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Read the director’s message, explore the latest research news, discover upcoming events, and browse our recent publications. After a well-deserved summer break, the CMES team gathered for a two-day kick-off at the beautiful Åhus Seaside to strategise and coordinate for the upcoming academic year. The autumn program for the CMES seminar series is already in place, offering a wide range of exciting

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/read-latest-cmes-newsletter-0 - 2025-10-01

CMES researcher Anne Lene Stein has recently published an research article in Babylon – Nordisk tidsskrift for Midtøstenstudier. An agonistic approach to ethnography illuminates the complexities of researching in Palestine, where violent Israeli border regimes create pro- found socio-political divides. This framework highlights the methodological challenges and the transformative potential of ethn

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/agonism-and-ethnography-palestine - 2025-10-01

New article from CMES. Article written by Mahmoud A. Abd El-Basir, Yasser Hamed, Tarek Selim, Ronny Berndtsson, Ahmed M. Helmi.Read the full article here: Link to external website.Abstract:Arid mountainous regions are vulnerable to extreme hydrological events such as floodsand droughts. Providing accurate and continuous rainfall records with no gaps is crucialfor effective flood mitigation and wat

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/developing-rainfall-spatial-distribution-using-geostatistical-gap-filled-terrestrial-gauge-records - 2025-10-01

CMES director Karin Aggestam has recently published an article in Forskning och Framsteg. She presents the article at a public event on justice at Playhouse Theatre, Stockholm, 6 October, 7pmRead the article (in Swedish) here: https://fof.se/artikel/ar-en-rattvis-fred-mellan-israel-och-palestina-mojlig/Read more about the public event: https://www.biljettkiosken.se/event/251006-fof-en_kvall_om_rat

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/prospect-just-peace-israel-palestine-0 - 2025-10-01

CMES researchers Pinar Dinc and Lina Eklund have published a new policy brief: From Conflict to Peace: The PKK’s Disarmament and the Green Potential of Peace in the Middle East. The PKK’s decision to disarm in 2025 presents a historic opportunity to transform peacebuilding in the Middle East. Beyond ending decades of armed conflict, this moment allows for addressing the deep ecological damage left

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/conflict-peace-pkks-disarmament-and-green-potential-peace-middle-east - 2025-10-01

The ECO-Syria research team at the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), Lund University, convened its second and final workshop on 15–16 September 2025 at the Pufendorf Institute for Advanced Studies in Lund. Titled “ECO-Syria: Exploring Conflict–Environment Interactions for Sustainable Development and Conservation”, the event formed part of the ECO-Syria research project funded by t

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/eco-syria-workshop-explores-environmental-politics-and-civil-society-post-conflict-syria - 2025-10-01

The Dialogue Police Units in Lund and Malmö visited CMES for a guest lecture on Israel-Palestine by CMES director Karin Aggestam. The Dialogue Police are tasked with maintaining order and ensuring safety for all participants in demonstrations. They also act as a channel of communication and knowledge between the police and groups organizing public expressions of opinion. A central part of their wo

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/dialogue-police-visiting-cmes-lecture - 2025-10-01

New article from CMES HighlightsBubbler system enhances sustainable water and salinity management in the Jemna oasis.HYDRUS-1D simulated irrigation scenarios under present and future climate conditions.Optimal irrigation scheduling increases yields and reduces salinity during fruit stages.Climate change may cut yields by 45 %, highlighting the need for sustainable practices.Read full article hereA

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/strategies-present-and-future-bubbler-irrigation-system-management-saharan-date-palm-oasis-under - 2025-10-01

Associate Professor Pinar Dinc (Department of Political Science), together with colleagues from several faculties at Lund University and external partners, has received seed funding from the Strategic Research Areas of Lund University for the project Extreme-Loss: Agricultural Workers’ Livelihoods under Climate Change-Related Extreme Weather Events and Biodiversity Loss. The project brings togethe

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/extreme-loss-new-project-receives-seed-funding-explore-farming-futures-changing-climate - 2025-10-01

Writing retreat spring & autumn 2026 Apply by 20 november 2025 The Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) supports writing retreats on Middle East research with the aim to finalise an article, book chapter, edited volume or a book for publication in peer-reviewed outlets. 4 writing retreats will be granted during 2026. CMES offers office space and modern research facilities in a stimula

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/now-open-cmes-call-writing-retreats-1 - 2025-10-01

Yemen is home to religious and sectarian minorities who represent about 0.5% of the total population. In addition to Muslims, there is a minority of Jews, who’s presence has drastically shrunk over the years due to the multiple violations and displacement they were subjected to. Yemen also has a Bahai minority, who are currently estimated to number around 2,000 individuals. They also have been sub

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/book-minorities-yemen-reality-and-challenges - 2025-10-01

Middle Eastern research news from Lund University. Words from the director: The covid-19 will transform the ways we work and socialize in a manner we can still not oversee. Already now most research and higher teaching are done by distance mode. Even so, many of the planned research activities and meetings during the spring have had to be cancelled or postponed. Also, the Middle East is preparing

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/middle-east-forum-newsletter-9-march-2020 - 2025-10-01

CyberOrient welcomes Anders Ackfeldt at Lund University in Sweden as a new Managing Editor along with Vit Sisler at Charles University. An expanded CyberOrient, an official open-access journal of the American Anthropological Association, is now up and ready for surfing. The renewed website, cyberorient.net, now has archived all past articles in PDF. CyberOrient is devoted to research on the impact

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-anders-ackfeldt-new-editor-journal-cyberorient - 2025-10-01

In January-February 2020, three researchers affiliated with CMES travelled to Khartoum, Sudan for the official kick-off seminar and workshop of a 3-year project that is funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR), FORMAS and SIDA and entitled: "Resilience in Urban Sudan (RUS): An Interdisciplinary Spatial and Temporal Study of Social Cohesion and Resilience to Tackle the Consequences of Climate an

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-affiliated-researchers-launch-climate-research-project-sudan - 2025-10-01

This book analyses the tensions that emerge within strong welfare states when faced with large migration flows. It also interrogates the phenomenon of the 2015 'refugee crisis' and its foreplay and aftermath in the context of Northern Europe and challenges the notion of crisis as a feature of contemporary realities. "With an eye to the daily strategies and experiences of newly settled populations,

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/new-book-refugees-and-violence-welfare-bureaucracies-northern-europe-edited-cmes-dalia-abdelhady-and - 2025-10-01

The rise of sectarianism in the Middle East and North Africa after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq has led to a new conceptual category – arguably as political as it is religious – which Rola El-Husseini has previously termed the ‘new Shi’a’. In this formulation, groups not traditionally associated with Twelver Shiism, such as the ‘Alawis of Syria or the Zaydis of Yemen, were suddenly deemed by jou

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/political-exigency-or-religious-affinity-sectarianism-contemporary-arab-world-new-article-cmes-rola - 2025-10-01

This article compares the discourses of building nations and national identities fostered in the content of school textbooks in the Republic of Turkey—a modern, territorial nation‐state—and the Autonomous Administration of North and East of Syria (hereafter Rojava)—an alternative state system model established in the power vacuum proceeding Bashar al‐Assad regime withdrawal from expansive territor

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/content-school-textbooks-nation-states-and-stateless-autonomies-comparison-turkey-and-autonomous - 2025-10-01

Middle Eastern research news from Lund University Message from the director The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is an exceptionally dynamic area that has undergone great changes politically as well as economically during the latest decades. The region is likely to continue to display rapid and sudden developments during coming decades. Demographically the region will almost double its populati

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/middle-east-forum-newsletter-8-february-2020 - 2025-10-01

An innovative project has received support from the Swedish Institute under its “support for cooperation with academics from Turkey” scheme. “Turkey Beyond Borders: Critical Voices, New Perspectives” aims to foster collaboration between academics in Sweden and scholars from Turkey whose academic freedoms are implicitly or explicitly curtailed and violated. The website is now launched, with 2 vodca

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/seminar-and-vodcast-series-draws-attention-infringements-academic-freedom-turkey-and-provides-forum - 2025-10-01

New article by CMES researcher Orwa Ajjoub in The Conflict Archives - a platform created to showcase work focused on conflict, insurgency and politics across the globe including the Middle East, South Asia, Africa and Central America. The website is a collection of news, articles, insights and analyses supported by in-depth analysis and research of contemporary conflict zones by several researcher

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/orwa-ajjoub-after-baghdadis-death-why-did-islamic-state-fighters-give-pledge-their-new-leader - 2025-10-01