Published 28 May 2025 Applications are now open for the CMES Call for Research Initiation. The application deadline is 18 August 2025. The Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) provides seed money for research initiation and preparation of applications for national and international research calls. Two such research grants will be offered during the autumn of 2025. CMES offers office s

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-call-research-initiation-2025 - 2025-07-03

Published 4 June 2025 How do ideas about ’the nation’ take place locally? How are imaginaries of ’a people’ represented and challenged in urban memory and forgetting? With what effects on community formation, polarisation, and everyday urban life? Concluding the three-year CMES project Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities: Exploring the Politics of Memory, Space, and Religion, this symposium assembles sch

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/upcoming-cmes-symposium-beyond-sacredsecular-cities-imagining-nation-urban-space - 2025-07-03

Published 5 June 2025 CMES researcher Altea Pericoli has published an article in The International Spectator about Gulf States’ foreign aid. Pericoli, A. (2025). Understanding Gulf States’ Foreign Aid: A Conceptual Framework. The International Spectator, 1–18. Read the article here.About Altea PericoliDr. Altea Pericoli is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in geopolitics and regional cooperation at t

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/understanding-gulf-states-foreign-aid-conceptual-framework - 2025-07-03

Published 10 June 2025 Lund University PhD student Anne Lene Stein will defend her thesis at the Department of Political Science. On 13 June, Anne Lene Stein will defend her PhD thesis titled Agonism against the odds: Epistemic disruptions and bodies of dissent in Palestine and Israel at the Department of Political Science, Lund University.The thesis explores how protests and performances in Pales

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/upcoming-phd-viva-agonism-against-odds-epistemic-disruptions-and-bodies-dissent-palestine-and-israel - 2025-07-03

Published 12 June 2025 CMES researcher Adam Almqvist has recently published about meaning-making and the politics of intergenerational injustice in Jordan. Almqvist, A. (2025) ”Meaning-Making and the Politics of Intergenerational Injustice in Jordan.” APSA-MENA Newsletter, 8 (1) Read the publication here.About Adam AlmqvistAdam Almqvist (Ph.D., University of Chicago 2023) is currently a Postdoctor

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/meaning-making-and-politics-intergenerational-injustice-jordan - 2025-07-03

Published 17 June 2025 On 13 June, Anne Lene Stein successfully defended her PhD thesis "Agonism against the odds: Epistemic disruptions and bodies of dissent in Palestine and Israel" at the Department of Political Science. Anne Lene Stein's thesis explores how protests and performances in Palestine and Israel are used to challenge dominant versions of history and identity - especially those that

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/agonism-against-odds-epistemic-disruptions-and-bodies-dissent-palestine-and-israel - 2025-07-03

Published 18 June 2025 On June 12–13, CMES hosted the symposium "Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities: Imagining the Nation in Urban Space" in the LUX building at Lund University. The event marked the conclusion of the three-year research project Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities: Exploring the Politics of Memory, Space, and Religion, led by project chair Torsten Janson.Gathering both Swedish and international

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-symposium-explores-urban-memory-beyond-sacredsecular-divides - 2025-07-03

Published 18 June 2025 CMES is happy to announce the new MECW project for 2025-2028 which will focus on satellite water investigation of fragile terrains in the Middle East. The Middle East faces a critical water crisis exacerbated by climate change-induced aridity, unsustainable overexploitation, weak governance, and the weaponization of water in conflicts. Rising temperatures and prolonged droug

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/new-mecw-project-satellite-water-investigation-fragile-terrains-monitoring-and-managing - 2025-07-03

Published 24 June 2025 Read the May-June CMES Newsletter about upcoming events, recent research activities, and new publications. The CMES Newsletter offers a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Middle Eastern research. It is distributed regularly to a diverse audience of scholars, both within Lund University and beyond. Each issue features:Message From the DirectorLatest Research NewsUpcomin

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/read-latest-cmes-newsletter-52 - 2025-07-03

Published 25 June 2025 This CMES Regional Outlook (2025:2) by Lisa Strömbom focuses on the global responses to the escalating humanitarian crisis in Gaza. In February 2025, a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas came into force, briefly easing the intense humanitarian crisis in Gaza after months of devastating conflict. The truce was structured in three phases. The first stage was implemen

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-regional-outlook-global-responses-escalating-humanitarian-crisis-gaza - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 7 April 2020 Minorities in Yemen 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 a

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/book-minorities-yemen-reality-and-challenges - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 30 March 2020 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 meeting

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/middle-east-forum-newsletter-9-march-2020 - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 31 March 2020 CyberOrient is devoted to research on the impact of cyberspace and its representation on the Middle East, North Africa and wider Islamic world in Asia. CyberOrient welcomes Anders Ackfeldt at Lund University in Sweden as a new Managing Editor along with Vit Sisler at Charles University. An expanded CyberO

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-anders-ackfeldt-new-editor-journal-cyberorient - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 30 March 2020 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

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/cmes-affiliated-researchers-launch-climate-research-project-sudan - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 25 March 2020 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

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/new-book-refugees-and-violence-welfare-bureaucracies-northern-europe-edited-cmes-dalia-abdelhady-and - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 10 March 2020 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’. Rola El-Husseini In this formulation, groups not traditionally a

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/political-exigency-or-religious-affinity-sectarianism-contemporary-arab-world-new-article-cmes-rola - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 5 March 2020 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 establi

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/content-school-textbooks-nation-states-and-stateless-autonomies-comparison-turkey-and-autonomous - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 28 February 2020 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. Middle East Forum Newsletter #8 February, 2020 The region

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/middle-east-forum-newsletter-8-february-2020 - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 15 June 2020 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 a

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/seminar-and-vodcast-series-draws-attention-infringements-academic-freedom-turkey-and-provides-forum - 2025-07-03

By maria [dot] lofstedt [at] cme [dot] lu [dot] se (Maria Löfstedt) - published 25 February 2020 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

https://www.cmes.lu.se/article/orwa-ajjoub-after-baghdadis-death-why-did-islamic-state-fighters-give-pledge-their-new-leader - 2025-07-03