Middle East

Radio Feature: The Middle East and Global Society

On July 1, 2025, Prof. Dr. Thomas Demmelhuber was invited to give a guest lecture in the series "The Middle East in Transition: Contemporary Historical Perspectives” at the Institute for the Studies of the Culture and Religion of Islam at Goethe University Frankfurt. He spoke about the interaction b...

IPSA 2025 in Seoul

Over 3500 participants attended the annual congress of the International Political Science Association (IPSA) in Seoul, among them parts of the Institute’s faculty. Lars Lott presented a paper on the connection between autocratization and its effects on universalism and the provision of social polic...

FAU Doctoral Candidate Student speaks at KAPSARC School of Public Policy Conference in Riyadh

Laura Schuhn, doctoral candidate at the Chair of Middle East Politics and Society, presented the results of her research last week at the regional 2025 NASPAA conference at the KAPSARC School for Public Policy (KSPP) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. In her doctoral project, Laura Schuhn examines how citizen...

Autocratization, Emotions and Identity in Saudi Arabia

Last September, Antonia Thies, doctoral candidate in the DFG Research Training Group on 'Sentimentality in Literature, Culture, and Politics' embarked on her second of three field researches to the Gulf, this time to Saudi Arabia. Embedded within the research activities of the Chair of Middle East ...

“The Ukraine War and the Impact on the Middle East” – Lecture by Ross Harrison (Washington)

We cordially invite you to a lecture by Prof. Ross Harrison (Middle East Institute, Washington DC). Prof. Harrison is a renowned expert on US foreign policy in the MENA region. He is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Institute and also on the faculty in the Political Science department at the Unive...

“Can Civil Society Hold the Democratic Line in Southeast Asia?” – Lecture from Meredith Weiss

We cordially invite you to a lecture by Prof. Meredith Weiss (Professor at State University of New York, SUNY). Meredith Weiss is a renowned expert on Southeast Asian politics. She is currently visiting Professor at the FAU to work with Prof. Bünte on a special issue on Civil Society in Southeast As...

“Revolutionary Utopia in the Middle East as steely romanticism” – Neuer Aufsatz von Christian Thuselt

A new essay by Christian Thuselt, PhD, has been published under the title "Revolutionary Utopia in the Middle East as steely romanticism: the case of the al-Baʿth party". More information can be found at Taylor&Francis Online.

A critical discussion of elitism in Lebanon

After the blast that destroyed last parts of the Lebanese capital in August. Christian Thuselt, Assistant Professor at Erlangen University, on a distorted picture of Lebanon as a place of some obscure elite as opposed to "the people" in the current media discourse, full article available at: https:/...