Opening Remarks by Fawaz Traboulsi
February 10, 2026
Fawaz Traboulsi
Arabic version
I would have liked to call my talk ‘Development in Times of Monsters’, but the Gramsci quote became suspicious since it was used in a tweet by an unexpected Gramscist, the Saudi ambassador in Lebanon (November 2021). With this goes the “pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” and I will keep the rest for Gramsci for myself.
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From Mines to Streets: The Anatomy of Extractivism and Protest in Tunisia’s CPG Legacy
February 10, 2026
Hèla Yousfi
Arabic version
The case of the Gafsa Phosphate and Railway Company- Compagnie des
phosphates et du chemin de fer de Gafsa- (CPG), founded in 1897 under
French colonial rule, offers a revealing lens into how colonial
extractivist capitalism structured not only Tunisia’s economic landscape
but also its patterns of labor organization, social hierarchies, and
political struggles.
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Farming the Desert: Oil, Agriculture, and Technology in the Arabian Gulf
February 10, 2026
Cynthia Gharios
Arabic version
In one of the driest regions on earth, glass-and-steel greenhouses glow under the desert sun. Inside, rows of tomatoes, strawberries, and lettuce thrive in climate-controlled chambers powered by desalinated water and energy derived from oil and gas. This is not a science fiction experiment; it is the reality of agriculture in the Arabian Gulf.
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What does Ahmed Al-Shara’a want from the Syrian Economy?
February 10, 2026
Jamie Allinson
The success of the new Syrian administration, established in the ruins
of fifteen years of civil war and counter-revolution, depends upon
economic recovery. Every move of the new regime in Damascus on the
international and regional stage–obtaining US sanctions relief through
Saudi good offices, seeking Gulf and Turkish investment, intimating the
possibility of normalisation with Israel even as the latter occupies
even more sovereign Syrian territory–seems directed towards this goal.
A Nordic Model for Lebanon? The Horizons and Limitations of Lebanon’s Prewar Labor Movement
February 10,2026
Zackary Culyer
Arabic version
In
the early 1970s, two labor experts—‘Afif Zaynati and Lucien
Berouti—made a series of proposals that might seem radical now but were
thinkable across most of Lebanon’s political spectrum at the time. These
authors and other labor leaders articulated a vision for Lebanon that
looked something like the “Nordic model,” under which economic and
social policy is formulated through state-mediated negotiation between
representatives of collectively organized labor and capital. By the
mid-1970s, this vision for Lebanon’s political economy was backed by an
increasingly powerful labor movement and shared across a wide swathe of
the political spectrum, including Arab nationalists, communists, and
liberal and illiberal reformists.
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What is HTS’ Strategy to Consolidate Power over Syria?
February 10, 2026
Joseph Daher
Arabic version
The fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December 2024 and the subsequent
process of lifting US sanctions have raised positive expectations for
Syria’s future. However, after just over a year, growing difficulties
have either surfaced or become more pronounced. These include
territorial and political fragmentation, foreign influences and
occupations, sectarian tensions, particularly after the massacres in
March against Alawite populations in coastal areas resulting in the
death of more than 1000 individuals, attacks against Druze populations in April, May, and July, and a suicide bombing in a church in Damascus in June.
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Beyond Remittances: Diasporic Engagement and the Future of Local Governance in Lebanon
February 10, 2026
Lama Mourad
Arabic version
To say that Lebanon’s municipalities sit at the frontline of overlapping
crises has become an almost too-familiar refrain. Since 2019, the
country has faced a devastating financial collapse, the 2020 Beirut port
explosion, and a war that since 2023 has displaced more than a quarter
of the population and destroyed hundreds of villages, poisoned
agricultural lands, and destroyed livelihoods. These shocks have
intensified pressures on an already fragile set of institutions and on
municipalities that must provide services under conditions of extreme
resource scarcity.
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Social Reproduction as Survival and Insurgency in Gaza
February 10, 2026
Mai Taha
Arabic version
What is happening in Gaza now is a total displacement of any form of
normality—no regular working hours, school schedule, or even meeting
friends in a coffee shop. This displacement of the normal has been
effected by a population-wide project of social reproduction. Every
Gazan, including children, is solicited to reproduce life, to survive;
nothing else seems to be happening.
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The housework of the movement: the hidden strategy of social movements
February 10, 2026
Mary Jirmanus Saba
Arabic version
What is the housework needed to keep social movements running, who does
it, and why does this matter to today’s questions of labor organization
and decolonization?
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Transnational Palestinian Practices of Digital Jana’iz
February 10,2026
Nadya Hajj
Arabic version
Since 2023, social media and international news sites have broadcast, in
real time, the death and funerals of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza.
Of course, these images and videos play an important role in motivating
people outside the Palestinian community to “bear witness” or observe
the suffering of Palestinians, and hopefully, motivate calls for a just
peace. In such desperate, violent, and anomic conditions Palestinians
have sought to endear their community to ever expanding circles of
everyday (non-Palestinian) people all over the world that also endeavor
to exhibit their care through the re-sharing of Palestinian narratives
and transfer of financial contributions otherwise known as financial
remittances.
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A Critical Genealogy of Development in SWANA: Property, Technology, and Ecology
February 10,2026
Roland Riachi
Arabic version
If you want to find your way to the American University of Beirut's
(AUB) Agricultural Research and Education Center (AREC) in the Bekaa
Valley, Lebanon, you would be better off asking for "Point Four" in
Arabic, النقطة الرابعة ("al nokta al rabiaa"). The persistence of this
name is a spectral reminder of the Cold War episode when United States
President Truman's technical assistance program, named after his fourth
inaugural speech point, became the new language of the global
development paradigm, spanning from infrastructure and agricultural
extension, to education and health, transitioning from the "civilizing
mission" of the colonial era (Rist, 1997).
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Tobacco Cultivation in the West Bank Between Economic Survival and Settler-Colonial Constraints
November 20, 2025
Kholoud Al-Ajarma, D. A. Jaber, and Jawida Mansour
I learned this work from a friend who knows about my precarious financial situation. She introduced me to a woman who rolls cigarettes at home so I could learn. . . . With few viable work options for a woman of my age and background, I figured tobacco rolling was better than nothing.
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Jenin Women’s Tobacco Diaries:
Women Workers’ lives Between Colonialism, Exploitation, and Survival
June 8, 2023
Kholoud Al Ajarma
Tobacco cultivation and cigarette production, known locally as "Arabic cigarette" in the city of Jenin and its villages, have become basic sources of livelihood for thousands of Palestinians whose daily lives are hampered by Israeli policies, limited job opportunities, and financial need.
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Agriculture in Palestine: Non-market Production
June 5, 2023
Fairouz Salem
Palestinian farmers are often forced to destroy their crops as a protest of Israeli crops flooding the Palestinian market. This occurs with the watermelon crop almost every summer season, when Palestinian farmers find pre-season Israeli watermelons sold in Palestinian markets at low prices.
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The Modest Harvest of the Algerian Labor Movement
April 28, 2023
Gianni Del Panta and Lorenzo Lodi
In the 2010s, mass movements emerged in many countries of the Middle East and North Africa. Algeria was all but an exception. Although long-standing autocrat Abdelaziz Bouteflika smoothly weathered the 2010-11 revolutionary cycle (Volpi 2013), he was forced to resign in April 2019, after which a popular movement known as the “Hirak” mobilized uninterruptedly for nearly six weeks.
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This is what a feminist economic future looks like
Published in 2022 in collaboration with Oxfam
Rima Majed
Plumber Mariam Tawfeeq Matlaq fixing a water tank on the roof of her
house, in Zarqa, north of Amman, Jordan. Oxfam has supported Mariam to
train other women to become plumbers across Zarqa (Picture: Abbie
Trayler-Smith/Oxfam)
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The Emotional Labor of Surviving Precarity in Egypt
Wednesday March, 15, 2023
Harry Pettit
When we met, Mahmoud immediately suggested he had no chance: “There will be an army of people there!” We arrived at 9 a.m., and Mahmoud was told to take a ticket and wait outside the gates along with around 200 others. He took ticket number 850 for the day. The application was open for 10 days, suggesting many thousands would be applying. Following Mahmoud, several others we spoke to who were waiting patiently for their turn also expressed that they had no chance of acceptance.
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Dismantling Green Colonialism: Towards a Just Transition in North AfricaFriday
February 3, 2023
Hamza Hamouchene
The reality of climate breakdown is already visible in North Africa and the Arab region, undermining the ecological and socioeconomic basis of life. Countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, and Egypt are experiencing severe recurrent heat waves and prolonged droughts, with catastrophic impacts on agriculture and small-scale farmers.
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Domestic Elites and IMF Executives: Who Are Our Overlords?
Friday December 16, 2022
Ahmad Al-Sholi
The IMF, last-resort creditor for economically failing sovereigns, attached about 26 conditions on average to each of its loans in 2016-2017, up from an average of 19 conditions in 2011-2013, according to this review. This is despite the IMF's own guidelines review in the interim that makes “parsimony in program-related conditions," a principal.
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Engineered Food Insecurity in the Middle East and North Africa
Friday December 2, 2022
Giuliano Martiniello
Having integral elements in the mechanics of global agricultural value chains such as food, feed, fertilizers, and fuel, Russia and Ukraine (and Belarus) play key roles in the overall functioning and stability of the global food system.
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East Mediterranean Natural Gas: A Lubricant for Israel’s Regional Integration
Friday, July 1, 2022
Sai Englert
On March 28, 2022, foreign ministers from Israel, the US, Egypt, Bahrain, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) met in Sde Boker
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How the Corruption-Centric Discourse in the Arab World Proved Self-Defeating
Thursday, May 5, 2022
Amr Adly
During the two major rounds of popular mobilization and revolutionary collective action in 2011 and 2019, corruption came to occupy a central position in the opposition's discourse on underdevelopment, injustice and inequality, and despotism in the Arab world
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Understanding Capitalism in the MENA and the Process of Neoliberal Reform
Tuesday, March 1, 2022
Joseph Daher
Alongside the absence of democracy, or its significant shortcomings, the widespread economic marginalization and intense socioeconomic grievances constituted one of the most important causes of the uprisings that erupted in the Middle East and North Africa
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