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Professor Marilyn Booth (Magdalen College) discusses her new translation of ‘Sa'iba’ by Alis al-Bustani (1891) with Samir al-Boustany and Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). ABOUT THE BOOK Alis al-Bustani's 'Sa'iba' (1891) is one of the earliest known novels authored in Arabic by a female writer. Written when the Arabic novel was only in its third or fourth decade, it takes up the leading fictional theme of the era: the question of young people's choices in marriage in a society where their elders traditionally made these decisions. In 'Sa'iba', the focus is on what happens after the wedding, as the eponymous heroine has to fend off a jealous cousin who believes he has a right to her. Drawing on motifs of Victorian Gothic writing, brought into an Arab-Turkish fictional context, the novel powerfully shows the continuing hold of old ideas about women's sexual susceptibility and moral 'weakness', as such ideas were slowly giving way among educated Arab and other Ottoman middle classes to new ideals of companionship in marriage. Marilyn Booth's translation is accompanied by an introduction discussing the themes and social context of the novel, a time of modernizing efforts and pushback against European and American power and culture in the Arabic and Ottoman worlds. Published by Oxford University Press in 2026: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/saiba-9780198921684?cc=gb&lang=en& ABOUT THE SERIES For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more. TRANSLATOR BIOGRAPHY Marilyn Booth is Professor Emerita at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford. She was holder through 2023 of an endowed chair in contemporary Arab studies, and previously held a chair in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her published work focuses on nineteenth-century Arabophonewomen's writing and ideologies of gender debate, including the role of translation. Recent research fellowships include the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton; l'Institut d'études avancées, Paris; Neubauer Collegium for Society and Culture, Chicago. She was visiting professor, l'EHESS, Paris, in 2024. She has translated many works of Arabic fiction into English.

Author, Dr Orçun Can Okan (St Antony’s College) introduces his new book 'Needs That Bind: Materializing Nationality in Post-Ottoman Regimes', chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). ‘Needs That Bind’ reconsiders the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the construction of new regimes in the decade after World War I, to understand the consequential connections that remained among the new republican regime in Turkey and neighboring French and British Mandates in Syria-Lebanon and Iraq. Orçun Can Okan examines how these new states and their people managed problems of state succession through diplomatic, administrative, and legal interactions with and between bureaucracies. He foregrounds pressing questions of nationality as they were experienced by a diverse group of social actors, men and women, rich and poor. Okan tracks previously untapped Ottoman records, now spread across multiple regimes, to investigate claims to retirement pensions, alimony cases between former spouses who became nationals of different states, and disputes over land, property, and assets held in pious endowments. It is through these types of interactions and connections, he argues, that newly emerged post-Ottoman regimes materialized basic norms and understandings about nationality—an understanding more similar to subjecthood to state authority than rights-based citizenship. With an engaging, grounded historical narrative, this book contributes to thinking historically and critically about the tangible stakes and practical significance of nationality in times of profound political change and institutional instability.  Published by Stanford University Press in 2026: https://www.sup.org/books/middle-east-studies/needs-bind

Author, Joost Hiltermann discusses his debut novel 'The Resurrected' with Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). They were meant to be dead, buried under the sand. But they survived. Two young Kurds manage to miraculously escape Saddam Hussein’s killing grounds to eventually find their way to America. A story of luck, nerve and perseverance, with many setbacks along the way. Partially based on true events, this novel tells the story of a genocide as remembered by some who lived through it – as victims, perpetrators, and witnesses. By weaving together their testimonies – some true, some false, others imagined – the author paints an enthralling portrait of survival and destiny under the worst of circumstances, the 1988 Anfal campaign in Iraq, and what happened afterwards. In America the survivors build protected but split-soul lives typical of first-generation immigrants – until one day the past comes calling. Published by Asfana Press in 2026: https://www.afsana-press.com/the-resurrected AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Joost Hiltermann is a Dutch researcher and writer. He was the Programme Director for the Middle East & North Africa at the International Crisis Group and was previously at Human Rights Watch. Joost holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has written for The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books, Foreign Affairs and other publications.  Joost has published two books: A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (Cambridge, 2007) and Behind the Intifada: Labor and Women's Movements in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, 1991). The Resurrected is his debut novel. Joost was one of the main researchers of the genocide against the Kurds for Human Rights Watch in the 1990s, culminating in his fictionized retelling of the case. He has remained in close contact with the two (real) survivors and their families to this day.

Dr Chihab El Khachab (Wolfson College) discusses his new book ‘Constructing the Achievement State: Cultural Administration in Postrevolutionary Egypt’. Chaired by Professor Walter Armbrust (St Antony’s College). After the 1952 revolution, the Egyptian state became an ideological project promoted by national cultural and media institutions. Focusing particularly on the years under the leadership of Gamal Abdel Nasser (1954–1970), Chihab El Khachab uses official written and visual sources produced by different governmental departments to show how low- and mid-ranking bureaucrats represented and embodied the Egyptian state through a praxis of 'achievement' (ingāz, pl. ingazāt). This study demonstrates how a successful anti-colonial nationalist movement built its own state apparatus. El Khachab argues that the state's 'achievements' are neither the tangible outcome of governmental work nor the self-evident metrics needed to evaluate national progress, but an ideological category deployed by bureaucrats. Conceiving achievements in this way allows us to understand how everyday bureaucratic work represents and embodies 'the state', and why this idea remains an important force in contemporary Egypt. Published by Cambridge University Press in 2026: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/constructing-the-achievement-state/BAB7ED73973C065D2CDE64C9D266FFAE

In this joint Refugee Studies Centre and Middle East Centre seminar, Dr Houman Oliaei discusses his new book. Chaired by Professor Pascal Menoret (Magdalen College). After ISIS's 2014 genocide, hundreds of thousands of Yazidis fled Sinjar, their ancestral homeland in northern Iraq. Most stayed within Iraq's borders, settling in camps and informal settlements in the Kurdistan Region. While global attention often focuses on refugees who cross international borders, the Yazidis' experience exemplifies a far more common but less visible form of displacement: people forced from their homes yet remaining inside their own country as internally displaced persons (IDPs). Drawing on research among displaced Yazidis in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, Yazidis on the Margins of Humanity traces how they navigate the contradictions of internal displacement. Author Houman Oliaei shows how this produces a paradox of protection: international actors treat IDPs as too much like citizens to merit intervention, while governments deem them too displaced to be recognized as full citizens. In this interstitial space, Yazidis become hypervisible as victims but erased as political subjects. They are caught between formal citizenship and humanitarian aid, suspended between a traumatic past and a future they cannot securely claim, and confined to camps that weaponize impermanence to manage and eventually expel their residents. Yazidis on the Margins of Humanity argues that internal displacement today is not just a humanitarian problem but a political project of dispossession. States maintain sovereignty over populations they have effectively abandoned, while humanitarian institutions transform citizens into objects of care stripped of their political rights. Published by Indiana University Press in 2026: https://iupress.org/9780253075604/yazidis-on-the-margins-of-humanity/ AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Houman Oliaei is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Babson College. His first book, Yazidis on the Margins of Humanity: Internally Displaced in Iraqi Kurdistan (Indiana University Press, 2026), offers an ethnographic account of Yazidi displacement in post-conflict Iraq, examining humanitarian governance, political recognition, and belonging in the aftermath of the 2014 ISIS genocide. His broader research engages questions of humanitarianism, citizenship, forced migration, and mobility across the Middle East and beyond.

Dr Katharina Galor (Brown University) discusses her new book 'Out of Gaza: A Tale of Love, Exile, and Friendship'. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). Out of Gaza tells the story of Dima Mansour, a young Palestinian who suffers hardship growing up in Jordan and Gaza during the Gaza War of 2014, later escaping to be with the man she loves in Belgium, where she is held in a detention center for illegal immigrants. Her harrowing story is told by Katharina Galor, an Israeli Jewish scholar who forms a close and unexpected friendship with Mansour. Despite the profound asymmetry that defines the geopolitical context of their lives—one marked by Palestinian loss and exile, the other by Jewish trauma and persecution—their bond uncovers surprising parallels in their shared experiences of displacement and survival. As their friendship unfolds, Galor and Mansour come to intimately understand the lasting impact of ethnic cleansing from the Holocaust and the Nakba, and how these pivotal events have shaped their families, identities, and ties to the region. Out of Gaza delves into themes of identity, belonging, and the enduring effects of historical trauma, showing how empathy and resilience can bridge even the deepest divides. Published by University of Nebraska Press in 2025: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/potomac-books/9781640126510/out-of-gaza/ AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY Katharina Galor is Associate Teaching Professor of Judaic Studies at Brown University. Born in Germany, where her parents had fled from communist Romania, Galor was educated in Germany, France, Israel, and the United States. She is the author or coauthor of four books, including The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians (with Sa’ed Atshan), and writes for or appears in various media outlets, including the Forward, Die Zeit, NPR, Israeli TV, National Geographic, and the Discovery Channel.

In this lecture, Saeb Eigner offers a journey through more than a century of modern and contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa, as documented in ‘Artists of the Middle East: 1900 to Now’. Spanning from 1900 to the present, the book brings together over 250 major artists — from early modernists to today’s leading contemporary voices — across a vast geographic area stretching from Morocco to Iran. Eigner will highlight how cultural heritage, linguistic and literary traditions, and regional socio-political realities have shaped different art movements and individual practices. By examining landmark artists such as those active in the mid-20th century alongside contemporary figures, the lecture will trace continuities and ruptures: how earlier modernist expressions gave way to new forms; how political upheaval, migration, globalization and cultural exchange influenced artistic production; and how art from the region today speaks to global audiences while remaining rooted in local histories. Saeb Eigner –Biography Saeb Eigner, Austrian by birth, spent his early years traveling the Middle East before settling in London, where he was educated. Fluent in several languages, including Arabic, he began his career in international banking and later founded a private investment firm. A founding member in 2004 of the Dubai Financial Services Authority, he played a key role in establishing one of the world’s leading financial centres, serving as Chairman of the DFSA (2011 - 2021). A former Governor of his Alma Mata London Business School and Chair of its Audit and Risk Committee. Eigner serves on boards related to finance, education, and the arts. A speaker on global business and economic issues, across major media platforms. He is committed to the arts and education as tools for cultural connection and social advancement. He authored Sand to Silicon (2002, 2008) and Art of The Middle East (2010, 2015), co- curated the British Museum’s Word into Art exhibitions in London and Dubai (2006, 2008), and recently authored Artists of the Middle East: 1900 to Now (2025). To view a copy of the slides in this talk, please use this link: https://media.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/sant/middle_east_studies/booktalk/2026-03-25-sant-mec-booktalk-eigner-SLIDES.pdf

This seminar was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Tuesday 3 March 2026 by Dr Alfonso Casani (Complutense University of Madrid) and was chaired by Professor Michael Willis (St Antony’s College). Alfonso Casani is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at the Complutense University of Madrid (Spain). He is Research associate of the Group of Studies on the Arab and Muslim Societies (GRESAM) at the University of Castilla-la Mancha and the Complutense Research Group on the Maghreb and Middle East (GICMOM) at the Complutense University of Madrid. His research interests focus on the study of political Islam, opposition dynamics and social movements in North Africa. He is co-editor of El impacto de la Guerra de Ucrania en el norte de África y Oriente Medio (Dyckinson). His articles have recently been published in journals such as Democratization, Contemporary Politics and the Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding.   Contemporary Islamist Opposition in Morocco: Resisting Inclusion and Moderation (2025) Edinburgh University Press https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-contemporary-islamist-opposition-in- morocco.html   Contemporary Islamist Opposition in Morocco: Resisting Inclusion and Moderation offers an in-depth and yet- unexplored analysis of the evolution and actions of Moroccan Islamist association Justice and Spirituality (al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane). By examining its mobilisation structure, the book enhances the understanding of Islamism as an oppositional force in non-democratic regimes, with a particular focus on Morocco. Contrary to the common premises of inclusion–moderation theory, al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane has undergone a politicisation process but rejects political inclusion; it promotes street mobilisation but refuses to resort to violence. Despite its illegal status and disregard for the regime’s red lines, al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane remains highly relevant as an anti-establishment actor.   Addressing these apparent contradictions broadens our understanding of inclusion–moderation approaches by introducing novel explanatory factors into the relationship between authoritarian regimes and Islamist opposition actors, including responses to shifts in opportunity structures and the effects of internal dynamics and learning mechanisms. It also deepens our knowledge of al-Adl wa-l-Ihsane, Morocco’s largest opposition actor, which nevertheless remains largely understudied.

This book talk was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Tuesday 10 February 2026 by author, Dr Daniel Neep (Brandeis University), and chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony’s College). A Modern History of Syria (2026) https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/213366/a-history-of-modern-syria-by-neep-daniel/9780241003299 Few countries have had as vexed a political history as Syria. Carved out of the Ottoman empire at the end of the First World War, Syria was then brutally ruled by France. This French ‘mandate’ carved out new borders with equally provisional neighbours in a process that pulled apart families, trade networks and political assumptions that had already been ravaged by the war. Syria's subsequent history has been a series of attempts to make sense of its borders, including a failed attempt in the late 1950s to unite with Egypt and several humiliations at the hands of Israel's armed forces. The civil war that broke out in 2011 plunged Syria into a nightmarish series of disasters, including the terrible years of Islamic State, ultimately resulting in the reimposition of Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, which came to an end in 2024. Daniel Neep’s remarkable book creates a gripping, intelligent narrative of how Syrians have lived through these events, never losing sight either of the fates of ordinary people or of Syria’s rich, complex and diverse society, unwillingly or willingly brought together in such a highly contested space.

This book talk was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Thursday 24 February 2026 by Tareq Baconi (author) in conversation with Dr Ammar Azzouz (Somerville College). Tareq Baconi is a Palestinian writer, scholar, and activist. He is the grandson of refugees from Jerusalem and Haifa and grew up between Amman and Beirut. His work has appeared in, among others, The New York Times and The Baffler, and he contributes essays to The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He has also written for film; his award-winning BFI short One Like Him, a queer love story set in Jordan, screened in over thirty festivals. He is the author of Hamas Contained: A History of Palestinian Resistance, which was shortlisted for the Palestine Book Award, and Fire in Every Direction. Fire in Every Direction: A Memoir (2026) https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/tareq-baconi/fire-in-every-direction/9781399739634/ Both a love story and a coming-of-age tale that spans countries and continents, Fire in Every Direction balances humour and loss, nostalgia and hope, as it takes us from the Middle East to London, and from 1948 to the present. Tareq Baconi crafts a deeply intimate, unforgettable portrait of how a political consciousness – desire and resistance – is passed down through generations. In 1948, Tareq’s grandmother would flee Haifa as Zionist militias seized the city. In the late 1970s, she would flee Beirut with her daughter, as the country was in the throes of a civil war. In Amman, the family would eventually obtain the comfort of middle-class life – still, a young Tareq would feel trapped: by cultures of silence, by a sense of not belonging, by his own growing awareness that he is in love with his childhood best friend, Ramzi. After relocating to London, Tareq hopes to put aside his past. Yet as the Iraq War radicalizes young people around the world towards anti-war protest, history comes back to him. Living between the region and London, Tareq fits in neither and feels alienated from both. Queerness is policed back in Amman, just as his Palestinian-ness is abroad. These gradual estrangements escalate, forcing him to grapple with what it means to live in liminal spaces, and rethink the meaning of home.

This seminar was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Thursday 19 February 2026 by Professor Simon Mabon (Lancaster University), and was chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail (St Antony’s College).

This book talk was delivered at the Middle East Centre on Thursday 12 February 2026 by Dr Kristian Coates Ulrichsen (Rice University) and was chaired by Professor Raihan Ismail (St Antony’s College). Kingdom of Football: Saudi Arabia and the Remaking of World Soccer (Hurst & Co, 2025) www.hurstpublishers.com/book/kingdom-of-football This talk explores how and why Saudi Arabia burst onto the landscape of world football in 2023 and examines what the speed and scale of Saudi engagement, as investor, owner, sponsor, host, and participant, means for the Kingdom and for football more broadly. Analysis will place Saudi Arabia’s startling emergence as one of the hubs in world football in the 2020s in historical and comparative perspective, set against previous periods of Saudi investment in football, in the 1970s, and attempts elsewhere to rapidly kickstart the domestic game, in the United States, Japan, and China. Going beyond labels such as ‘sportswashing,’ which have gained media currency in recent years, Kingdom of Football examines what drives Saudi policymaking and connects the move into football with domestic economic and social developments and external and foreign policy considerations. The talk also examines how the Saudi foray into football builds upon but differs from the approaches taken by other Gulf States, such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, and assesses the factors that will determine the sustainability and durability of the Kingdom’s engagement with football in the decade-long runup to the 2034 World Cup.

In this seminar, Ambassador Nabeela Al Mulla, author, is in conversation with Professor Eugene Rogan, MEC Director, about her new book ‘Breaking New Ground on the Global Stage: Memoirs of Kuwait’s First Woman Ambassador’. In this Gender and Sexuality Series seminar, Ambassador Nabeela Al Mulla, author, is in conversation with Professor Eugene Rogan, MEC Director, about her new book ‘Breaking New Ground on the Global Stage: Memoirs of Kuwait’s First Woman Ambassador’. This seminar was held at the MEC on 25th November 2025.

Seminar in English and Arabic. Professor Said Laouadi, winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025, discusses his book ‘Food and Language: Rhetorical-Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), with Professor Eugene Rogan. Seminar in English and Arabic. Professor Said Laouadi, winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025 for Literary and Art Criticism, discusses his book ‘الطعام والكلام: حفريات بلاغية ثقافية في التراث العربي’ / ‘Food and Language: Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), with Professor Eugene Rogan, Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College. Introduced by Professor Michael Willis, HM King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. About the book: Published in 2023, this work offers a critique of the complex relation between rhetoric and food in Arab heritage, analysing literary texts from poetry to proverbs and stories from a broad cultural perspective. With its in-depth analysis and broad scope, his research enriches rhetorical studies with new, unconventional approaches. About the author: Said Laouadi is a Moroccan academic and professor of rhetoric and discourse analysis at the Faculty of Arabic Language at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, where he also serves as Vice Dean for Scientific Research and International Cooperation and heads the Laboratory for Methodological Integration in Discourse Analysis. Laouadi oversees the ‘Academic Picks’ programme, which hosts leading Arab researchers in critical and linguistic studies. Laouadi serves as a member of judging panels for several Arab and Moroccan literary awards, while also contributing to various specialised academic journals as an editor and reviewer. His research explores the intersection of rhetoric and culture, with notable publications such as ‘The Kitchen of the Novel: Food in Fiction from Visuality to Weaving’ (2024) and ‘Food and Language: Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), along with studies on literature, imagery, and aesthetics in poetic discourse”.

This seminar discusses the inaugural Bait AlGhasham DarArab International Translation Prize winner, ‘Safe Corridor’; a bold, unforgettable novel of war, imagination, and survival. Kurdish-Syrian novelist, Jan Dost; translator, Professor Marilyn Booth; Director of the Bait AlGhasham DarArab International Translation Prize, Ali Al Mujaini; and Founder and Director of DarArab for Publishing & Translation, Nasser Al Badri, all discuss Dost’s novel ‘Safe Corridor’, with Professor of Turkish Literature and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Laurent Mignon, as Chair.