Devastation, Imaginaries and Knowledge: Regional Junctures and Global Repercussions

Date: May 15-18, 2025

Program

The Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS) held its Seventh Conference, titled Devastation, Imaginaries and Knowledge: Regional Junctures and Global Repercussions in Beirut, Lebanon on May 15-18, 2025. The conference brought together over 400 researchers from the Arab region and the world, as well as the ACSS Board of Trustees, representatives of donor organizations, university presidents and deans, and faculty members in prominent universities around the region. To view the Program, press here. 

Theme: Devastation, Imaginaries and Knowledge: Regional Junctures and Global Repercussions

In addition to the 61 panels and 7 roundtables, the conference included 2 keynote presentations, the first delivered by Dr. Khaled Fahmy (Tufts University), titled The June 1967 Defeat: Examination, Rejection and Self Criticism, chaired by Dr. Suzanne Elizabeth Kassab (Doha Institute and Chair of the ACSS Board of Trustees), with Dr. Mohammad Bamyeh (University of Pittsburgh) as discussant, and the second by Dr. Joelle Abi Rached (American University of Beirut), titled Traumatopias: Archiving Wounds and Cities of Destruction, chaired by Dr. Rima Majed (American University of Beirut and ACSS Board of Trustees), with Dr. Hanan Sabea (American University in Cairo) as a discussant. The closing session was titled Return(s), was chaired by Mr. Elias Kattar (ACSS) and brought together four speakers: Dr. Seteney Shami (ACSS) who presented a framework for theorizing Return(s) and Dr. Abaher El Sakka, (Birzeit University and ACSS Board of Trustees), Dr. Rana Sukarieh (American University of Beirut), and Dr. Omar Dahi (Hampshire College), who presented on the bittersweet experiences of return(s) to Palestine, Syria and Lebanon, after displacement and destruction.

Papers presented at the conference were organized around the following four main themes:

1) The Crisis of the World Order and the Centrality of the Arab Region

2) The Production of New Knowledge: Epistemology and Technology

3) Forms of Being: Resistance, Steadfastness, Silence, and Loss

4) Shaping the Future in Academia and the Public Sphere: Narratives and Freedoms

The conference also included diverse activities, among them: the biennial meeting of the ACSS General Assembly that included a special event honoring two pioneering Palestinian researchers: Ms. Rosemary Sayigh and Dr. Shareef Kanaaneh; poster sessions by the ACSS New Generation of Social Scientists Program fellows; a debate on the universality of research ethics; the showcasing of 8 short films from the Arab region; an interactive session on global transformations in funding research and civil society; a training on data management and sharing by Datacite; presentations by MERIP and AUC Press on publishing for various audiences; a conversation with Arab-American comedian, Amer Zahr; a book exhibit (including ACSS publications) and 3 exhibitions, the Constantine Zurayk Archive, Maps of Dignity and SUMUD.

Sub-Themes

The Seventh Conference of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences was organized around four sub-themes:

1) The Crisis of the World Order and the Centrality of the Arab Region

2) The Production of New Knowledge: Epistemology and Technology

3) Forms of Being: Resistance, Steadfastness, Silence, and Loss

4) Shaping the Future in Academia and the Public Sphere: Narratives and Freedoms

Subtheme 1: The Crisis of the World Order and the Centrality of the Arab Region

The last decades have witnessed overlapping crises as well as significant political and economic shifts in the global order; the Arab Region is often at the epicenter of those structural transformations. As with the rest of the planet, the Arab region must respond to the interconnected problems of ecological tipping points, droughts and climate change and their interconnections with food and livelihood security, public health, economic precarity and social development. Privatization and deregulation policies, often implemented without transparency, have benefited an economic elite while excluding the majority of the population.  Popular uprisings in the region have also revealed the deficit of democratic governance and basic and political rights. Popular demands or aspirations for economic and social justice are consistently met with stagnant, unresponsive and increasingly authoritarian institutional structures and/or are erupting into prolonged conflicts.

The Arab region still suffers from the legacy of European colonialism and Western imperialism, which have had a long-lasting impact, shaping the political, social and economic configuration of the region.  The perception of the West and “the international order” as applying double standards in the promotion of democratic values and human rights has fueled skepticism and resistance towards these values. The region is also witnessing new economic, political, security and military linkages due to the rise of states within and outside the region that seek to project their power and foreign policy regionally and globally, creating new collaborations as well as new conflicts.

Despite the generally dismal results of this confluence of forces, the people of the region are continuously finding new ways to assert their agency over their collective future through new social movements and new imaginaries.

The Arab diaspora, composed of millions who have emigrated in search of better opportunities or fleeing conflicts is another actor with increasing importance. These communities play a crucial role both in their countries of origin and host countries, influencing the economy, politics, and culture regionally and globally.

In summary, the centrality of the Arab region in the crisis of the world order lies in its geostrategic position, its wealth of resources, and its historical legacy of intervention and resistance. To fully understand the scope of these shifts and the possibility for alternative, peaceful, just and sustainable futures, a multidimensional analysis that considers historical roots as well as contemporary and transnational dynamics is essential.

Subtheme 2: The Production of New Knowledge: Epistemology and Technology

“New knowledge for new times” has been one of the founding themes of the ACSS. New knowledge is inseparable from new ways of seeing. These are facilitated by new conceptions of what knowledge is worthy of being pursued, or a rethinking of criteria to validate it, or a foundational critique of existing knowledge and offering relevant intellectual alternatives.

This subtheme is devoted to research that shows what new knowledge is created out of conditions of devastation; it focuses on how knowledge is created, with special attention to epistemological innovations. Consistent with the overall conference theme, papers are encouraged that theorize the notion of “devastation” in all its dimensions and show how conditions of war, misery, refugee flows, impoverishment, or disaster bring about new ways of knowing that speak to, emerge from, or generate social scientific and humanistic concepts and methods appropriate to such conditions. Proposed papers may address devastation through new theories or methods of research, exploring how the experience of devastation may require reconsidering foundations of social science research, popular attitudes, policies and social movements. Encouraged as well are papers that address epistemologies of devastation comparatively, across different countries, communities or groups, or at various levels, from the global to the regional and the local.

The role of technology is central to this theme both as technologies of destruction and technologies of generation. How do the same technologies that enable surveillance, targeting and terror also enable data collection, analysis and dissemination? How do technologies become coded with social, political, or ethical values that are not universal and that impact ways of seeing, feeling and knowing? How does machine learning, AI, and new digital tools change the processes of data collection, analysis and dissemination? What are the ethical implications of these tools for researchers, participants and consumers of research?

Finally, this theme encourages reflection on how social, scientific and humanistic knowledge arising out of experiences of devastation, interrogate the relationship between what is called “global academia” and regional production and circulation of knowledge, in terms of theories, methodologies and priorities.

Subtheme 3: Forms of Being: Resistance, Steadfastness, Silence and Loss

The challenges afflicting the MENA region are decades old, yet the choices available to express and analyze forms of being are always emergent and changing and therefore require insightful and careful reading. As stories and narratives continue to emerge from the region and globally, some relate to the resistance to occupation and (neo)colonialism, others explore the steadfastness of those working towards justice, and still more convey overwhelming loss. Yet, perhaps loudest of all, are stories of the silenced – voluntarily and not.

This conference seeks to go beyond traditional knowledge expressed in writing about these themes in order to incorporate alternative forms of knowledge production and communication – visual, and auditory. By bringing awareness and inclusion to the ways in which we receive and pursue knowledge, traditional notions expressed by experts may be challenged and enriched. This methodology also allows for increased acceptance of the role of technologies, traditional and emerging, that affect forms of existence and being. How is the way we receive these stories from alternate modalities – social media, visual arts, podcasts – adding to our understanding of life-worlds? How have they inspired creative expressions of resistance, steadfastness, silence, and loss? Are academics and non–academics able to use these tools creatively to dismantle colonial epistemologies, or are they merely maintaining them? How have they affected the ways in which we receive information about the wars on and in the region? What daily practices are politicians, citizens and activists employing? How are institutions, governmental and civil, reacting? What are the challenges of incorporating fictional depictions of real events? Are these expressions promoting social solidarity or division? Are the generational experiences mutual or disparate? Should emerging forms of communication inspire re-readings of the past? How has public discourse been affected?

Finally, and importantly, what are the consequences of not analyzing and incorporating emerging and alternative forms of being and narration?

Subtheme 4: Shaping the Future in Academia and the Public Sphere: Narratives and Freedoms

The past few years have witnessed a remarkable openness in critical narratives addressing the past, present, and future of the Arab region. Social media, non-academic historical writings, and digital humanities have played a major role in redefining the boundaries between academia and public participation, which in turn has affected academic freedom and the public sphere, with relevant positive and negative implications.

Non-academic historical writings and digital humanities have led to the democratization of historical narratives production and academic work; digital platforms are enabling scholars to share their research with a wide audience and to bypass traditional scholarly gatekeepers such as peer-reviewed journals. This has resulted in the expansion of academic freedom by enabling researchers to provide alternative or different perspectives that might have no place in traditional academic spheres.

Traditional non-academic writings and digital humanities have facilitated direct interaction between scholars and the public, thus breaking the traditional divide between academia and the public sphere. Researchers can now engage in public debates, offer deep and serious analysis of current events, and make their research accessible to the non-specialist. This has enriched public discourse by adding scientific rigor to popular discourses.

Yet, the same platforms that have made room for dissonant voices can also subject scholars to online censorship and harassment. In fact, researchers engaging with controversial or politically-sensitive topics can face a societal backlash or become prone to defamation, threat or violation of their personal liberty. This can lead to self-censorship, as scholars shy away from specific topics to protect themselves, which may limit the freedom of academic research.

Moreover, with the advent of social media, scholars might feel pressured to conform to popular narratives or socially acceptable ones, even if these narratives oversimplify or distort historical facts. This could undermine academic freedom by allowing public opinion and populist ideas to affect the process of academic knowledge production.

The public sphere has also turned into a battleground for disinformation and ideological polarization, as social media platforms, in particular, can amplify misleading information or historically inaccurate narratives. Academic historians and social scientists engaged in these public debates may often find themselves confronted with false narratives, which may be intimidating and can sometimes seem like a lost battle. Academic freedom and the public sphere have undergone far-reaching changes as aresult of academic writings being merged with non-academic ones, open to social media, and engaged with digital humanities. While such changes provide opportunities for broader participation as well as more open and inclusive narratives, they also present challenges related to censorship and self-censorship, misinformation, and the decay of traditional academic authority. Overcoming such challenges involves striking a delicate balance between the values of openness, critical engagement, and ethical responsibility.

Important questions arise from this blurring of boundaries. What are the potentials for greater inclusivity in knowledge production? How does public discussion unleash the imagination to construct new potential futures? How do such imagined futures build on the past but also reinterpret and subvert it?

Organizing Committee Members

    Randa Aboubakr is Professor of English and comparative literature at Cairo University, Egypt. She is the author of The Conflict of Voices in the Poetry of Dennis Brutus and Mahmud Darwish (2004),and Co-editor (with Sarah Jurkiewicz, Hicham Ait-mansour, and Ulrike Freitag) of Spaces of Participation: Dynamics of Social and Political Change in the Arab World (2021). She has published research in the fields of Modern English literature, cultural studies, popular culture, Egyptian colloquial poetry, translation studies, and sub-Saharan African literature. She is founder and principal coordinator of the online platform: Forum for the Study of Popular Culture and has numerous published translations in the social sciences and literary translations. She has been research fellow at University of Texas at Austin, USA; Leiden University, the Netherlands; University of Florence, Italy; the Jagiellonian University, Poland; Zentrum Moderner Orient- Berlin, Germany; the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany; and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany.

    Fadma Ait Mous is currently Tenured Professor of Sociology (Professeur Habilité) at Aïn Chock Faculty of Letters and the Humanities (Hassan II University of Casablanca); Joint-director and Researcher at Laboratoire de recherche sur les différenciations socio-anthropologiques et les identités sociales (LADSIS) at the same Faculty as well as Director of the Confucius Institute and “Chargée de mission” on developing research on Social Sciences and Humanities. Among her many professional affiliations, she is Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (Beirut) and Member of the Executive Council of the Merian Center for Advanced Study in the Maghreb (MECAM, Tunis). She received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Hassan II University of Casablanca in 2012 for her work on nationalist networks from local to national. Her research interests focus on questions related to collective identities, nationalism, Amazigh culture, history and memory, gender dynamics, youth participation, and migration. Among her subsequent works are the co-edited (with Driss Ksikes) Le Métier d’intellectual [En Toutes Lettres, 2014], which won the Atlas Prize for Essays in 2015; and the co-edited (with Zakaria Kadiri) Les jeunes du Maroc: Comprendre les dynamiques pour un nouveau contrat social [Morocco’s Youth: Understanding the dynamics for a new social contract], 2021. She is fluent in Arabic, French, English, and Amazigh (tashelhit).

    Amira Badri is a PhD holder in social development studies from the University of Reading, United Kingdom. She has been an academic and researcher since 1986, working in social development, women empowerment in economy, refugees and migration studies. She has established women and youth advocacy and training centers in rural areas. Amira is a focal person and member in the UN-academic impact for SDG5. She has worked in Gulf Universities for 13 years (University of King Saud, King Abdul-Aziz, University of Sharjah), and has been a short-term visitor to the University of Manchester, UK and University of Oldenburg, Germany. She is an advisory board member for the African women work-in history, a consortium of four African universities, Institut des mondes africains (IMAF)/Paris, CNRS, and the European Research Council. She is an affiliated senior member in the refugees and laws initiative at the School of advanced studies, University of London.  Author of the book “Fundamental of development and social planning”, published in Arabic. She has been a member of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences since 2017.

    Mohammed Bamyeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and the incoming editor of the International Sociology Review of Books (ISRB). He has held the Hubert Humphrey chair in International Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the SSRC-MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. He has previously taught at Georgetown University, New York University, and the University of Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990. His subsequent areas of interest have included Islamic studies, sociology of religion, political and cultural globalization, civil society and social movements, and comparative social and political theory. His books include Anarchy as Order: The History and future of Civic Humanity (2009); Of Death and Dominion: The Existential Foundations of Governance (2007); The Ends of Globalization (2000); and The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse (1999, winner of the Albert Hourani Honorable Mention from the Middle East Studies Association). He has also edited Palestine America (published as a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, 2003), the forthcoming Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East (2011); and co-edited Drugs in Motion: Mind and Body Altering Substances in the World’s Cultural Economy (published as a special issue of Cultural Critique, 2009).

    Nacer Djabi is professor of higher education at Algeria 2 University. He is the senior consultant for the Arab Council for the Social Sciences focal point in Algeria. His interests lie in political sociology and he has published several articles on the Amazigh movements in North Africa, in addition to many other publications concerning the social and trade union movements in Algeria.

    Amina El Mekaoui is a researcher at the Regional Research Center, Dr. Hideyo Noguchi in Mexico, specializing in the development of sustainable energy policies in Yucatán. She is a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI Level 1) and serves on the Board of Directors of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences in Lebanon, where she also chairs the membership committee.

    With over 15 years of experience leading advocacy projects funded by international organizations in North Africa and the Middle East, Dr. El Mekaoui’s expertise spans climate change, sustainability, energy, international migration, gender, and local development. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a Master’s degree in Family Sociology from Mohammed V University in Rabat, Morocco, as well as a Master’s and PhD in Social Anthropology from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Iztapalapa, Mexico. Her work focuses on energy policy advocacy, directing federally funded projects that aim to integrate social and environmental sustainability into the energy sector.

    Khaled Fahmy ‎‎is the Edward Keller Professor of North Africa and the Middle East at Tufts University. Previously he was His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Modern Arabic Studies at the University of Cambridge. His research interests include the social and cultural history of the modern Middle East, with an emphasis on the history of law, medicine, the army and the police in nineteenth-century Egypt. In addition to his academic publications, he also writes for the press in both Arabic and English. He is a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton and has been elected to the British Academy. He holds a D.Phil. from the Faculty of Modern History (Social and Economic History) at the University of Oxford.

    Mary Kawar is a social and economic policy expert and former Jordanian Minister for Planning and International Cooperation.  She  served at the the International Labour Organisation  for 20 years where she  held senior positions in the ILO headquarters in Geneva, the Regional Office for Arab States in Beirut, and was the director of ILO in East Africa  based in Dar El Salaam.  Her areas of expertise range from labour policy and employment, social protection, gender, youth and refugee livelihoods . She is currently the director of Tiraz: Widad Kawar Home for Arab Dress and is serving on the Board of Directors  at the Jordan Central Bank.  She is also a trustee and board member to several national and regional think tanks and NGOs.  During her career she  had bridged academic research with  development policy and programming. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.

    Rana Kazkaz is an award-winning filmmaker, associate professor, and communication program director at Northwestern University in Qatar. Her films have been recognized at the world’s leading film festivals including Cannes, Sundance, Toronto, Tallinn, Tribeca, and Abu Dhabi. With a focus on Syrian stories, her films include The Translator, Mare Nostrum, Searching for the Translator, Deaf Day, and Kemo Sabe. Her current film projects include The Foolishness of God, The Hakawati’s Daughter, Love-45 and Honest Politics. Her articles have been published in the Journal of Screenwriting and Alphaville Journal of Film and Screen Media. She is a member of the Académie des César, was awarded the Roberta Buffett Visiting Professorship at Northwestern University, and is a MacDowell fellow. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University/Moscow Art Theater, BA from Oberlin College, and was selected for the American Film Institute’s Directing Workshop for Women.

    Samer Kherfi holds a PhD in economics from the Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is head of Department and Associate Professor at the Department of Economics of the American University in Sharjah. He teaches Middle East economics, international economics, econometrics and introductory economics. He has several publications.

    Eileen Kuttab is an academic activist and feminist. She is an Associate Professor in Sociology, a founding director of the Institute of Women Studies at Birzeit University from 1998-2008; and director from 2014 to 2016. She is a founding   board member of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (ACSS) based in Beirut, Lebanon until 2014 and is currently the chair of the focal point of the ACSS in Ramallah, Palestine. Her research interests and publications are mainly focused on Palestinian women’s movement, social movements, gender and alternative development in a colonial context, in addition to higher education as a political practice.

    Rima Majed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Her work focuses on the fields of social inequality, social movements, sectarianism, conflict, and violence. Dr. Majed has completed her PhD at the University of Oxford where she conducted her research on the relationship between structural changes, social mobilization, and sectarianism in Lebanon. She was a visiting fellow at the at Princeton University in 2018/19, and is currently a research fellow at Harvard University (2022/23).  Her work has appeared in several journals, books and media platforms such as Social Forces, American Political Science Review, Mobilization, Routledge Handbook on the Politics of the Middle East, Middle East Law and Governance Journal, Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East, Global Dialogue, Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology, Al Jumhuriya, OpenDemocracy, Jacobin, Middle East Eye, CNN and Al Jazeera English. She is also the co-editor of The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution (I.B. Tauris, 2022), and the Principal Investigator on the “Critical Approaches to Development Studies” project at the American University of Beirut.