Alaa Al Aswany, author of The Dictatorship Syndrome (2019), gives a talk for the Middle East Centre seminar series. Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Antony's College, Oxford) Alaa Al Aswany is Egypt’s most celebrated novelist and essayist whose books are runaway bestsellers in Arabic and have been translated into more than 30 languages. His second nove ... Show More
Nov 21
Egypt’s Role, Identity, and Foreign Policy in a River of De-Nile
This MENA Politics Series Seminar was delivered on Tuesday 18 November in the MEC’s Boardroom by Dr May Darwich (University of Birmingham) and was chaired by Professor Neil Ketchley (St Antony’s College). This paper explains Egypt’s foreign policy stagnation, with a novel argumen ... Show More
34m 45s
Oct 31
NGOization of the Palestinian civil society post-Oslo: our community-based ways out
This seminar was delivered on 28 May 2025 by St Antony’s George Antonius Birzeit Visiting Fellow, Dr Amal Nazzal, and Palestinian political and feminist organizer at Rawa, Soheir Asaad. This seminar was delivered at the Middle East Centre on 28 May 2025 by St Antony’s George Anto ... Show More
1h 5m
Jan 2018
Egypt as Effigy: Predatory Power, Hijacked History, and the Devolution of Revolution
* We apologise for the abrupt ending of this podcast. The last few minutes of the recording were corrupted.
Speaker: Adel Iskandar, Simon Fraser University
Seven years since the popular uprising that shook Egypt, the relationships between state, society, social movements and corp ... Show More
1h 27m
Apr 2023
Tunisia’s democracy on the brink
Tunisia in North Africa was the birthplace of the Arab Spring, a wave of popular uprisings that shook or toppled authoritarian regimes in the region. But, after a decade of fragile democracy, in 2019 a new strongman, President Kais Saied, swept to power. He directed his campaign ... Show More
49m 5s
Feb 2024
Egypt Under El-Sisi (S. 13, Ep. 16)
On this week's episode of the podcast, Maged Mandour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace joins Marc Lynch to discuss his new book, Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge. His book follows President Sisi's regime in the aftermath of the coup that brought him to po ... Show More
50m 9s
Jan 2024
Is the world losing faith in democracy?
2024 will be the world’s biggest election year ever. From the United States to the UK, Taiwan to India, South Africa to Mexico, it’s estimated countries representing nearly half the world’s population will head to the polls in some form of election this year. But how much faith d ... Show More
48m 57s
Jun 2019
Ece Temelkuran on How to Save Democracy
Just a decade ago, Ece Temelkuran was recognized as the most-read political columnist in Turkey, then a thriving secular democracy. Today, she no longer lives in Turkey and her homeland is on the knife’s edge of dictatorship under the rule of President Erdogan. Temelkuran, author ... Show More
33m 14s