29 NOV 2022 · When an earthquake shook Palestine, Transjordan and the south of Lebanon and Syria in 1927, terms such as the Richter scale or plate tectonics which we now use to talk about seismic events were still a thing of the future. In global science, scholars were debating what caused earthquakes and were trying to work out how to measure their power and impacts. This lecture looks at how local scientists, journalists and government officials in the 1920s Levant thought about and reacted to earthquakes and how they fit into the broader cultural and political discourses of the day.

29 NOV 2022 · In Jerusalem, what you see and what is true are two different things. Maps divide the walled Old City into four quarters, yet that division doesn’t reflect the reality of mixed and diverse neighbourhoods. Beyond the crush and frenzy of its major religious sites, much of the Old City remains little known to visitors, its people overlooked and their stories untold. This webinar highlights voices of the communities of the Old City by bringing into dialogue the writings of author/journalist Matthew Teller and artist/academic Bisan Abu Eisheh. Teller’s latest book ‘Nine Quarters of Jerusalem’ is a highly original ‘biography’ of the Old City and its communities, evoking the city’s depth and cultural diversity, from its ancient past to its political present. Abu Eisheh is a lifelong resident of the Old City, whose academic and artistic works investigate history, society and politics through the lost details of grand narratives. This webinar took place on the occasion of the US release of ‘Nine Quarters of Jerusalem’, and featured a presentation on the book’s findings, followed by a discussion led by Abu Eisheh exploring insider/outsider dynamics that shape understandings, policies and communities of Jerusalem.

29 NOV 2022 · Rebel populism tells the story of the Syrian uprising through the eyes of migrant workers in Beirut. Workers from Syria have maintained a presence in Lebanon for decades. There was a time when their wages stretched further back home. However, from the mid-2000s, liberalising reforms saw accelerating levels of poverty. Migration shifted from an ‘opportunity’ to a survivalist strategy.   

26 MAY 2022 · It is commonplace to seek to enforce international law as a means of vindicating the rights of the Palestinian people, including, fundamentally, the right to liberation. Legal “tools” deployed to dismantle the “master’s house” of colonial oppression, to borrow from Audre Lorde. But the international legal system is embedded with the ideology and techniques of imperialism and colonialism. Is international law not, then, part of the “master’s house”? Would the implementation of international law necessarily bring about Palestinian liberation? The lecture, based on a new article in the Palestine Yearbook of International Law, provides a critical evaluation of what is at stake when international law is invoked in the context of the Palestinian struggle. How and to what extent does it speak to the fundamental question of Palestinian liberation? About the speaker: Dr Ralph Wilde is a member of the Faculty of Laws at UCL, University of London, where he teaches and researches on international law and convenes the “‘decolonizing’ law” public lecture series. He is currently at Residential Fellow at the CBRL Kenyon Institute in Al Quds.  His current research focuses on the extraterritorial application of international human rights law and the international law aspects of the Israel-Palestine situation. His previous work on the concept of trusteeship over people and territorial administration by international organizations includes his book International Territorial Administration: How Trusteeship and the Civilizing Mission Never Went Away (OUP), awarded the Certificate of Merit of the American Society of International Law.  He previously served on the Executive bodies of the American and European Societies of International Law, and the International Law Association.  He is a past winner of the Philip Leverhulme Prize by the UK Leverhulme Trust.

22 MAR 2022 · 16 March 2022 The heritage agenda in the Levant, whether focused on tourism, local communities, or sustainability, has typically been set by external agents. This event addresses this issue through presentations and discussion from two previous winners and co-authors of CBRL’s Contemporary Levant best paper prize – Christina Luke, 2021 – and Shatha Abu-Khafajah, 2019. The discussion will be chaired by cultural heritage specialist, Paul Burtenshaw.  In the presentation based on her and Lynn Meskell’s paper, ‘Developing Petra: UNESCO, the World Bank, and America in the desert’, Christina Luke charts the nascent development agendas for archaeological heritage and tourism at Petra, Jordan. Findings reveal that saving Petra was underwritten by an increasing American vigilance in the Middle East and technocratic tourism-as-assistance agenda resulting in an overburden of international bureaucracy and consultancy culture.   Drawing on the co-authored paper with Riham Miqdadi ‘Prejudice, military intelligence, and neoliberalism: Examining the local within archaeology and heritage practices in Jordan’ Shatha Abu-Khafaja will examine the ‘local’ within archaeology and heritage practices in Jordan. Sustainable development on the basis of local communities’ participation dominates contemporary heritage practices in Jordan. Shatha will situate archaeology and heritage within colonialism and neoliberalism to examine how, in the Arab region, local communities have shifted from periphery to centre. Despite participatory paradigms, the shifts seem to have almost always come ‘from the outside’, operating on sites and peoples alike. Shatha argues that in order to make sustainable development in the field of archaeology and heritage change has to come from within. This implies questioning western approaches and introducing conceptual and practical alternatives and options based on cultural localities. About the speakers:  Shatha Abu-Khafajah graduated as an architect from the University of Jordan in 1997. She specialized in documentation and conservation of archaeological heritage while doing her master degree in archaeology. Her PhD in cultural heritage management from Newcastle University enabled her to synthesise architecture and archaeology with special interest in establishing a sustainable approach to heritage management in the Arab region that is community-based and context-oriented. She is currently an associate professor at the Hashemite University in Zarqa, Jordan. Her research focuses on examining the relationship between people and place. Currently, she is exploring ‘the decolonial options’ in cultural and heritage studies Christina Luke is Associate Professor of Archaeology and History of Art at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. She’s conducted archaeological and ethnographic fieldwork in Central America, Mexico, the Balkans, and Turkey. Her professional background includes the US Department of State as well as training programmes with the governments of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Serbia, Montenegro, and Turkey. Her research has been funded by the US National Endowment for the Humanities, US National Science Foundation, British Cultural Protection Fund, and the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council. Her current projects focus on food and society, Ottoman conservation policies, and the historiography of archaeology and preservation in the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey. This work grew from journal articles and her 2019 book, A Pearl in Peril: Heritage and Diplomacy in Turkey (Oxford University Press). She also serves as Editor for the Journal of Field Archaeology. About the chair: Paul Burtenshaw is an independent specialist in cultural heritage and sustainable development. He has worked on a number of community development and tourism projects in Jordan and globally. Burtenshaw holds a PhD from UCL in heritage and economic development and was the Director of Projects at Sustainable Preservation Initiative between 2014 and 2019.

28 FEB 2022 · 23 February 2022 This webinar explores the history, archaeology and architecture of this historic city, located in central Israel. Ramla is significant because it was the only new city founded by the Muslim Arabs within Palestine and for a short period functioned as capital. From the eighth to the tenth century Ramla grew to be the most populous city in Palestine extending over a vast area with different quarters for Jews, Christians and Muslims. However, by the end of the eleventh century the city had fallen into decline and when the Crusaders arrived, much of the city was uninhabited. After the expulsion of the Crusaders, the city was rebuilt both as a staging post on the trade route between Cairo and Damascus and also the principal stop-over for Christian pilgrims travelling from Jaffa to Jerusalem. After the creation of Israel in 1948 the city once more fell into decline- a transition which has been captured in the best-selling book The Lemon Tree by Sandy Tolan. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ About the speaker: Andrew Petersen is Director of Research in Islamic Archaeology at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. He studied medieval history and archaeology at St Andrews followed by an MPhil in Islamic Architecture at Oxford. His PhD at Cardiff University concentrated on the development of urban centres in medieval and Ottoman Palestine. He has worked in and carried out research in a number of countries of the Middle East and Africa including, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Turkmenistan, the UAE, Oman, Syria, Qatar, Kenya and Tanzania. He has also worked in British archaeology with a speciality in recording standing buildings. He is a member of the Institute for Archaeologists and a fellow of the Royal historical Society. He has published a number of books on different aspects of the architecture and archaeology of the Islamic world including most recently an edited volume on Ramla in collaboration with Denys Pringle. About the discussants: Richard Piran McClary is a Senior Lecturer in Islamic Art and Architecture at the University of York, and the Research Director of the British Institute of Persian Studies. has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh. His research focuses primarily on medieval Islamic architecture, from Anatolia to Central Asia, and on Iranian overglaze ceramics from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. His first two monographs examined Rum Seljuq Architecture and Qarakhanid Architecture respectively, and his third monograph, currently in press, with be the first comprehensive study of mina’i ware. He is currently working on a project to examine lajvardina ware, and editing what will be the first major book on the use of stucco in Islamic architecture. He has conducted field work across West and Central Asia and has lectured extensively on Islamic art and architecture around the world. Maher Y. Abu-Munshar is Associate Professor of Islamic History at Qatar University. He completed his PhD in 2003 in Islamic History at the University of Dundee. His teaching and research expertise lies in the areas of Islamic history, with a special interest in the history of Jerusalem, history of Muslim – Christian Relations and the Crusaders. He is the author of Islamic Jerusalem and Its Christians: A History of Tolerance and Tensions (IB Tauris Publishers, 2007 & 2013) as well as many articles on different aspects of Jerusalem, Islamic history, Christian-Muslim Relations and the study of Islam and Muslims. He is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ Watch the webinar on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds4sURIihNc

19 JAN 2022 · 19 January 2022 Bringing together a vivid array of analog and non-traditional sources, including colonial archives, newspaper reports, literature, oral histories and interviews, Buried in the Red Dirt tells a story of life, death, and reproduction, and missing bodies and experiences, during and since the British colonial period in Palestine. Using transnational feminist reading practices of existing and new archives, Frances Hasso moves beyond authorized frames of collective pain and heroism. Looking at their day-to-day lives, where Palestinians suffered most from poverty, illness, and high rates of infant and child mortality, Hasso's book shows how ideologically and practically, racism and eugenics shaped British colonialism and Zionist settler-colonialism in Palestine in different ways, especially informing health policies. She examines Palestinian anti-reproductive desires and practices, before and after 1948, critically engaging with demographic scholarship that has seen Zionist commitments to Jewish reproduction projected onto Palestinians. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Core. About the speaker: Frances S. Hasso is Professor in the Program in Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies at Duke University. She holds secondary appointments in the Department of Sociology and the Department of History. She was a 2018-2019 Fellow at the National Humanities Center. She is an Editor Emerita of the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (2015-2018). Her scholarship focuses on gender and sexuality in the Arab world.