Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies Exeter

Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies Exeter IAIS is a leading centre for teaching and research in the UK and internationally. Email [email protected] for more info

With the largest concentration of Middle East Studies scholars at a British university, we offer the broadest range of Arabic and Middle East Studies programmes. The University of Exeter's Institute or Arab and Islamic studies is a world-leading provider of degree, postgraduate and PhD programmes in fields relating to the Middle East is culture, history and anthropology.

It's nearly time.... The Digital Archive of the Middle East exhibition is being installed ready for the launch on Tuesda...
09/09/2026

It's nearly time....

The Digital Archive of the Middle East exhibition is being installed ready for the launch on Tuesday 15th September.

Amongst the collection on show will be part of an archive, comprising thousands of pages from diaries, personal documents and digital records, that has been donated by award-winning Palestinian author and human rights lawyer Raja Shehadeh.

You can read about the Shehadeh collection here or via the link in our bio: https://tr.ee/ZFw_rJiSRc

Dr James Downs, archivist of the University of Exeter’s Middle East collections and project manager of DAME, said: “The Digital Archive of the Middle East is dedicated to preserving rare documents and other archival materials, including those under threat of loss or destruction.

It has been a privilege to have had a role in supporting the digitisation of Raja Shehadeh’s diaries and other writings, and we aim to continue our involvement with Edinburgh University through collaborating in a larger project that will bring new readers to Raja’s work as well as ensuring the preservation of his papers and cultural legacy for generations to come.”

New book available now.GAZA RISING: Voices From the RubbleEdited by Ramzy Baroud, Ilan Pappé and Romana RubeoClarity Pre...
04/09/2026

New book available now.

GAZA RISING: Voices From the Rubble
Edited by Ramzy Baroud, Ilan Pappé and Romana Rubeo
Clarity Press

This book sheds light on the power of the Palestinian people of Gaza emanating from the voices of its own intellectuals, journalists, doctors, teachers, civil defense workers, artists, and community leaders. These powerful accounts illuminate Gazans’ struggles and unwavering commitment to persist as a people against all odds, facing the future with enduring solidarity and unshakeable resolve.

https://tr.ee/FcFj6BNQY_

Date for your diary!You are invited to a private view of the new DAME (Digital Archive of the Middle East) exhibition.Tu...
04/09/2026

Date for your diary!

You are invited to a private view of the new DAME (Digital Archive of the Middle East) exhibition.

Tuesday 15th September
3-4.30pm
Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies
Stocker Road
EX4 4ND

Add it to your Welcome Week plan!

New exhibition coming soon!Digital Archive of the Middle East retrospective 2021-26Private View 15 September 2026 3-4.30...
01/09/2026

New exhibition coming soon!

Digital Archive of the Middle East retrospective 2021-26

Private View 15 September 2026 3-4.30pm
IAIS Street Gallery, Stocker Road, Exeter

The IAIS Street Gallery is nearly ready for our next Digital Archive of the Middle East (DAME) exhibition. Watch this sp...
28/08/2026

The IAIS Street Gallery is nearly ready for our next Digital Archive of the Middle East (DAME) exhibition. Watch this space...

Dr Farangis Ghaderi, Director, Centre for Kurdish Studies, recently contributed to the Fifteenth Biennial Iranian Studie...
27/08/2026

Dr Farangis Ghaderi, Director, Centre for Kurdish Studies, recently contributed to the Fifteenth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference at Utrecht.

She organised and chaired a panel titled, 'Language, Power, and Resistance: The Kurdish Struggle Through Translation' and also presented her paper titled ''Erased from the Margins': Reclaiming Kurdish Women's place in the Canon' at a panel on 'Modern Kurdish Literature Between Different Languages, Genres and Countries'.

She also served on the selection committee of the inaugural Nemati Book Award that honours exceptional monographs on Iran’s minoritized ethnic and religious groups.

We are very excited to share with you MERIP’s new summer issue. The issue explores culture not as an escape from politic...
26/08/2026

We are very excited to share with you MERIP’s new summer issue. The issue explores culture not as an escape from politics, but as a space where struggles over power, identity and belonging are continually negotiated.

From songs circulating through Iran and northeast Syria to theatre in the Golan, cultural practices become counter-archives, preserving experiences and histories that official narratives seek to erase.

Artists in Lebanon grapple with what it means to look at death and destruction day after day through their phone screens.

A Gazan artist confronts the Israeli surveillance he has lived with throughout his life, while in Amman, musicians and performers navigate state repression, foreign funding and the commodification of solidarity.

Other contributions examine the institutions and markets that shape what counts as art, from the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Gulf’s cultural economy to the gendered boundaries between art and craft and the precarious labour behind AI-generated spectacles.

Across these diverse contexts, the issue asks who gets to produce culture, who controls its circulation and value, and what happens when artists challenge imposed categories.

The issue is particularly close to IAIS, with Sabiha Allouche serving as one of its editors, alongside Kevin Schwartz, Hatim el-Hibri and Hanan Toukan. It also features two excellent contributions from our wider research community, by Nafiseh Sharifi and Heidi Sarah Affi. MERIP's Executive Editor is Billie Jeanne Brownlee and the Managing Editor is Marya Hannun.

You can read it here or via the link in our bio: https://tr.ee/PrJB8xB_SP

Maziyar Ghiabi recently wrote a script for a comic that was published on The Public Source - a Beirut-based investigativ...
25/08/2026

Maziyar Ghiabi recently wrote a script for a comic that was published on The Public Source - a Beirut-based investigative journalism outlet, which won the National Press Club's 2026 Arthur E. Rowse Award for Examining the News Media.

The graphic journalism piece is in collaboration with Gianluca Costantini, an Italian artist of international standing who recently illustrated Ai Weiwei’s, Zelinsky’s, and Xi Jiping’s biographies.

You can read the comic here or via the link in our bio: https://tr.ee/jP4GMlgeuZ

New article published in International Journal of Nautical Archaeology: Reflections on a Strategy of ‘Mixed’ Hull Constr...
20/08/2026

New article published in International Journal of Nautical Archaeology:

Reflections on a Strategy of ‘Mixed’ Hull Construction – The Case of a Ngwanda, Zanzibar, Tanzania

by John P Cooper, Lucy Blue, Alessandro Ghidoni & Abdallah Ali

This article challenges some of the fundamental tenets of maritime archaeology with respect to the building of wooden boats and ship hulls.

It also questions the epistemic authority that sustained these tenets for so long by way of an ethnographic collaboration with a wonderful boatbuilder (fundi) in Zanzibar, Fundi Hamdan Ali Ibrahim Ayoub.

You can read the article here or via the link in our bio: https://tr.ee/QinzGur7Fk

New volume published by BRILLHumanities in IranVolume Editors: Majid Daneshgar, Mohsen Feyzbakhsh, Azar Mirzaei, and Saj...
19/08/2026

New volume published by BRILL

Humanities in Iran
Volume Editors: Majid Daneshgar, Mohsen Feyzbakhsh, Azar Mirzaei, and Sajjad Rizvi

The study of the humanities is a truly global endeavour as cultures seek to make sense of the category of the human and its locations. What gives that inquiry colour, vibrancy, and dynamism, are the local and embedded expressions of the study of the human.

Iran, both in premodern tradition and in the modern period, has been one of the leading Asian countries contributing to knowledge production and Muslim literatures and humanities.

This volume, Humanities in Iran, offers a fresh voice about the structures, developments, receptions, and marginalization of the humanities (ʿUlūm-i Insānī) as a discipline in the Iranian academic context, particularly following the Islamic Revolution of 1979.

Humanities in Iran is a series of reflections upon the connection between the classic and modern subjects in the humanities in relation to Eurocentrism, processes of Islamisation, and beyond the classic insider-outsider approaches to the field.

https://tr.ee/reHwoFboac (or via link in bio)

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EX44ND

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