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In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with Eman Shahin and Alice Lubbock about the BIRI Project Women Transcending Boundaries, a project that uncovers the intertwined lives of women who shaped archaeology and heritage work across many regions. Using the archives of the British International Research Institutes (BIRI), they trace how letters, photographs, field notes and personal writings reveal a long, interconnected history of women whose contributions were often overlooked. BIRI Project Women Transcending Boundaries: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/47f520f8a244442cb13fc605ee8d95ac

In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with Robert Bewley and Firas Bqa’in about their recent field visit to newly identified Roman camps in Jordan’s Eastern Desert. Supported by the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (AAJ) project and in collaboration with EAMENA, they discuss the process of documenting these sites from aerial photography to on-the-ground surveys, the discovery of pottery and architectural features, and the significance of these camps for understanding Roman and Nabataean presence in the region.

LEARNING FROM THE LEVANT - Episode 9: Mayyada Wazaify and Jenny Scott In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with Dr Jenny Scott and Prof Mayyada Wazaify about the two-day workshop on “Co-Development of an Academic Network and Research Prioritisation Exercise to Study the Role of Pharmacies and Pharmacists in Substance Use Disorders in Jordan,” held at the CBRL Amman Institute in September 2025. The conversation explores the current role of pharmacists in Jordan, challenges in addressing substance use disorders, and the outcomes of the workshop, including the top research priorities and the establishment of a sustainable academic network dedicated to advancing research in this field.

LEARNING FROM THE LEVANT - Episode 8: Olivia Mason and Gazua Alaun In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with photographer Gazua Elaun and political geographer Olivia Mason about their bilingual book Shifting Grounds: Bedouin Cultural Heritage in Jordan’s Badia. The conversation explores how the book documents living, often overlooked forms of Bedouin cultural heritage, poetry, stories, ecological knowledge, mobility, tattooing, and the subtle, everyday practices that shape Bedouin identity.

LEARNING FROM THE LEVANT - Episode 7: Gerasimos Tsourapas and Imad El-Anis In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with Professor Gerasimos Tsourapas and Dr. Imad El-Anis about their work on “eco-humanitarian rentierism.” They explore how countries like Jordan and Egypt navigate the combined pressures of climate change and refugee influxes, and how these challenges shape policy, diplomacy, and daily life. The discussion connects local realities to wider debates in international relations, highlighting what Jordan’s experience reveals about similar crises across the Global South. Learn more about their research in the International Affairs journal: https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiaf185.

LEARNING FROM THE LEVANT - Episode 6: Jamie Fraser In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with Dr. Jamie Fraser, Director of the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in East Jerusalem. They explore the world of the Bronze Age Levant, Dr. Fraser’s discoveries at Khirbet Um al-Ghozlan, an Early Bronze Age olive oil factory in Jordan, and what these findings reveal about ancient economies and communities. 🎧 Tune in to hear how archaeology continues to shape our understanding of the past and its connection to the present.

LEARNING FROM THE LEVANT - Episode 5: Carmen Ting In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with Dr. Carmen Ting, an archaeologist specialising in materials analysis and ancient technologies. Dr. Ting directs several projects on the emergence and spread of medieval glazed tableware across the Levant, Islamic lands, and Central Asia. She also develops innovative non-invasive techniques to study medieval Persian ceramics, expanding the context and narratives of museum collections. Dr. Ting is the Co-editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Open Archaeology Data and has held research and teaching positions at Cambridge, UCL, and internationally. Her work highlights the complex networks of production, trade, and consumption that shaped the medieval world.

Learning from the Levant Episode 4: Yasir Suleiman In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with Professor Yasir Suleiman about the deep connections between language, identity, and place in the Arab world. They explore how Jerusalem’s street signs reveal stories of power and resistance, why Arabic holds such symbolic importance, and how cities ‘speak’ through their languages. Professor Suleiman also shares insights for young researchers and reflects on a literary work that shaped his understanding of identity and language.

Learning from the Levant Episode 3: Muhyi Majeed In this episode of Learning from the Levant, Shatha Mubaideen speaks with Muhyi Majeed, a peer researcher in the Reconfiguring Heritage project. Muhyi discusses how participatory methods such as photovoice and embodied storytelling can help young people reclaim and reimagine their cultural heritage. They reflect on the power of everyday memory, the importance of documenting unseen narratives, and what it means to leave a personal mark on a place. The episode offers a fresh look at how creative heritage methods are reshaping identity and community in Amman and beyond.

Learning from the Levant Episode 2: Shaddin Almasri In this episode of Learning from the Levant, host Shatha Mubaideen welcomes Dr. Shaddin, a Research Fellow at CBRL and postdoctoral researcher at Danube University Krems. Shaddin’s research focuses on inequalities between refugee and migrant groups, particularly in the SWANA and East Africa regions. Together, they discuss the evolving refugee policies in Jordan and the Levant, the challenges of aid distribution, and the long-debated ‘durable solutions’ of resettlement, local integration, and return. With shifting political realities, questions arise about the future of Syrian refugees, international funding, and the broader implications for displaced communities in the region.

Learning from the Levant Episode 1: Jane Humphris In this first episode of Learning from the Levant, a Podcast Series by the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), Shatha Mubaideen hosts Dr Jane Humphris, CBRL Director. Together, they discuss Dr Humphris' career in archaeology, her new role at CBRL, and the organisation’s mission to promote interdisciplinary research and cultural heritage preservation in the Levant region in 2025 and beyond.

Jerusalem: From Arab world metropolis to divided city Dr Mansour Nasasra shares his insights into the complex history of Jerusalem. He looks back to the British occupation of the city by General Edmund Allenby in 1917 and the unstable years that followed, the division of the city in 1948 between Israel and Jordan and Israel’s capture of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day war. He recalls how Jerusalem was a hub for the Arab world with flights to all over the region from the former Jerusalem International Airport at Qalandia, now better known as the site of the Israeli checkpoint between the northern West Bank and Jerusalem. In a wide-ranging podcast he addresses the complexities and challenges of a two-state solution, the international community’s solution to the Middle East problem. Speaker: Dr. Mansour Nasasra is a senior lecturer of Middle East politics and International Relations. He is the author of "The Naqab Bedouins : A century of Politics and Resistance, published by Columbia university press, 2017 ; co-editor of Routledge Handbook of Middle East cities , published by Routledge 2020. He is currently finishing a book about Jerusalem with Edinburgh university press. Dr Nasasra was a CBRL research fellow at the Council’s Kenyon Institute in East Jerusalem, funded by the British Academy. Moderator: Tom Thomson, CBRL Trustee and Honorary Secretary

In recent years, the illicit amphetamine-like drug Captagon (Fenethylline) has become a major concern in the Middle East – both as a source of addiction and due to its connection with terrorism and the armed groups who produce and traffic it. This presentation will provide an overview on the findings of a qualitative study about the impact of Captagon on Jordan by focusing on its relationship to organised crime, and on its role as a source of addiction. This project uniquely combines knowledge from social pharmacy; criminology and international relations to gain a comprehensive understanding of the many ways in which Captagon impacts on Jordanian public health and law enforcement institutions. The research project was funded by GCRF/UK and aimed to describe and analyse Captagon addiction in Jordan from the perspective of users and workers, to ascertain the extent of Captagon trafficking into Jordan, its sources and links to regional conflicts. About the speakers Prof. Mayyada Wazaify Prof. Mayyada Wazaify is Professor of Pharmacy Practice at The School of Pharmacy at the University of Jordan and an Adjunct Professor in Social Pharmacy at The University of Helsinki, Finland. She obtained The Best Scientific Research Award by the Hamad Medical Corporation in Qatar in 2013, the Distinguished Researcher Award at University of Jordan in 2011 and 2012 and was an Advisor of the 41st Expert Committee on Drug Dependence (ECDD) of the World Health Organization (WHO), Geneva in 2018. She has consulted for Jordan Food and Drug Administration (JFDA) and Jordan Anti-Narcotics Department since 2004. Dr Christina Steenkamp Dr Christina Steenkamp is a Reader in Social and Political Change at Oxford Brookes University, where she teaches Peace and Conflict studies. She has published widely on topics related to conflict, peacebuilding and violence and has carried out extensive qualitative fieldwork in South Africa, Northern Ireland and the Middle East. She is currently writing her third book, this time on the relationship between organised crime and peacebuilding in the Middle East.

The fourth episode in the Kashmir Palestine Conversation Series addresses “Poetry and literature” and feature short presentations from Dalia Taha (poet and playwright) and Ather Zia (poet and writer, University of Colorado). The chair is Nadine El-Enany (Birkbeck, University of London) About the speakers Dalia Taha is a Palestinian poet and playwright living in Ramallah. Her first play Keffiyeh/Made in China was produced by the Flemish Royal Theatre and A.M. Qattan Foundation and premiered in Brussels. Her play Al’ab Nariya/Fireworks was developed under the Royal Court’s International Playwriting residency and was produced there (London) in 2015. Dalia graduated from Brown University with an MFA in Playwriting and has published two collections of poetry and one novel. She recently completed her third play There Is No One Between You and Me. Ather Zia is a political anthropologist, poet and short-fiction writer. She is an assistant professor of anthropology and gender studies at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir (June 2019) and co-editor of Resisting Occupation in Kashmir (UPenn 2018) and A Desolation called Peace (Harper Collins, May 2019). She has published a poetry collection The Frame (1999) and another collection is forthcoming. Ather’s ethnographic poetry on Kashmir has won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region. Ather is also the founder/editor of e-zine based on Kashmir titled Kashmir Lit at www.kashmirlit.org. Nadine El-Enany is a Reader in Law at Birkbeck School of Law and Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Race and Law (@CentreRaceLaw). Nadine teaches and researches in the fields of migration and refugee law, European Union law, protest and criminal justice. Her current research projects, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, focus on questions of race and justice in death in custody cases, and the role of law in addressing health inequalities arising from environmental harm. Nadine has written for the Guardian, the LRB Blog, Pluto Blog, Verso Blog, Open Democracy, Media Diversified, Left Foot Forward and Critical Legal Thinking. Her book, (B)ordering Britain: law, race and empire (2020) is published by Manchester University Press. The Kashmir-Palestine Conversations Series aims to create space for dialogue, networking and knowledge exchange between scholars of both Kashmir and Palestine. The series is organised by the Kashmir-Palestine Scholars Solidarity Network – an initiative conceived out of a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers Seed Grant awarded to scholars at the Council for British Research in the Levant (Dr Toufic Haddad) and the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol) (Dr Emma Brännlund) in early 2020.

In this webinar, the project partners share insights from the 2021/22 FIELD SONGS project, an AHRC-funded collaboration of agricultural and social scientists at the University of Edinburgh and Douzan Art & Culture and Syrian Academic Expertise, two Syrian-run organisations based in Turkey. For this project, the partners documented refugees’ intangible agricultural heritage and present-day working conditions in Turkish farming and met with local governments and Syrian agricultural entrepreneurs to envision alternative futures for Syrian labour. In a region shaped by intersecting forms of displacement and dispossession, including through climate change, conflict, and globalisation, we argue for an integrated approach to strengthening refugees’ rights as workers and agricultural experts. In the webinar, the project partners share best practices, such as municipal cooperatives for long-term refugee employment, how refugee farmers build new supply chains around traditional Syrian products, and how to link decent working conditions to climate-smart agriculture. Together, the findings on the continuing relevance of Syrian agricultural heritage and expertise can inform sustainable and collaborative policy-making in Turkey and other forced migration contexts. About the project: The One Health FIELD Network was launched in 2019 by Professor Lisa Boden at the University of Edinburgh. Through projects in Syria and across the Middle East, it collaborates with researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers to ensure a successful transition away from humanitarian provision of short-term food supplies and agricultural inputs towards long-term contingency planning for food security in conflict affected states. Douzan Art and Culture is a Syrian cultural organization launched in Turkey in 2019, to enable Syrians to build their contemporary cultural identity, through: Preserving cultural memory, providing spaces for interaction, building capacities, and enhancing solidarity and cooperation to build our cultural future between the heritage and modernity. Syrian Academic Expertise is a network of Syrian academics and experts in Syria and the diaspora. It implements sustainable projects and studies in various sectors to provide innovative solutions appropriate to crises and post-crisis contexts and contributes to experiences exchange to raise self-resilience and promote peacebuilding in Syria.