NEMEPW 2011
The Northeast Middle East Politics Workshop (NEMEPW) was established by a group of scholars specializing on the Middle East. The group held its first annual meeting at Yale University in March 2007, its second meeting at Princeton University in 2008, then Cornell University, and at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in March 2010. The Middle East Studies Program at Brown University is hosting this year’s conference on March 11 to 13, 2011.
The conference brings together a talented group of anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists, sociologists and legal scholars who work on contemporary politics in the MENA. The workshop provides a forum for scholars to discuss their research, comment and offer constructive feedback on the work of others, and develop and consolidate a cross-disciplinary network of scholars in the Northeast working on the region. Another key goal of the workshop is to discuss recent scholarly trends in the field of Middle East Politics and to discuss ways of productively engaging with public policy.
Paper topics in previous NEMEPW meetings have spanned an array of themes and subfields and utilized a variety of theoretical perspectives and methodologies. Paper topics this year include authoritarianism and pro-democracy movements, women’s political participation, rentierism and economic development, the dynamics of civil conflict, and the impact of geopolitics on political development in the Middle East.
As world events become more focused on the Middle East, the NEMEPW is emerging as an important and valuable event for scholars of the region. We are honored to hold the conference here in 2011 and welcome all our participants to Brown University.
