Shii News – Academic Items
1.AKU-ISMC: 14 and 21 October 2022 Short Course – Religious Cultural Heritage: Concepts and Issues in the Modern Middle East
This is a two-day introductory course on the theme of religious cultural heritage (RCH) in the Middle East. It aims to contextualise RCH as the living cultural heritage of its community of users. In addition, the course attempts to present RCH as a contemporary construct of its socio-political and religious context through its connections to ethnicity, gender, nationalism, as much as religion.
Read and download course structure.
Learning Objectives
– To identify religious cultural heritage as one constituent of the community’s broader cultural heritage;
– To address the challenges that religious cultural heritage faces in its cultural, religious and socio-political context;
– To examine the process of constructing relationship between people and their religious cultural heritage and its changes over time;
– To appreciate religious cultural heritage through the community’s values and their various processes of meaning making rather than the intrinsic values of the religious cultural heritage site itself.
Course Convenors
Professor Dick Douwes holds the chair of Global History at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. He studied Languages and Cultures of the Middle East at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands. From 1994 to 1998 he was coordinator of the programme Indonesian-Netherlands’ Cooperation in Islamic Studies (INIS) at Leiden University. From 1998 onwards, he was academic coordinator – later executive director – of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) and editor of the ISIM Newsletter/Review and ISIM Paper Series. He has published on late Ottoman history in Syria and on religious plurality in the Middle East, as well as on Muslims in Western Europe. Currently, he researches changes in shrine culture and politics in Syria and Lebanon, including the destruction of shrines.
Mohamad Meqdad is a PhD student at the Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, Erasmus University Rotterdam. His main research focuses on religious cultural heritage at times of crisis. In 2006, Mohamad received his BA in Archaeology and Museum Studies from Aleppo University, Syria. He also took part in several national and international archaeological expeditions in Syria (2002-2008), where he worked on discovering its rich cultural heritage and preserving it for future generations. In 2010, Mohamad received an MA in Muslim Cultures from the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations (AKU-ISMC), London, with focus on researching the display of Muslim material culture in international museums, specifically at the British Museum’s John Addis Islamic Gallery. Between 2011-2019, he was the Arabic editor, and later the acting manager, of the Muslim Civilisations Abstracts Project (MCA) at AKU-ISMC.
Date and Time
14 October (13:15 – 16:00) and 21 October (13:30 – 16:00) 2022, London Time.
Tickets and Booking
£75 professionals | £45 students, AKU alumni and staff. Book as soon as possible.
*The course will be delivered via Zoom. Readings and further details will be provided later upon registration.
*The course will not be recorded.
2. The Yarshater Center for Iranian Studies is pleased to announce that fascicle 2 of Volume XVII of the Encyclopaedia Iranica has been printed and is available to order.This installment (pp. 113-224) of Volume XVII of the EIr continues the development of letter “K” topics and covers titles starting with the entry “Khotan iii. History in the Islamic Period” and ends with “King of the Benighted.” These 112 new pages of the Encyclopædia Iranica include the conclusion of a major series of entries on Khotan and its history, language, literature, and art that began in fascicle 1 of Volume XVII. The fascicle also contains significant and up-to-date biographical entries on Moḥammad Ḵiābāni, Nur-al-Din Kiānuri, and Abbas Kiarostami; a detailed study of Ḡazāli’s Kimiā-ye Saʿādat; and reports on the archeological sites of Kilizu, Kindyktepa, and Kinet Höyük.
For the complete list of entries, please visit the Yarshater Center website at https://cfis.columbia.edu/research-projects/encyclopaedia-iranica.
For ordering information, please contact Brill Publishers.
3. Summer School of Persian Language and Iranology
PLUS Special Tour of Tehran, Kashan, Abyaneh, and Isfahan
15 August – 9 September 2022
https://avestak.com/summer-school-of-persian-language-and-iranian-studies/
4. The 3rd Intensive Academic Tour and Course in Iranian studies
University of Religions and Denominations, Qom
2 to 12 September 2022
For more information:
https://iranianstudies.urd.ac.ir/#join-us
5. Call for Applications – BJMES Assistant Editor
The British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (BJMES) is seeking an assistant editor who can help with the refereeing process for articles relating to the Arab world, and in particular Palestine/Israel. The successful candidate will be fluent in Arabic (knowledge of Hebrew too, is an advantage) and have a PhD. Preference will be given to applications from scholars who reside in the UK, and who are thus able to attend editorial meetings when necessary.
Please contact Lloyd Ridgeon to express interest: lloyd.ridgeon@glasgow.ac.uk. Please also send a brief CV (no more than 2 pages in length). The position comes with an annual honorarium and the successful candidate can serve for a maximum of eight years. The journal is looking to have someone in the position by the beginning of August 2022.
6. BRISMES awards:
The Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize was established jointly in 1986 by the Leigh Douglas Memorial Fund and BRISMES in memory of Dr Leigh Douglas who was killed in Beirut in 1986. The prize is awarded annually to the writer of the best PhD dissertation on a Middle Eastern topic in the Social Sciences or Humanities awarded by a British University in the previous calendar year.
- Joint winner: Nader Andrawos (LSE)
Righting Dissent: Intellectual Critique and Human Rights in Egypt - Joint winner: Nora Jaber (Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London)
Women, International Law, and the State: A Critical Analysis of Saudi Women’s Petitions for Reform - Runner Up: Joshua Rigg (SOAS, University of London)
A Resounding No: Contentious Politics in Tunisia 2015-2019 - Honourable Mention: Dena Qaddumi (University of Cambridge)
Post-Arab Spring Tunis: Materializing Revolution in the City
Congratulations to the prize winners and thank you to everyone who submitted their dissertations for consideration. Read more about the prize and the winning dissertations on the BRISMES website.
The BRISMES Early Career Development Prize was established in 2021 to support activities geared toward strengthening the academic profile and CV of an early career scholar. This year, the prize was awarded to Narges Ansari and Nur Arafeh.
- Narges Ansari
From the Prize Committee: The applicant’s proposal has the potential to contribute to novel findings in both the sub-field of Iranian Studies and the larger field of political anthropology. The applicant’s research theorises subjectivity in revolutionary Iran going beyond well-established epistemological binaries such as obedience and resistance, coercion and subversion, secular and religious politics. Read more
From the Prize Committee: The prize will sustain the applicant through one of the most arduous processes for an early career scholar: the transformation of their PhD into a book. Dr. Arafeh will expand on their doctoral thesis and conduct further interviews in Hebron on the role of local elites in the broader Palestinian business class, and wider class structures. Read more
7. Research Associate
University of Leicester
In this role you will undertake research and related administration and other activities supporting the work of a project entitled ‘Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa’ which is funded by the Arcadia Fund. Reporting to the PI (Professor D. Mattingly) and the Senior Researcher (Dr N. Sheldrick), you will be a member of a University of Leicester project group of the Endangered Archaeology project, collaborating with archaeologists at the University of Oxford and University of Durham.
Deadline | 24 July 2022
8. Assistant Professor in Modern Arabic Studies (Fixed Term)
University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is seeking to appoint an Assistant Professor in Modern Arabic Studies in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies to begin on 1 October 2022. The appointment is for 12 months in the first instance. Applicants will have the opportunity to contribute to the delivery of a stimulating programme for bright and highly-motivated students taking Arabic, Persian, Hebrew often in conjunction with a modern European language.
Deadline | 7 August 2022
9. Research Fellow in Human Geography
University of Leeds
You will work with a team of researchers on emerging trends in refugee governance in relation to cash assistance and biometrics. Under the supervision of Co-Investigator Dr. Glenda Garelli, you will be researching cash assistance and / or digital technology and humanitarian assistance in Jordan (examples may include digital and e-wallets, debit cards, Iris scan technologies used in the provision of humanitarian aid).
Deadline | 2 September 2022
10. Call for Papers – War, Gender and Displacement: The Impact of Forced Migration on Families in the Middle East and North Africa
Conference | German-Jordanian University | 9 October 2022
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to demonstrate to what extent the emergence of new understandings of gender socialisation, informed by grassroots and top-down approaches, can contribute to securing sustainable societal well-being. Exploring the changing demographics of host societies through the spread, speed and scale of refugees, this conference examines the different socio-religious, economic and legal challenges host societies in various countries in the Middle East have faced since the beginning of the 21st century. The focus of the conference lies in the changing nature of family structures and their relationships as well as gender roles influenced through and by migration processes.
Deadline | 1 September 2022
11. ASPIRANTUM is organizing a Persian language winter school in Yerevan, Armenia, from December 5 till December 30, 2022.
For more details and to apply, please visit: https://aspirantum.com/courses/persian-language-winter-school
Posted in: Academic items- July 23, 2022
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