Program

MIDDLE EAST CONFERENCE 2022
Knowledge and Power in Middle East Studies: Regional and International Perspectives

February 6-7, 2022

All the below timings are in Doha time (GMT +3). 
The conference will be held online, a link to the online session will be emailed to registrants after filling in this form. 

Sunday, February 6, 2022

11:00 am - 12:30 pm 

Welcome: 

Professor Hassan Hakimian, Conference Chair and Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Department, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (HBKU) 
Dr. Amal Al-Malki, Founding Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (HBKU)

Keynote Speech: 

“A Nexus, Not a Locus: Middle Eastern Studies and South-to-South Relations”

Marwan Kraidy, Dean and CEO, Northwestern University in Qatar, and Professor of Communication and the Anthony Shadid Chair in Global Media, Politics and Culture at Northwestern.
Moderator: Amal Al-Malki, Founding Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (HBKU)

4:00 pm - 5:30 pm

Panel 1

“Transnational Dynamics and International Politics: How are Evolving Big Power Politics Impacting the Middle East” 

Chair: Marc Owen Jones, Assistant Professor, Middle Eastern Studies Department (HBKU)
Moderator: Steve Wright: Associate Dean for Student Affairs, College of Humanities and Social Sciences (HBKU)

• Lina Khatib, Director, Middle East and North Africa Programme, Chatham House:
  “International Foreign Policies Towards the Middle East: Between Disengagement and Pragmatism”
• Courtney Freer, Emory University and LSE: 
  “Transnational Movements in a Globalised World: Regional Rivalries and Ideological Competition?” 
• Abdulla Al Etaibi, Lecturer, International Affairs Programme, Qatar University:
  “Changing Regional Alliances and Patterns of Behaviour”

5:30 pm - 6:00 pm   

Break

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

Panel 2

“Analyzing the MENA Social Dynamics Using NLP and Big Data Methods”

Chair: George Mikros, Professor in Digital Humanities, Middle Eastern Studies Department (HBKU)
Moderator: Wajdi Zaghouani, Assistant Professor in Digital Humanities, Middle Eastern Studies Department (HBKU)

• Kareem Darwish, Principal Scientist, Principal Scientist, aiXplain Inc:
  “News Consumption in Time of Conflict: 2021 Palestinian-Israel War as an Example” 
• Muhammad Imran, Senior Scientist, Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI):  
  “Two Billion Multilingual COVID-19 Tweets with Sentiment, Entity, Geo, and Gender Labels” 
• Walid Magdy, Reader, School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh:
  “Understanding the Arab Region from Social Media: What can we learn?”
• Eric Atwell, Professor of Artificial Intelligence for Language, School of Computing, University of Leeds: 
  “Understanding the Quran: A Challenge for Artificial Intelligence”

Monday, February 7, 2022 

4:00 pm - 5:30 pm 

Panel 3

“Society, Cities, and Space in the MENA Region”

Chair: Sophie Richter-Devroe, Associate Professor, Middle Eastern Studies Department (HBKU)
Moderator: Carol Fadda, Associate Professor, Middle Eastern Studies Department (HBKU)

• Amy Kallander, Associate Professor in History, The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University, and Karem Said, Lecturer in Religious Studies, Department of Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Houston: 
  “Embodied Masculinities: Navigating Manhood and Identity in Tunis and its Periphery” 
• Nazanin Shahrokni, Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalisation, Department for Gender Studies, LSE:
  Social Inclusion through/despite Physical Segregation? Gender and Politics of Space in the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Hiba Bou Akar, Assistant Professor in the Urban Planning program at Columbia GSAPP:
  The Doubleness of Beirut’s Ruins: Between a Past War and Wars Yet to Come

5:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Break

6:00 pm - 7:30 pm

Panel 4

“Knowledge and Power in Palestine: The Quest for Statehood and the Marginalization of Rights”

Chair: Dana Olwan, Associate Professor, Middle Eastern Studies Department (HBKU)
Moderator: Samia Al-Botmeh, Dean of Faculty of Business and Economics, Birzeit University

• Leila Farsakh, Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science, College of Liberal Arts, UMass Boston:
  “Knowledge, Power and the Palestinian Quest for Statehood: Self-Determination Re-examined”
• Adam Hanieh, Professor of Political Economy and Global Development, University of Exeter:
  “The Political Economy of State Formation in Palestine: A Regional Perspective”
• Susan Akram, Clinical Professor of Law, Boston University:
  “Palestinian Nationality and “Jewish” Nationality: From the Lausanne Treaty to Today”

7:30 pm - 7:35 pm

Closing Remarks

Hassan Hakimian, Conference Chair and Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Department.