Protector, Partner, Powerbroker: Turkey’s Smart Power in the Arab Region Post-2011
Lecture/seminar
This thesis investigates how Turkey (now Turkiye) constructed and deployed 'smart power' across the Arab world in the ten years that followed the Arab Uprisings, examining the fusion of religious soft power, strategic communication, economic engagement, and military capability within its regional…
Iran's China Pivot: Neoclassical Realist Vision (2005-2024)
Lecture/seminar
For more than twenty years, Iran’s consistent eastward shift occurred despite significant political and ideological disparities among Iranian leaders. Why did Iran pivot toward China from 2005 to 2024? What explains this continuity among otherwise diverse administrations? During this time, Iran…
CAIS Public Lecture Series | Remembering the 1931-1933 Kazakh Famine: Memory and Representation
Lecture
This talk examines the evolving memory of the Kazakh famine of 1931–1933, one of the most devastating yet under-researched episodes of mass starvation in the 20th century. While the famine led to the death and displacement of over a million people, its public commemoration in Kazakhstan remained…
CAIS Public Lecture Series | Regional Security Complex Theory and the Middle East
Lecture/seminar
This seminar will audit and discuss Barry Buzan and Ole Waever’s regional security complex theory (RSCT) as it relates to the Middle East. RSCT was developed over the 1990s and early 2000s around a central theme of securitization; that states are drawn together into regional or subregional clusters…
Central Asia - going green with EU assistance?
Lecture
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Central Asian (CA) republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan found themselves in a power vacuum, economically underdeveloped, needing to establish their individual sovereignties, identities, and their…
A Master Class and Workshop with CAIS HDR Students and ECRs on “Why Political Economy Matters?”
Workshop
In this Master Class, Professor Matthew Gray will explain the importance of Political economy as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that explores the interplay between political power and economic structures and how these relationships shape and are shaped by national and global social and…
CAIS Public Lecture Series | State Capitalism in the Arab Gulf Monarchies
Lecture/seminar
While scholars have understandably given emphasis to the role of oil and gas revenues in the political economy of the Arab Gulf monarchies — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — especially through rentier state theory (RST) and its variants, an…