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Teaching students at Armenia's oldest and foremost university is a grateful and rewarding task. Svante Lundgren from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies speaks of experience. Yerevan State University is Armenia's oldest, largest and most prestigious university. It turns one hundred years this year and was thus founded during the short time, 1918-20, when the country was independent before it was

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/lectures-armenia-very-much-appreciated - 2025-10-23

Edinburgh University are launching a free online course "The Sharia and Islamic Law: An Introduction". The course brings together a range of academic to help learners think critically about religious law and its many diverse manifestations in different times and places.  

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/free-online-course-sharia-and-islamic-law-introduction - 2025-10-23

The documentary film "Reformisten – den kvindelige imam" is about Sherin Khankan, Scandinavia's first female imam. In 2016, Sherin Mariam opened the Mosque in Copenhagen, one of the first mosques in Europe led by women. They struggle for a reading of the Quran marked by tolerance, equality and Islamic feminism. The film has attracted a lot of attention and started this year's Copenhagen Internatio

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/filmreformisten-den-kvindelige-imam-wednesday-may-8 - 2025-10-23

Congratulations to Nazanin Shahrokni, Assistant Professor at Syracuse Univesrsity and Guest Researcher at CMES for this academic year for the completion of her book Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran, an outline of which she presented in a CMES public lecture back in February in a packed lecture hall. Women in Place offers a gripping inquiry into gender segregation policies

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/women-place-politics-gender-segregation-iran - 2025-10-23

Fanny Christou and Spyros Sofos have just had a chapter published in The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of Diasporas, Media, and Culture, published in association with the International Association for Media and Communication Research. Their contribution in the book focuses on the “Physical and Virtual Spaces Among the Palestinian Diaspora in Malmo” and is based on extensive fieldwork in Skåne and elsew

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/physical-and-virtual-spaces-among-palestinian-diaspora-malmo - 2025-10-23

The 14th international SIEF* congress´s theme is Track Changes: Reflecting on a Transforming World draws upon both the ethnological explorations of human life and its continual change as well as the transforming, yet constant, Camino. Maria Frederika Malmström (Lund University/Columbia University) will participate in the congress with a paper on how political active Cairenes are navigating suspici

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/navigating-ocean-suspicion-affective-politics-and-materiality-cairo - 2025-10-23

Associate Professor Maria Frederika Malmström in conversation with Jonas Otterbeck in London. Associate Professor Maria Frederika Malmström is in London hosted by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations (ISMC), to give a talk entitled "Urban Bodies in the Cityscape of Cairo: Passion, Despair and Entanglement". The talk, a conversation with Jona

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/urban-bodies-cityscape-cairo-passion-despair-and-entanglement - 2025-10-23

Ever since the birth of hip-hop in the South Bronx in New York, Islam has been a key feature of the music. Islamologist Anders Ackfeldt at Lund University analyzes several examples of this in his thesis Islamic Semiotic Resources in US Hip-Hop Culture. The hip-hop has, and still is, giving voice to weak and vulnerable groups in American society. And many of today's religious expressions are popula

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/islam-resource-struggle-american-hip-hop - 2025-10-23

The students had the opportunity to learn more about matters such as: History of the Persian language and some common phrases (Mehdi Ghavideldostkohi), Islam and the young people in the Middle East (Anders Ackfeldt) Is populism a European fruit? The experience of the Middle East (Spyros Sofos) Has peace a chance in the Middle East? (Svante Lundgren). Ellen Björklund studies her third year in the H

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/katedralskolans-history-class-had-full-day-lectures-about-middle-east - 2025-10-23

We are pleased to announce the dates of this year's Graduate Student Conference. CMES is pleased to announce this year's Graduate Student Conference, entitled "The Middle East in the Contemporary World". The conference is intended as an opportunity for students at CMES and more widely at Lund University to present and discuss their own research and ideas. Papers will be organised into panels of 3-

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-graduate-student-conference - 2025-10-23

Middle Eastern research news from Lund University. Words from the directorThe covid-19 has turned teaching, research, and ordinary university activities upside down. Still, we do not see the end of it. But the most important lesson to be learned is to adapt to future pandemics and increase resilience of society and university tasks. Indeed, technology such as Skype, Zoom, and Teams has proven inva

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/middle-east-forum-newsletter-10-april-2020 - 2025-10-23

CMES welcomes affiliated researcher Orwa Ajjoub! CMES is pleased to welcome orwa [dot] ajjoub [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Orwa Ajjoub), who will be working on a report discussing the future of Islamic State. Orwa's research focuses on the theology of Salafi-Jihadi groups. He recently graduated with an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from CMES, with a thesis discussing the theological aspects of the s

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/op-eds-salafi-jihadi-groups - 2025-10-23

On Wednesday 20th of March, CMES staff and students came together to celebrate Nowruz. The celebration was organised by Mehdi Ghavideldostkohi as part of CMES' Persian Language instruction, and included staff and students showing off their cooking with a pot-luck dinner including Iranian favourites ash reshteh, fesenjan, and ghormeh sabzi.  

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-celebrates-nowruz - 2025-10-23

Since its launch by Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law back in 2016, the festival has become a tradition which we have consistently supported. This year, we at CMES, support the festival with our MA in Middle Eastern Studies students playing an active role as student ambassadors and through the Centre hosting a Q&A session between Johanna Caminati Engström (LUMID) and

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-proud-be-swedish-human-rights-film-festival-partner-organization-once-more-year - 2025-10-23

CMES Associate Professor Maria Frederika Malmström's upcoming work, published by University of California Press. "This sophisticated book presents new theoretical and analytical light on the momentous events in the Arab world that began in 2011 and, more importantly, life and politics in the Arab world in the aftermath of these events. Focusing on the qualities of the sensory world, Maria Frederik

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/streets-are-talking-me-affective-fragments-sisis-egypt - 2025-10-23

Anders Ackfeldt's "Spikning" (Nailing) Ceremony for the completion of his PhD thesis. Congratulations to CMES Lecturer Anders Ackfeldt who on Thursday, 21st February nailed his PhD thesis "Islamic Semiotic Resources in US Hip-Hop Culture" to the wall in the LUX building. The "Spikning" (Nailing Ceremony) is a tradition in Swedish universities and symbolises the completion of the PhD project and it

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/islamic-semiotic-resources-us-hip-hop-culture - 2025-10-23

Workshop held at the Department of Human Geography, 6-7th February 2019. Following the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Goal 11, making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable will be the focus of the workshop’s discussions. Swedish and Turkish scholars contribute to the subject matter from the angle of an advanced capitalist country context and an emergi

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/workshop-financialisation-housing-and-violation-housing-rights-global-north-and-south - 2025-10-23

On the 31st January, Philip Proudfoot (anthropology, University of Bath, UK, and Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University, Sweden) and Mahdi Zaidan, independent researcher and activist, Beirut, Lebanon, presented a paper in a EuroStorie research seminar organised by the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives at the University of Helsinki. Titled "Against abando

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/against-abandonment-activist-and-humanitarian-responses-lgbt-refugees-athens-and-beirut - 2025-10-23

CMES Persian instructor Mehdi Ghavideldostkohi is contributing to the UPF magazine the Perspective with a piece about the fascinating relation between Persian literature and the current pandemic outbreak – and what this means for human affinity. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, while announcing the extension of quarantine in Spain, spoke to people and recited verses of Sa’di (d.1291) the 13th

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/coronavirus-and-persian-literary-humanism - 2025-10-23

Three researchers within the Social Science Faculty at Lund University have compiled an anthology challenging the notion of the refugee crisis of 2015. The book also investigates how Germany, Sweden, and Denmark use bureaucracy to control, discipline, and shape asylum seekers’ lives. In 2015, the number of asylum seekers arriving in the EU doubled from the previous year, totalling at over 1.3 mill

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/how-northern-european-welfare-states-exercise-bureaucratic-violence-asylum-seekers - 2025-10-23