MENACS : University of Sussex

The Middle East and North Africa Centre at Sussex (MENACS) is the focal point for study and engagement with the Middle East and North Africa at the University of Sussex. Its members are a diverse body of over 30 full-time academics based in departments across the university, who work alongside an active community of student researchers. Please contact us on menacs@sussex.ac.uk.

News

Sitting at desk The Middle East and North Africa Centre at Sussex recently hosted a Nation & State workshop on ‘The Unmaking of the Middle East: Thinking through the Crises’. There has long been a tendency to blame the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement for the problems of the Middle East. The workshop argued that the Sykes-Picot narrative is indicative of a wider crisis in the intellectual infrastructure of Middle East Studies, manifested in the disjuncture between the sociopolitical reality of the region and the concepts used to capture that reality. Sitting at desk 2

Leading academics from Dublin City University, Stirling University, London School of Economics, Lund University, Georgetown University and Bilgi University participated.

View of discussion MENACS recently held a postgraduate conference entitled ‘Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Middle East and North Africa’. PhD students from UK universities presented their exciting research, ranging from discussions on migration, media, literature, politics, and art. The conference was generously supported by the CHASE consortium.

Events: Screening of 'On a Wing and a Prayer' (Alia Syed, 2016)

Friday 2 June, from 18:45 until 20:00, Attenborough Centre for Creative Arts Auditorium, Univeristy of Sussex

MENACS have teamed up with the Poetics and Politics Symposium to screen the film 'On a Wing and a Prayer' (Alia Syed, 2016) at their symposium.

The film is inspired by the story of Abdul Rahman Haroun, who walked through the channel tunnel on 17th August 2015. Mr Haroun was held on remand for 5 months at Elmley Prison. He has since been released and granted Asylum but was charged under The Malicious damages act of 1861 for illegal entry into the UK. The language in this bylaw, when juxtaposed against the physical and emotional feat of traversing 30 miles of the Channel Tunnel supplies the terrain for this film. The journey is shot on two video cameras attached to the filmmaker’s body. The first person view offered to the audience in the film invites a reciprocal investment in the physical and emotional exertion of the act; to sense with their whole bodies the relationship to the environment created by the cognitive dissonance at the heart of Europe’s lawscape.

For more information about the film, and the symposium, please see the symposium's webpage here.

Middle East and North Africa Centre at Sussex (MENACS)

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