challenges facing Sudanese cinema with his presentation\, “The Quest for a Sudanese Cinema.” He highlighted the scarcity of archives and resources\, exacerbated by the impact of the 2023 war. Historically\, Sudanese cinema experienced brief state support in the 1970s and a recent resurgence led by young diaspora and local artists. Early film culture\, dating back to 1911 with screenings in El-Obied and flourishing in Khartoum and Omdurman by the 1940s\, featured cinema as both entertainment and a political instrument\, notably during World War II when colonial authorities used film for mobilization. He stressed the dearth of research on Sudanese audiences\, their viewing habits\, taste formation\, and socio-political influences. He proposes to investigate cinema appreciation and consumption through archival newspapers\, magazines\, and other sources\, aiming to understand how Sudanese cinephiles navigated scarcity\, class divides\, urban politics\, and national identity formation amidst structural challenges to the cinema industry. \n\nRazan Idris presented “Sudanese Filmmakers and Egyptian Audiences: From Decolonization to Displacement\,” which examined the often-overlooked history of Sudanese filmmakers working in Egypt throughout the 20th century and their representation of Sudanese identities to Egyptian audiences. She revealed that the well-known Sudanese filmmaker Saeed Hamed directed the 1998 Egyptian film An Upper Egyptian in the American University\, which contains anti-Black stereotypes criticized across the Arab world. Her work seeks to uncover how Sudanese filmmakers\, many of whom studied or lived in Egypt\, have navigated racial\, cultural\, and political dynamics in their films\, both during Sudan’s national struggles and periods of exile. The paper will highlight Sudanese cinema’s diasporic nature\, where displaced filmmakers produce work in Egypt\, engaging with themes of identity\, displacement\, and representation amidst political turmoil. The aim is to excavate lost films and histories\, questioning how Sudanese cinema abroad has shaped perceptions of Sudanese identity and how this legacy can inform future filmmaking practices within and beyond Sudan.In the final session\, Mai Abusalih examined “Khartoum (2025): The City as the Sixth Protagonist\,” portraying it as both a documentary portrait of five residents and an exploration of the city as a “sixth protagonist\,” shaping their experiences amidst political upheaval. Filmed between the 2019 revolution and the 2021 military coup\, the work documents Khartoum’s transition toward intensified militarization and the disruptions that preceded the 2023 war. Through street-level perspectives\, the film employs walking as a narrative method to reveal how spatial hierarchies\, planning politics\, and everyday urban informalities structure life in the capital. Juxtapositions between marginalized peripheries such as Jabarona\, an area historically housing displaced communities\, and central protest sites highlight the city’s entrenched social inequalities and contested notions of citizenship. Constraints imposed by surveillance and censorship shaped the film’s iPhone-based production\, underscoring the tension between public space and state control. She will utilize interviews\, mapping\, and comparative cinematic analysis to interrogate representation\, agency\, and the right to the city. \n\n\nTo view the working group agenda\, click here\n\n\n\nTo read the participants’ biographies\, click here\n\n\n\nRead more about this research initiative\n\n\nParticipants and Discussants:  \n\n\nSamar Abdel-Rahman\, University of Liverpool\n\n\n\nBayan Abubakr\, PhD candidate\,Yale University\n\n\n\nMai Abusalih\, Dcomomo Sudan | Modern Sudan Collective\n\n\n\nKhalid Ali\, Brighton and Sussex Medical School\n\n\n\nZahra Babar\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nMisba Bhatti\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nKhalid Albaih\, Artist in Residence\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nFrédérique Cifuentes-Morgan\n\n\n\nMaryam Daud\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nRoman Deckert\, Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT) \n\n\n\nDanya Elmalik\n\n\n\nAbdelrahman Elbashir\, \n\n\n\nTaghreed Elsanhouri\, \n\n\n\nMamoun Eltlib\n\n\n\nHatim Eujayl\n\n\n\nRoopa Gogineni\n\n\n\nLeena Habiballa\n\n\n\nMohanad Hashim\, BBC\n\n\n\nNoor Hussain\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nRazan Idris\, University of Pennsylvania\n\n\n\nSarra Idris\n\n\n\nUmloda Ibrahim\n\n\n\nRaga Makawi\, London School of Economics and Political Science \n\n\n\nSuzi Mirgani\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nAbubakr Omer\n\n\n\nSabreen Taha\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\nArticle by Misba Bhatti\, Research Analyst\, CIRS
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/sudan-in-the-picture-research-on-sudanese-cinema-workshop-i/
CATEGORIES:Sudan
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251110T130000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251110T140000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251028T121509Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251123T105940Z
UID:10001587-1762779600-1762783200@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Launch Event: Migrant Stories from Qatar
DESCRIPTION:Join us for the launch of the Migrant Stories from Qatar project website! \n\nThis project brings together oral histories from migrant workers across Qatar\, offering rare insight into their lived experiences and contributions to the country’s social and economic fabric. The six principal investigators will reflect on the research process\, its findings\, and the broader significance of archiving migrant voices in Qatar\, an endeavor that seeks to reframe narratives of labor\, belonging\, and memory in the Gulf. \n\n\nMore info\n\n\nOn November 10\, the Center for International and Regional Studies held the official launch of the Migrant Stories in Qatar project website\, a digital platform dedicated to preserving and sharing the lived experiences of migrant workers in Qatar. Conceived as a long–term public resource\, the project curates oral histories\, testimonials\, and personal narratives that illuminate the social worlds\, aspirations\, and challenges of the migrant communities whose labor has shaped the contemporary Gulf. It seeks to democratize knowledge production by placing migrant workers not merely as subjects of study\, but as active contributors and curators of their own histories. \n\nZahra Babar\, the project emerged from intimate exchanges with migrants and from frustration with how their voices are routinely mediated\, silenced\, or reduced to anonymous data points. The website functions as a counter archive that democratizes knowledge production by coproducing narratives with migrant workers themselves and making these stories accessible to migrants\, their families\, and wider publics. \n\nSpeakers at the launch highlighted the project’s methodological\, ethical\, and political stakes. Trish Kahle and Nadya Sbaiti situated the archive within broader efforts to document global south histories at a time when formal state archives remain inaccessible\, arguing that migrant narratives reveal migrants not as marginal to the Gulf\, but as central to its social and economic order.  \n\nNoha Aboueldahab drew attention to the global significance of these testimonies\, observing that themes of law\, its absence\, and its uneven application recur across the interviews. She argued that oral histories offer multiple truths that complicate existing legal narratives and have important implications for fields such as international law and transitional justice. Integrating such testimonies into legal analysis\, she suggested\, could transform understandings of rights\, accountability\, and lived experience. \n\nThe project also involves extensive technical and linguistic labor. Suzi Migani\, responsible for recording and editing the English–language podcasts\, spoke about the logistical challenges of conducting interviews and the delicate process of editing without inadvertently shaping the narrative. She explained that the platform provides two versions of each interview: a full recording with only identifying details removed\, and a shorter public podcast episode of approximately fifteen minutes. Misba Bhatti\, who leads editing in hindustaani\, described the complexity of translation and the responsibility to convey meaning and emotion with accuracy and integrity. \n\nTogether\, these interventions articulate Migrant Stories in Qatar as both an archive and a collaborative intellectual project that reclaims authorship for migrant workers in and beyond Qatar.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/launch-event-migrant-stories-from-qatar/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251111T130000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251111T140000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251028T131444Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251130T121712Z
UID:10001588-1762866000-1762869600@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:CIRS Lunch Talk: Masterclass with Professor Arjun Appadurai on "Global Cultural Flows"
DESCRIPTION:In the 1990’s\, the world began to see a massive growth in transnational traffic in images\, ideologies and commodities\, a process which popularized the term globalization. Today\, almost four decades later\, the world order is multipolar\, highly unstable and full of obstacles to free cultural flows. How can we interpret these changes? \n\nHosted by CIRS\, in collaboration with the Indian Ocean Studies Working Group\, this masterclass brings together scholars and students for an engaging discussion on the dynamics of globalization and cultural movement. Renowned anthropologist Arjun Appadurai will reflect on how people\, objects\, and ideas circulate across borders\, and how imagination\, media\, and markets shape these flows. Drawing on his influential works Modernity at Large\, The Social Life of Things\, Fear of Small Numbers\, and Banking on Words Professor Appadurai will offer a framework for understanding disjuncture\, modernity and power in the present moment.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/cirs-lunch-talk-masterclass-with-professor-arjun-appadurai-on-global-cultural-flows/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251113T130000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20251113T140000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251103T123243Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251123T124618Z
UID:10001590-1763038800-1763042400@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Laboring to Keep the Dead Alive: Commemoration and Social Reproduction in the Kurdish Movement
DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Marlene Schäfers\, Associate Professor\, Department of Cultural Anthropology\, Utrecht University \n\nOn November 13\, CIRS hosted a lunch talk in collaboration with the Critical Security Studies Hub at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University\, titled “Labouring to Keep the Dead Alive: Commemoration and Social Reproduction in the Kurdish Movement.” \n\nIn this talk\, Dr Marlene Schäfers explored how the Kurdish movement understands and mobilizes martyrdom as a form of labour that sustains the community. Drawing on examples of funerals\, memorial ceremonies\, social media tributes\, and the production of “martyr albums\,” she showed that these practices constitute a vital mode of reproductive labour\, one that preserves continuity and identity when biological kinship cannot be relied upon.  \n\nWhat emerged clearly is that these acts of remembrance are not peripheral or decorative. They are central to how the movement reproduces itself. In contexts where traditional forms of kinship or biological reproduction cannot be relied upon\, especially in guerrilla camps marked by precarity and constant threat\, memory becomes a primary means of sustaining life. The speaker drew attention to the idea that narration itself becomes a reproductive act. Each story\, each obituary\, each ceremony extends the presence of the dead into the lives of the living. Through this narrative labour\, the community cultivates what one might call descendants or extended selves\, people whose identities form through their attachment to martyrs and to the struggle they represent. \n\nA striking quote from the presentation captured this ethos: “We have learned that there are other ways of multiplying.” In other words\, the reproduction of the community does not depend on producing biological offspring. Instead\, it comes from producing affective ties\, political commitment\, and a shared sense of continuity. As one Kurdish interlocutor explained\, “If you go to Kurdistan\, to Rojava\, and ask who Martyr Zîlan is\, everyone will tell you. In this way martyrdom becomes a means of reproducing the existence of the people\, and of the person herself.” Martyrs do not disappear; their memory generates new forms of political life. \n\nThe presentation also highlighted how internationalist volunteers in Rojava engage with this culture of martyrdom. For many of them\, the emotional and ethical demands of this form of commemoration require a departure from liberal Western assumptions that individual life is the highest good. Instead\, they are encouraged to adopt a long-term\, historical view: to understand their lives as part of a continuum that includes those who fought before them and those who will continue the struggle after. This shift in orientation is both necessary and unsettling. It asks individuals to situate their grief within a broader collective horizon. \n\nThis does not mean that death becomes easy. On the contrary\, participants repeatedly acknowledged that death remains bitter. One writer described rebelling against each new announcement of martyrdom\, asking\, “Why is there death? Are we condemned to lose our beautiful friends forever?” Even language seems insufficient. “No single word does justice to them\,” another wrote. The task of writing about the dead becomes a dilemma: if one writes\, the attempt feels inadequate; if one does not write\, the memory risks disappearing. This tension is precisely what pushes many to take up the pen again\, despite what they describe as their own lack of skill. Writing becomes a moral responsibility. \n\nUltimately\, the speaker argued that martyrdom in the Kurdish movement is not only a political symbol. It is a mechanism of social reproduction\, a way of keeping the community alive under conditions of war\, displacement\, and uncertainty. \n\nArticle by Maryam Daud\, Administrative Assistant at CIRS \n\n\n\n\nMarlene Schäfers is associate professor at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Her research focuses on the impact of state violence on intimate and gendered lives\, voice and memory\, and the politics of death and the afterlife. She specializes in the anthropology of the Kurdish regions and modern Turkey. Her first monograph\, Voices that Matter: Kurdish Women at the Limits of Representation in Contemporary Turkey\, was published with the University of Chicago Press in 2023 and awarded the annual Book Prize of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association in 2024. 
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/laboring-to-keep-the-dead-alivecommemoration-and-social-reproduction-in-the-kurdish-movement/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260111T080000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260111T170000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20251204T084318Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20251204T084319Z
UID:10001592-1768118400-1768150800@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Migration Studies from the Global South: Rethinking Theory and Method Workshop
DESCRIPTION:On November 16 and 17\, 2025\, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) at Georgetown University in Qatar (GUQ) held a brainstorming session under its research initiative Migration Studies from the Global South: Rethinking Theory and Method. This inaugural meeting brought together scholars and practitioners of migration from the Global South to explore key themes and suggest future research directions. The main themes that emerged from collective sessions and focus groups emphasized a shift towards decolonized\, context-specific\, and migrant-centric approaches. Throughout the discussions\, participants consistently highlighted the need to move beyond Eurocentric perspectives and established categories in migration studies. \n\nThe discussion began with a focus on “State Formation\, Sovereignty\, and Borders.” This session explored how state formation\, sovereignty\, and borders influence migration patterns. Participants examined why people undertake irregular migration\, how migrants cope with challenges\, and the role of solidarity and agency in navigating policy obstacles and structural inequalities. The session reimagined sovereignty as a shared concept\, questioning its traditional definition\, and explored a decolonial perspective on borders\, including pre-state migrant political communities. Notably\, the focus shifted from receiving states to origin states in migration integration\, analyzing sending states’ motivations and migrants’ responses. Discussions covered the Kafala system\, theories of the state from the Global South\, and challenges to sovereignty through social and cultural dynamics. The session also addressed gender and borders\, development finance through diaspora capital\, and the complexities of regular and irregular mobilities. Participants emphasized understanding migrant operations at a micro-level\, utilizing digitalization\, and critically assessing knowledge production in migration studies. \n\nThe second session\, “Decolonization\, Race\, and Nationalism\,” investigated power modalities\, resistance forms\, and research methods in migration. The session examined how race and categories shape belonging and wider power structures. The discussion emphasized ‘de-exceptionalizing’ the Gulf region and examined the continuity of colonial power structures through a postcolonial lens on migration. Anti-trafficking policies were scrutinized for blurring consent\, differentiating inadequately between trafficking and smuggling\, and failing to account for migrants’ coping strategies with coercion. The session stressed the need for decolonizing research through alternative methods and indigenous knowledge while addressing structural inequalities and the power of negotiation. Participants emphasized that decolonization\, race\, and nationalism carry different meanings across contexts\, highlighting the need for both intellectual and institutional decolonization. The definition of the Global South and its role as the “majority world” were also discussed\, alongside global mobility\, passports\, and using social media to amplify migrant voices. \n\nIn the next session\, “The Problem of Migration Categories\,” participants critically analyzed the impact of migration categories\, advocating for new vocabularies and a “demigration” of migration studies. The unit of analysis was questioned\, and regional variations in existing categories were highlighted\, particularly challenging the legal versus illegal distinction as unconventional. A core focus was the need for “categories from below\,” advocating for local\, indigenous classifications that reflect migrants’ lived experiences and agency rather than state-imposed definitions. The group critiqued white versus non-white binaries and the homogenization of categories for specific jobs. Participants also differentiated between categorization and classification\, emphasizing the unstable and evolving nature of these categories and the importance of understanding their contextual meanings. \n\nIn the “Identity\, Belonging\, and Citizenship” session\, the discussion explored how racial capitalism constructs identities\, often deeming people as “surplus” and producing “hyper mobile citizens.” Participants examined race\, class\, and identity as intertwined characteristics of citizenship while acknowledging the complex self-identification of people on the move. The discussion included carceral migration\, detailing detention tactics and prison-industrial complexes that limit movement. Participants stressed rethinking the citizenship-belonging nexus\, questioning traditional notions of loyalty and civic attachment\, and contrasting the perceived value of a “strong passport” with actual belonging. Migrant identity mobility\, including migrant capital and onward migration\, was also analyzed. The session differentiated between “desirable” and “surplus” migrants\, critiqued homogeneous categories\, and sought new language beyond “blue collar” terms to define migrants. Participants also addressed how migration impacts family structures\, called for a post-nationalist liberal theory of citizenship\, viewed remittances as a form of belonging\, and highlighted the role of networks in providing safety and security. \n\nIn the session “Labor\, Capitalism\, and Political Economy of Migration\,” participants examined theories of migration states in the Global South\, including nationalization\, neoliberal\, and developmental approaches\, and their impact on sending countries’ economies\, with particular attention to the gendered dimensions of remittances. The discussion highlighted the need for better theories on return migration\, focusing on reintegration and communication with policymakers. Destination imaginaries were explored\, including the evolving perception of the West as a dream destination\, transient migration\, and alternative routes. Remittances were critically analyzed as both a politically engineered necessity that can create dependency but also as a resource with social\, human\, and political value. The session also addressed tracking money flows\, including reverse remittances and debt circulation\, and the challenges of measuring remittances\, their household impacts\, taxation effects\, and diverse uses. \n\nIn the next session\, “Unpacking Migration and Development\,” participants examined the often assumed link between migration and development\, labeling it Eurocentric and non-causal. They highlighted the need to rethink this nexus through social transformation and human capabilities while exploring informal economies and their bi-directional impacts. The session sought a Global South epistemology for migration and development\, focusing on social processes and knowledge production. Participants highlighted remittances as crucial\, often exceeding foreign direct investments\, and discussed diaspora contributions to national development through various forms. Climate migration was introduced as a new development issue\, linking climate change\, security\, and human movement. The session questioned restrictions on free movement and promoted using regional knowledge for solutions. Participants critiqued “white saviorism” in migration development and emphasized the practical application of lived experiences. The discussion aimed for a ground-up vision of development\, advocating for alternative lexicons and challenging the argument that development reduces migration. \n\nFor the session focused on “Gendered Experiences of Migration and Mobility\,” participants highlighted the lack of gender-focused policies and data\, which renders female migration largely invisible. They emphasized reclaiming human trafficking as a gendered issue vital for migration studies and advocated for research beyond traditional family units. The session highlighted how reintegration often neglects female returnees’ vulnerabilities\, urging policies tailored to their specific needs. Participants critiqued governance’s legal focus for overlooking the care economy and transnational care networks\, challenging the assumption of women as domestic caregivers regardless of professional background. Data indicate that women send remittances more frequently and in larger amounts than men\, often also serving as primary recipients in origin countries and efficiently managing household finances. However\, methodological gaps persist\, with insufficient data disaggregated by gender and age. The discussion also addressed phenomena such as “self-deportation” triggered by policy changes\, gender disparities in digital platforms\, and the role of social media in increasing visibility. Migration was considered both a form of protection from and a context for violence. The session highlighted female migrants’ life cycles\, the rise of mail-order brides\, and the effects of male return on women’s empowerment. It further emphasized the importance of pre- and post-departure orientation and the need to recognize diverse family structures\, including single mothers. \n\nIn the last session\, “Conflict and Climate Mobilities\,” participants highlighted the need for community-centric solutions in conflict and climate induced mobilities while addressing citizenship and belonging during displacement. The discussion examined the 1951 Convention’s relevance\, advocating for refugees’ self-definition and re-evaluating classification systems. Localized knowledge is crucial for climate mobilities\, with participants acknowledging that displacement often stems from both climate change and conflict. The session highlighted trapped populations\, such as those with disabilities\, who cannot relocate. Participants emphasized communal efforts\, in preparing for and reacting to climate events. The health consequences of climate change were also explored\, stressing sending states’ and embassies’ roles in awareness and preparedness. \n\nThe discussions from this workshop will inform a series of CIRS-led projects\, fostering studies and publications on migration that advance innovative theoretical and empirical approaches in and of the Global South. \n\n\nTo view the working group agenda\, click here\n\n\n\nTo read the participants’ biographies\, click here\n\n\nParticipants and Discussants:  \n\n\nRogaia Mustafa Abusharaf\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nIdil Akinci\, University of Edinburgh \n\n\n\nHaya Al Noaimi\, Northwestern University in Qatar\n\n\n\nHessa Alnuaimi\, University of Sharjah\n\n\n\nZahra Babar\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nMisba Bhatti\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nMaryam Daud\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nDenisse Delgado Vázquez\, Georgetown University\n\n\n\nPriya Deshingkar\, University of Sussex\n\n\n\nBina Fernandez\, University of Melbourne\n\n\n\nAmanda Garrett\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nNoor Hussain\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nNeelima Jeychandran\, Virginia Commonwealth University\, Qatar\n\n\n\nSyed Taha Kaleem\, PhD candidate at Brandeis University\n\n\n\nLeander Kandilige\, University of Ghana \n\n\n\nAnju Mary\, New York University Abu Dhabi \n\n\n\nThemrise Khan\, Independent Researcher \n\n\n\nHasan Mahmud\, Northwestern University in Qatar\n\n\n\nSuzi Mirgani\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nLaila Omar\, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies \n\n\n\nLinda Adhiambo Oucho\, African Migration and Development Policy Centre (AMADPOC)\n\n\n\nRhacel Salazar Parreñas\, Princeton University \n\n\n\nZarqa Parvez\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nMd Mizanur Rahman\, Qatar University \n\n\n\nDina Taha\, Doha Institute for Graduate Studies \n\n\n\nSabreen Taha\, CIRS\, Georgetown University in Qatar\n\n\n\nBrenda S.A. Yeoh\, National University of Singapore (NUS)\n\n\n\nMeron Zeleke\, University in Ethiopia\n\n\nArticle by Misba Bhatti\, Research Analyst at CIRS
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/migration-studies-from-the-global-south-rethinking-theory-and-method-workshop/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260122T130000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260122T140000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20260122T090233Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260216T072728Z
UID:10001595-1769086800-1769090400@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Africana Studies Across Regions: In Conversation with Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer and Professor Akintunde Akinade
DESCRIPTION:In Conversation with Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer and Professor Akintunde Akinade \n\nWhat does Africana Studies look like depending on where it is practiced? This lunch talk brings scholars into conversation on how institutional location\, disciplinary training\, and regional context shape the questions\, methods\, and stakes of Africana Studies. The discussion considers the relationship between scholarship and community\, and how recognition\, accountability\, and relevance vary across contexts. \n\nOn January 22nd\, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted Dr. Su’ad Abdul Khabeer\, a scholar of anthropology and Africana Studies at the University of Michigan\, in conversation with Professor Akintunde Akinade\, Professor of Theology at Georgetown University in Qatar. The dialogue explored the intersections of theology\, Africana Studies\, pedagogy\, and resistance within increasingly hostile academic environments. The conversation began with both scholars reflecting on their experiences teaching liberation theology and Africana Studies\, with Professor Akinade sharing that after nearly 30 years of teaching\, he remains passionate about doing “theology for the people” and moving students beyond Eurocentric frameworks to engage with theologies from Latin America\, Africa\, and Asia. He described teaching a course on liberation theologies at GU-Q and noted that students are responsive and engaged\, coming to class ready to move beyond dogma and think critically. \n\nThe discussion outlined the challenges of teaching in the current political climate\, particularly around issues of white supremacy and institutional resistance. Professor Akinade shared a powerful teaching moment from his recent class where he defined white supremacy as sin\, explaining that from a theological perspective\, sin is separation—separation between humanity and divinity\, but in the context of white supremacy\, it manifests as separation between people through hierarchies that deny our shared humanity. Dr. Abdul Khabeer added Islamic theological perspectives on this\, citing scholars like Sherman Jackson who frames white supremacy as shirk\, the association of partners with God that destabilizes the fundamental Islamic principle of tawhid\, the oneness of God. She also mentioned feminist Islamic theologian Amina Wadud who makes similar arguments about patriarchy usurping divine authority. Both scholars emphasized that these theological framings ground their resistance to oppression in core spiritual principles. \n\nThe conversation addressed how space and place shape what can be taught and said. Professor Akinade contrasted his experience teaching in Doha\, where he feels freedom to speak openly\, with his previous position in High Point\, North Carolina\, where students were more resistant to revolutionary content. Dr. Abdul Khabeer spoke candidly about the contemporary reality of teaching in the United States\, including students recording classes to try to “catch” professors saying something controversial\, the need to have attorneys on standby\, meticulous documentation of all interactions\, and the recent elimination of diversity\, equity\, and inclusion programming at the University of Michigan where she teaches. Despite these hostile conditions\, both scholars emphasized the absolute necessity of continuing the work.  \n\nA significant portion of the discussion focused on teaching the humanity of Black people and moving beyond caricatures and stereotypes. Professor Akinade grounded this in the theological concept that everyone is created in the image of God\, making every person precious and important with a divine spark. Dr. Abdul Khabeer described teaching a hip-hop course where she uses albums like Biggie Smalls’ “Ready to Die” to help students understand Black humanity in three dimensions rather than one-dimensional caricatures. She explained that by analyzing songs like “Suicidal Thoughts” and Geto Boys’ “Mind Playing Tricks on Me\,” students learn to understand the socioeconomic contexts shaping people’s lives\, recognize the community and relationships that exist\, and see the solidarity and care present even in difficult circumstances. The goal is to move students beyond seeing Black people as hypersexual and hyperviolent stereotypes to understanding the fuller context of lived experiences\, mental health struggles\, and community support systems. \n\nBoth scholars emphasized the importance of embodiment and experience as forms of knowledge\, challenging the Enlightenment paradigm’s overemphasis on reason alone. Dr. Abdul Khabeer\, who is also a dancer trained in Katherine Dunham’s dance anthropology technique\, explained how everyday life\, how one dresses\, moves through space\, and physically exists\, is deeply tied to history and politics. She shared an example of applying to Vassar College and discovering that the staircases were built for “women’s gaits” but her feet were too large for them\, teaching her viscerally about who institutions are designed for and who they exclude. Professor Akinade connected this to his theological work\, arguing that experience—particularly the experience of those raised in villages\, those who have suffered\, those marginalized—must be used to redefine orthodoxy and challenge monolithic paradigms. He referenced James Cone’s declaration that “God is Black” not as a statement about skin color but as an ontological connection with suffering\, as Cornel West says\, letting suffering speak. \n\nThe conversation highlighted the expansiveness that Africana Studies offers as an epistemology. Dr. Abdul Khabeer explained that unlike the traditional Euro-American tradition that says “you do it this way or that way and that’s it\,” Africana Studies provides more options\, more possibilities\, and therefore more solutions. She attributed this expansiveness to the fact that Black people\, particularly descendants of enslaved people\, are “miracles walking” because they were not meant to survive but did survive through imagination and refusing to accept oppressive narratives as truth. This survival through creativity and alternative ways of knowing gives Africana Studies its power to envision futures and discover opportunities that dominant frameworks foreclose. \n\nProfessor Akinade challenged who gets to define rigorous scholarship\, questioning why work not done at elite Western institutions like Rome\, Columbia\, or Yale is deemed less rigorous. He invoked Steve Biko’s book title “I Write What I Like” to assert his own approach: “I write what I like\, I teach what I like\, and I’m accountable\, accountable to my people.” Both scholars emphasized that scholarship cannot be abstract but must be connected to life\, must be life-giving\, must help things grow. They discussed the danger of “dead scholarship” that exists only in ivory towers disconnected from the communities it purports to study\, though Dr. Abdul Khabeer nuanced this by noting that death itself is a portal to other things in many traditions\, so perhaps the better term is scholarship that is not life-giving\, that doesn’t allow things to grow and flourish. \n\nArticle by Maryam Daud\, Administrative Assistant at CIRS and Honore Mugiraneza\, CIRS Publications Assistant
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/africana-studies-across-regions-in-conversation-with-dr-suad-abdul-khabeer-and-professor-akintunde-akinade/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260126T183000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260126T210000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20260118T132247Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260122T085526Z
UID:10001594-1769452200-1769461200@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Cotton Queen | Film Screening and Panel Discussion
DESCRIPTION:Join us for the screening of Cotton Queen\, register below! \n\n\nRegister Here\n\n\nCotton Queen is a 2025 internationally co-produced drama written and directed by Suzi Mirgani in her feature directorial debut. Set in a cotton-farming village in Sudan\, the film follows Nafisa\, a young woman raised on her grandmother’s stories of resistance against British colonial rule. When a businessman arrives with a development scheme centered on genetically engineered cotton\, Nafisa finds herself at the heart of a quiet but fierce power struggle that exposes the entanglements of land\, memory\, gender\, and exploitation. \n\nThe film had its world premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September 2025 and has since received wide international acclaim\, including the Golden Alexander Award for Best Feature Film at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival. With a haunting score by Amine Bouhafa and striking cinematography by Frida Marzouk\, Cotton Queen is a powerful meditation on resistance\, inheritance\, and the cost of so-called progress.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/film-screening-cotton-queen-by-suzi-mirgani/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260129T120000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260129T150000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20260223T104600Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260223T122423Z
UID:10001599-1769688000-1769698800@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:CURA Research Workshop | Visualizing Your Research: Poster Design
DESCRIPTION:On 29 January 2026\, the Center for International and Regional Studies (CIRS) hosted a research skills workshop titled Visualizing Your Research: Poster Design Workshop. The workshop was facilitated by Sahar Mari\, Senior Learning Engineer at Northwestern University in Qatar\, and Sara Shaaban\, Creative Director at VCU School of the Arts in Qatar. The workshop attracted students from Qatar Foundation partner universities\, including Northwestern University in Qatar\, Texas A&M University at Qatar\, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar\, and Weill Cornell Medicine – Qatar\, enriching the experience through interdisciplinary exchange as participants applied these skills to their own research practices. \n\n\nThe session introduced participants to strategies for transforming complex research projects into clear\, visually compelling posters that communicate a strong central message. The facilitators helped students understand how logos\, ethos\, and pathos shape not only written arguments but also visual presentations. Students analyzed sample posters through group discussions with smaller groups and with the facilitators to spot the strengths and weaknesses of each design. These exercises encouraged participants to reflect on how even the smallest design choices can influence credibility\, logical flow\, and audience engagement\, which helped the students gain practical insight into the elements required to produce a visually strong and persuasive research poster. \n\n\n\nThe session then introduced what the facilitators referred to as the “Four Secret Weapons” of design: Contrast\, Repetition\, Alignment\, and Proximity (CRAP). It emphasized how these principles work together to create a cohesive and clear visual structure that guides the viewer’s attention and strengthens overall communication. This resonated with many students\, who recognized how these principles could immediately improve their work. The workshop concluded with dedicated time for students to work on the designs for their own research project and receive personalized feedback from the facilitators\, ensuring the students leave the session equipped with both conceptual knowledge and practical skills to enhance their future research presentations. \n\n\nArticle by Mehek Elahi\, CIRS Research Assistant.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/cura-research-workshop-visualizing-your-research-poster-design-3/
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260208T090000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260209T150000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20260308T094256Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260310T075450Z
UID:10001601-1770541200-1770649200@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:Rethinking Migration Categories from the Global South Workshop I
DESCRIPTION:On February 8 and 9\, 2026\, the Center for International and Regional Studies held a research workshop under its project\, Rethinking Migration Categories from the Global South. The purpose of the two-day meeting was to discuss and provide feedback on a collection of draft abstracts submitted for the project. Scholars\, working on the topic\, were convened for the meeting from around the globe. The topics discussed various aspects of developing theories around categories of migration that are centric to the Global South.   \n\nThe discussion was initiated by Payal Banerjee\, who examined how temporary visa systems transform migrants into specific legal categories that constrain their personhood and rights. She questioned what it means to be “documented\,” arguing that legal status involves restrictions and vulnerabilities rather than simply lawfulness. Her proposed paper aims to analyze temporary visa regimes in the US\, to understand how visa classifications create hierarchies among migrants and weaken their ability to challenge discrimination based on gender\, race\, or caste. The research positions visas as instruments of power that shape migrants’ social\, economic\, and political positioning in destination countries. \n\nIn the next session\, Rachel Silvey addressed how temporary migration regimes create “stuck movement\,” the paradoxical simultaneous production of mobility and immobility for low-wage foreign workers. Drawing on Massey’s “power geometries\,” she discussed three dimensions of im/mobility: spatial (border-crossing yet employer-tied)\, temporal (cyclical contracts creating perpetual temporariness)\, and social (international movement without occupational advancement). Workers experience involuntary immobility across the migration cycle\, waiting before departure\, confinement during contracts\, and stuckness after return. Her work will examine how legal documentation doesn’t guarantee true mobility\, as temporary workers face institutionalized uncertainty and precarity. This im/mobility framework reveals how contemporary migration governance relies on immobilization as a control technique. \n\nBrenda Yeoh talked about the concept of the “developmental migration state” in East and Southeast Asia\, where migration governance prioritizes economic development over individual rights. She highlighted how the state employs categorise and control strategies through: hierarchizing migrants by skill levels as proxies for developmental utility; managing degrees and varieties of temporariness to balance market demands with citizenship boundaries; controlling category conversion between migrant statuses; and creating legal versus permissive zones that can transform migrants from “illegal and precarious” to “legal yet precarious.” These power-knowledge techniques divide\, differentiate\, and discipline migrant populations\, reinforcing global hierarchies while obscuring racial and gender prejudices in migration management. \n\nMeron Zeleke then shifted the focus to Ethiopian female migrants in the UAE and how they strategically navigate a highly racialized labor market through skill acquisition and sectoral transitions. Challenging victimhood narratives\, she highlighted the female migrants’ agency as they invest in training\, from basic domestic skills to beauty industry certifications and marketing courses\, to improve their positioning within the UAE’s hierarchical capitalism. While migrants face systematic devaluation based on nationality rather than actual skills\, returnees use planned migration and skill upgrades as coping strategies. The research reveals how migrants exercise negotiated agency to achieve limited mobility within racialized structures\, though such strategies don’t fundamentally destabilize the racial order underlying labor market inequality. \n\nZahra Babar presented on the liberal/illiberal binary in migration scholarship that treats Gulf states as exceptional authoritarian cases while positioning liberal democracies as normative baselines. She argued that Western-centric frameworks overlook how liberal states also produce migrant precarity through detention\, deportation\, welfare exclusion\, and legal stratification. Rather than governance failures\, Gulf labor regimes\, including the kafala system\, reveal global logics that render migrants economically essential yet socially excluded. Her proposed work will use the Gulf as theory generating rather than exceptional case\, demonstrating structural continuities across political systems in producing differentiated membership and migrant vulnerability. \n\nIn the next session\, Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh examined critiques of three displacement categories\, refugee\, host\, and camp\, through Syrian\, Palestinian\, Iraqi\, Lebanese\, and Jordanian interlocutors’ perspectives in Lebanon and Jordan. Drawing on 450 interviews\, her work challenges bounded categorizations by demonstrating that refugees are hosts and hosts experience displacement\, proposing ‘refugee hosts’ as a concept highlighting agency and intersecting identities. Her paper will look at how these labels impose epistemic violence while also offering analytical tools to disentangle complex realities. Using Baddawi camp as a ‘more-than-camp’ hosting multiple displaced populations and ‘camps within camps\,’ the intervention aims to move beyond essentialized hierarchies toward relational understandings that recognize displacement’s inherently intertwined nature with hosting. \n\nBina Fernandez talked about theorizing protection for migrant domestic workers (MDWs) through a feminist international political economy lens on social reproduction. She argued that MDWs are constituted as precarious workers\, over-regulated through restrictive immigration policies yet under-regulated in labor protections\, serving employer and state interests within global capitalism. Her paper proposes analyzing MDW protection through assemblages of formal and informal social provisioning across origin and destination countries\, evaluating whether protections are transformative (replenishing social reproduction) or depleting. Key protection areas include abuse prevention\, labor exploitation\, health\, pregnancy/maternity\, social security\, and community-based support. The discussion emphasized that inadequate MDW protection isn’t oversight but structural design sustaining gendered\, racialized inequalities. \n\nAashsih Karn shifted the discussion towards Gulf migration and argued for situating the scholarship beyond suffering-centered approaches that reduce migrants to victims of exploitation. While acknowledging labor precarity under systems like Kafala\, his paper proposes analyzing Gulf cities as hybrid urban formations where non-citizen life is normalized rather than exceptional. The framework examines three interdependent processes: identity and belonging (how migrants position themselves in stratified urban worlds)\, place-making (symbolic anchoring of social location)\, and agency (collective practices sustaining migrant life). The paper aims to conceptualize Gulf cities as composed of distinctive migrant ecosystems\, dynamic social worlds characterized by proximity and boundaries\, and migrants as social actors who actively produce meaning and sociality under non-citizenship conditions. \n\nIn the next session\, Faisal Garba Muhammed expressed that mainstream migration studies misrepresent African migration and depict migrants as burdens driven by desperation. His paper aims to decenter Eurocentric frameworks that ignore intra-South mobility and African scholarship. He advocated historicizing migration as integral to African life\, not exceptional\, including examining the transatlantic slave trade’s legacy in contemporary migration regulation that “wants the body\, not the human.” He emphasized that migrants are collective actors in world-making and challenged the narrow nationalist belonging concepts. \n\nIn the last session\, Anushka Bose looked at passport acquisition as a categorical mobility strategy beyond physical migration. Her work analyzes three citizenship-by-investment programs (golden passports)\, strategic naturalization through temporary migration\, and ancestry-based acquisition as pathways that convert different resources\, financial capital\, time/bureaucratic compliance\, or kinship claims\, into second passports. Focusing on the GCC\, where passport nationality determines high-skilled workers’ salaries (Western passport holders earning the most\, followed by Middle Eastern\, then Asian nationals)\, she questions whether passports proxy for skill or credentials. She proposed treating diverse acquisition pathways as unified categorical mobility strategies\, examining how passport capital transforms labor market positioning\, especially for expatriates seeking stronger legal anchors while maintaining Gulf-based careers. \n\nThe final papers from this workshop will be published as a special issue of a journal by CIRS. \n\n\nTo view the working group agenda\, click here\n\n\n\nTo read the participants’ biographies\, click here\n\n\n\nRead more about this research initiative\n\n\nParticipants and Discussants:  \n\n\nZahra Babar\n\n\n\nPayal Banerjee\n\n\n\nMisba Bhatti\n\n\n\nAnuska Bose\n\n\n\nMaryam Daud\n\n\n\nNandini Deo\n\n\n\nMehek Elahi\n\n\n\nBina Fernandez\n\n\n\nFaisal Garba\n\n\n\nAmanda Garrett\n\n\n\nNoor Hussain\n\n\n\nSyed Taha Kaleem\n\n\n\nAashish Karn\n\n\n\nTorsten Menge\n\n\n\nSuzi Mirgani\n\n\n\nHonore Mugiraneza\n\n\n\nShyryn Nurlybek\n\n\n\nHaala Qamar\n\n\n\nElena Fiddian Qasmiyeh\n\n\n\nRachel Silvey\n\n\n\nSabreen Taha\n\n\n\nBrenda S.A. Yeoh FBA\n\n\n\nMeron Zeleke
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/rethinking-migration-categories-from-the-global-south/
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260209T180000
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DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20260128T105721Z
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UID:10001596-1770660000-1770663600@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:CIRS Monthly Dialogue: Asian Migration in a Global Context
DESCRIPTION:This public panel brings together scholars to examine how migration categories are produced\, governed\, and contested within Asia and across transnational flows from the Global South to the Global North. Moving beyond fixed labels such as migrant\, refugee\, skilled worker\, or trafficking victim\, the discussion explores how state policies\, visa regimes\, and labor markets shape mobility in practice. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOn February 9th\, the Center for International and Regional Studies CIRS hosted a public panel featuring scholars from the workshop Rethinking Migration Categories from the Global South. The discussion brought together three panelists\, Brenda Yeoh\, Payal Banerjee\, and Bina Fernandez\, to examine how migration regimes classify\, control\, and at times constrain those who move across borders\, with particular attention to perspectives from the Global South. \n\nBrenda Yeoh opened by mapping the dominance of temporary migration regimes across Asia\, where pathways to permanent residency or citizenship remain structurally inaccessible for low skilled workers. She critiqued Western centric paradigms in migration studies\, highlighting how mechanisms like enclavisation and enclosure\, the spatial segregation of migrants and the use of borders as instruments of discipline\, function to contain rather than include. Her central provocation was this: how do states design systems explicitly not to integrate migrants\, and how should scholars study migration not as states define it\, but as migrants actually experience it? \n\nPayal Banerjee drew on her research into Indian IT workers in the United States to examine the mechanics of status dependence\, the way a migrant’s legal and economic existence becomes tethered to a single employer. This produces structural vulnerability\, including precarious legal standing\, limited labor mobility\, and chronic anxiety. She connected these individual experiences to broader global asymmetries\, arguing that employer sponsored visa regimes are not incidental but deliberate\, and that the Indian tech sector’s deep reliance on Western markets reflects wider patterns in which Global South economies remain structurally dependent on Global North capital and labor demand. \n\nBina Fernandez challenged Eurocentric framings by repositioning Australia within the Asia Pacific region and introducing the concept of “uninvited migrants and settlers” to foreground colonial histories. She critiqued Australia’s offshore detention regime as a calculated deterrence strategy while also noting more hopeful developments\, such as the Australia Tuvalu bilateral agreement offering climate linked mobility pathways. She identified three migration regimes deserving particular critical attention: forced deportation regimes\, climate and disaster induced displacement\, and statelessness. \n\nThe panel’s discussion surfaced several cross cutting themes. Participants examined how migration governance increasingly treats human movement as a problem to be managed\, with administrative categories serving as tools of state control that generate waiting\, anxiety\, and unequal power. The rise of AI\, biometrics\, and surveillance technologies was described as double edged\, enhancing border enforcement while also enabling migrants to build digital networks and transnational communities. Panelists also interrogated the politics of labeling itself\, noting that categories like “refugee” or “skilled worker” carry colonial and racial histories\, and that the global skills hierarchy reframes exclusion through the language of merit. Finally\, feminist perspectives on social reproduction highlighted how migrant domestic workers effectively labor for two households simultaneously\, with migration redistributing care work globally along gendered and racialized lines. \n\nArticle by Maryam Daud\, CIRS administrative Assistant and Haala Qamar CIRS Student Assistant \n\nSpeakers: \n\n\nBrenda S.A. Yeoh FBA is Distinguished Professor\, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Migration and Mobilities Cluster\, at NUS’ Asia Research Institute. She was awarded the Vautrin Lud Prize for outstanding achievements in Geography in 2021 for her contributions to migration and transnationalism studies. Her research interests in Asian migrations span themes including social reproduction and care migration; skilled migration and cosmopolitanism; and marriage migrants and cultural politics. \n\n\n\nBina Fernandez is Professor in Development Studies at the University of Melbourne. She obtained PhD and MPhil degrees at the University of Oxford and has held academic positions at the University of Leeds\, the Institute of Development Studies\, Sussex\, the University of Oxford and the University of Oxford-Brookes. Bina’s research focuses on migration and social policy\, analysed through the feminist lens of social reproduction. For over a decade\, she has conducted multi-sited research on Ethiopian migrant domestic workers in the Middle East; key themes have been the conditions of work\, the care needs of migrants\, migrant mothers and their children at risk of statelessness. She has also undertaken research on Ethiopian refugees in Kenya and Australia. Current research on ‘Diaspora Humanitarians’ investigates the regenerative contributions of Australia-based migrant and refugee diasporas to the social reproduction of their homeland communities during times of crisis. \n\n\n\nPayal Banerjee is Professor of Sociology at Smith College\, USA. Her research focuses on the political economies of migration\, globalization\, and the role of policies in structuring labor incorporation\, migrant categories\, and status displacement. Banerjee’s work on Indian IT workers in the US has appeared in International Migration\, Critical Sociology\, Race\, Gender\, and Class\, International Feminist Journal of Politics\, Irish Journal of Anthropology\, Women’s Studies Quarterly\, Social & Public Policy Review\, Man in India\, and in several edited volumes. Banerjee’s publications on Chinese minorities in India have appeared in Security and Peace\, China Report\, Asian Journal of Comparative Politics\, Huaqiao Huaren Lishi Yanjiu (Overseas Chinese History Studies\, in Mandarin)\, and in the book Doing Time with Nehru. As a Borders Studies Group member\, she co-published India China: Rethinking Borders and Security. Banerjee served as a research fellow at the BRICS Policy Center in Rio de Janeiro\, Brazil; and\, taught at the Graduate Program in International Affairs\, The New School in New York City\, and in India at Sikkim University in Gangtok and at FLAME in Pune\, as visiting faculty. \n\n\nModerator: \n\n\nWaleed Ziad is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University in Qatar. His research interests lie at the intersection of social history\, religious studies\, and anthropology. Professor Ziad’s scholarship examines the historical and philosophical foundations of Muslim revivalism and mysticism in South and Central Asia and Iran. In this endeavor\, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in over 140 towns across Afghanistan\, Pakistan\, and Uzbekistan. He is the author of Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints Beyond the Oxus and Indus (Harvard Press\, 2021)\, which won the prestigious Albert Hourani Prize given by the Middle East Studies Association of North America as well as the American Institute for Pakistan Studies 2022 Book Prize. His most recent book In the Treasure Room of the Sakra King: Votive Coinage from Gandharan Shrines (American Numismatic Society\, 2022) builds on his long-standing research into numismatics and material culture of the Indo-Iranian borderlands. His forthcoming book\, Sufi Masters of the Afghan Empire: Bibi Sahiba and Her Sacred Networks (Harvard Press)\, is a continuation of his core research on the development of Sufi networks\, spanning modern-day Afghanistan\, Uzbekistan\, Pakistan\, Tajikistan\, India\, China\, and Russia. He has also written extensively on historical and ideological trends in the Muslim world\, his work appearing in The New York Times\, International Herald Tribune\, The Wall Street Journal\, Foreign Policy\, Christian Science Monitor\, and The Hill. 
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/cirs-monthly-dialogue-asian-migration-in-a-global-context/
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260309T173000
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DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20260224T103224Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260224T115526Z
UID:10001600-1773077400-1773082800@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:CIRS Monthly Dialogue: What Arab Authoritarianism Tells Us About the World
DESCRIPTION:rEGISTER nOW\n\n\nThis panel highlights contributions in the new Handbook on Authoritarianism in the Arab World\, forthcoming open access from Bloomsbury Politics. The Handbook highlights the specificities of authoritarianism in the Arab world while placing the region in the context of global trends. The panel will feature Dana Al Kurd (Associate Professor at University of Richmond) Yasmeen Mekawy (Assistant Professor at Northwestern Qatar)\, Alexei Abrahams (Assistant Professor at HBKU)\, and Abdullah Al Arian (Associate Professor at GU-Q)\, moderated by Diana Buttu\, to discuss trends in research on authoritarianism\, emotions in the Arab Spring uprisings\, and digital authoritarianism. \n\nModerator: \n\n\nDiana Buttu\, a Palestinian lawyer specializing in international law and human rights\, returns to GU-Q as a Practitioner-in-Residence for the academic year. She will teach Palestine and the Law and Negotiation and Organizational Conflict\, offering students a practitioner’s lens on diplomacy\, accountability\, and resistance. A former legal adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team and fellow at Stanford and Harvard\, she is a frequent commentator on Palestine and international law in global media.  \n\n\nSpeakers: \n\n\n\n\nDana El Kurd is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Richmond\, in Richmond\, Virginia\, USA. She specializes in Palestinian and Arab politics\, particularly on topics related to mobilization\, public opinion\, and international intervention. Her first book\, titled Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine\, was published in January 2020 with Oxford University Press. Her work has been published in academic journals such as Global Studies Quarterly\, PS: Political Science & Politics\, and Democratization\, as well as media outlets such as The Nation\, Foreign Policy\, Jewish Currents\, Financial Times\, and more. El Kurd is a senior nonresident fellow at the Arab Center Washington\, and serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Palestine Studies as well as the Board of Directors of Jewish Currents.  \n\n\n\nAlexei Abrahams is an Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Doha\, Qatar. His research examines information manipulation and cybersecurity using big data and social science methods\, with a current focus on designing digital observatories to assess the health of media ecosystems. His work has appeared in journals including Journal of Information Technology & Politics\, Political Science Research & Methods\, and International Journal of Communication\, and has informed reporting in outlets such as The New York Times\, The Washington Post\, The Guardian\, Al Jazeera\, Reuters\, and CBC News.Previously\, he served as Digital Lead for the Canadian Media Ecosystems Observatory at McGill University and held research fellowships at Harvard\, the University of Toronto\, Princeton University\, and UC San Diego. He earned his PhD in Economics from Brown University and frequently consults for the World Bank. \n\n\n\nYasmeen Mekawy is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in Qatar. She received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Chicago\, specializing in the comparative politics of the Middle East and North Africa. Her research and teaching focus on social movements and revolution\, digital media and popular culture\, and the politics of emotion. She examines how emotions mobilize and demobilize collective action\, and how affect circulates through social media and cultural forms. Her work has been published in Mediterranean Politics. She is currently working on her book project on the role of affect and emotion in the making and unmaking of Egypt’s 2011 revolution. affect circulates through social media and cultural forms. Her work has been published in Mediterranean Politics. She is currently working on her book project on the role of affect and emotion in the making and unmaking of Egypt’s 2011 revolution. \n\n\n\nAbdullah Al-Arian is Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University in Qatar wherehe specializes in the modern Middle East and the study of Islamic social movements. He is theauthor of Answering the Call: Popular Islamic Activism in Sadat’s Egypt\, editor of Football inthe Middle East: State\, Society\, and the Beautiful Game and co-editor of the forthcoming GlobalHistories and Practices of Islamophobia. He is also editor of the Critical Currents in Islam pageon the Jadaliyya e-zine.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/cirs-monthly-dialogue-what-arab-authoritarianism-tells-us-about-the-world/
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DTSTART;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260413T130000
DTEND;TZID=Asia/Qatar:20260413T140000
DTSTAMP:20260404T192035
CREATED:20260203T124010Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20260215T131215Z
UID:10001597-1776085200-1776088800@cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu
SUMMARY:CIRS Book Talk: Halfway to Freedom: The Struggles and Strivings of African American in Washington\, DC by Maurice Jackson
DESCRIPTION:In Conversation with Professor Maurice Jackson \n\nThe book\, set to be published next year\, traces the struggles of African Americans for equality and human rights from 1780 to 2020. Through the history of Washington DC\, it shows how Black lived experiences\, political mobilization\, and resistance mirror broader national struggles. By centering the city as both a symbolic and material site of power\, the book tells the history of the United States through Black Washingtonians. \n\n\nMaurice Jackson  teaches in the History and African American Studies  Departments and is Affiliated Professor of Music (Jazz) at Georgetown University. Before coming to academe\, he worked as a longshoreman\, shipyard rigger\, construction worker and community organizer. He  is author of Let This Voice Be Heard: Anthony Benezet\, Father of Atlantic Abolitionism\, co-editor of African-Americans and the Haitian Revolution\, of Quakers and their Allies in the Abolitionist Cause\,1754-1808 and DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington\, DC. Jackson wrote the liner notes to the 2 jazz CDs by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones\, Steal Away: Spirituals\, Folks Songs and Hymns and Come Sunday. He has recently lectured in France\, Turkey\, Italy\, Puerto Rico\, and Qatar. He served on  Georgetown University Slavery Working Group. A 2009 inductee into the Washington\, D.C. Hall of Fame he was appointed by the Mayor and the DC Council as Inaugural Chair of the DC Commission on African American Affairs (2013-16) and presented “An Analysis: African American Employment\, Population & Housing Trends in Washington\, D.C.” to the Mayor and elected leaders of the D.C. government in 2017. He is completing work on Halfway to Freedom: The Struggles and Strivings of African American in Washington\, DC to be published by Duke University Press. His next books will be We Knew No Other Way: The Many-Sided Struggle for Freedom and  Black Radicalism: A Very Short Introduction.
URL:https://cirs.qatar.georgetown.edu/event/cirs-book-talk-halfway-to-freedom-the-struggles-and-strivings-of-african-american-in-washington-dc-by-maurice-jackson/
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