Why Location Matters: Doctoral Research in the Arab World
June 29-July 3, 2025
Held at AUC Campus
Deadline for submission of applications: February 27, 2025.
The Middle East Studies Association, the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, the Orient Institute in Beirut are organizing a five-day workshop at the American University of Cairo, June 29-July 3. The workshop, which is co-sponsored by AUC, will bring together a select group of doctoral students from North American, German, and Arab universities to discuss the possibilities, critical approaches, epistemological, and practical challenges of undertaking archival and/or ethnographic research in the Arab region.
The aim of the organizers is to foster a transnational interdisciplinary community of emerging scholars. Two questions inform the workshop: How do different locations of research in the North and Global South, in our case the Arab world, frame epistemic postulations and research methodologies? How does knowledge production and the theories and methodologies that undergird interpretive communities change when young scholars from the Atlantic North and those from the Global South meet to discuss their research in an Arab capital of learning/higher education? Academic mentors – independent and university-based scholars in the Arab world and North America – will lead sessions of small groups of participants drawn from different disciplines and countries.
Workshop sessions will be conducted in Arabic and English. Participants will present their work and write in either English or Arabic, but all participants need to have facility in both languages to ensure that everyone can participate fully in discussions and read each other’s work.
Eligibility
Applicants from disciplines in the social sciences and humanities are encouraged to apply. Preference will be given to scholars in the early stages of their doctoral research whose dissertation projects have been approved by their advisors and institutions.
Application requirements for students matriculating in North American Universities:
- Applicants must be 2025 student members of MESA.
- Submit a 1000-word description of their project.
- Submit a short paragraph (250 words) on how location has informed or might inform their epistemic and research methodologies.
- Submit proof of their advance to candidacy and a copy of their transcript.
- Request a letter of recommendation from their advisor submitted by advisor to MESA.
- Request a letter from their language instructor, submitted by instructor to MESA addressing the facility of the student in reading and communicating in Arabic.
Successful applicants are encouraged to seek partial funding from their universities for the cost of air travel to Cairo.
Successful candidates will be responsible for obtaining their visas from the Egyptian Embassy. MESA will provide a letter indicating that the student is partaking in a workshop at AUC.
To apply:
1 - Complete the form (select the button below) and upload the required materials.
2 - Request letters from advisor and language instructor be sent directly to [email protected]
Questions can be directed to [email protected].