An Archetypal Revival: Reimagining Chivalry in a Cross-Cultural Context
Lecture/seminar
This dissertation investigates the concept of chivalry within Iranian civilization as a dynamic and evolving imaginative framework that shapes ideals of heroism and identity. Moving beyond conventional views of chivalry as a static code of conduct, the study reveals how these ideals have been…
Book Discussion: "International Political Economy and the Global South" (2025)
Book launch
Dr Zaynab El Bernoussi will discuss her new co-authored book with Dr Jessie Moritz on International Political Economy and the Global South: Perspectives from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East (2025). The primary goal of this new book is to provide an alternative or…
CAIS Public Lecture Series | States and Social Hierarchies in Kuwait and the Arab Gulf Region
Lecture/seminar
How do autocratic regimes instrumentalize ascriptive identity to maintain political power? I argue that by enforcing status boundaries for privileged groups, status rewards act as a club good for those in a regime's coalition. To demonstrate the empirical implications of these ideas, I…
CAIS Public Lecture Series | Islam in a Globalised World: Local, National, and International Dimensions
Lecture/seminar
What is the role of Islam as a lived, embodied faith in shaping individual subjectivities, collective identities, and political practices across different spatial scales? This lecture will critically examine the vernacularization of Islam—how global Islamic discourses are translated, localized, and…
A Master Class and Workshop with CAIS HDR Students and ECRs on “Researching Social and Political Movements in the Middle East and Central Asia"
Workshop
This interactive workshop will explore theoretical and methodological approaches to studying Islamic social and political movements in the Middle East and Central Asia. How and under what structural, political, and cultural conditions does Islamism emerge as an oppositional identity? What…
CAIS Public Lecture Series | Severing Colonial Relationality: Towards an Islamicate Theory of Autonomy and Refusal
Lecture
In this paper I seek to bring to the fore the theological sources of everyday resistance in the Islamicate, focusing specifically on emancipatory detachment. In doing so, I think with anti-colonial theories of relationality and strategies of refusal, both generatively and critically. While the…
CAIS Public Lecture Series | Turkey in Transition: Authoritarian Drift, Public Protest, and the Future of Islamism
Lecture/seminar
This timely lecture will examine the political and ideological transformations unfolding in Turkey, with a focus on recent events such as the arrest of the Mayor of Istanbul and the ensuing protests. Are we witnessing the reactivation of civil society and a potential turning point in Turkish…