MENARG and CRG kindly invite you to the following research seminars on “Methods and Ethics in Fieldwork”. During these seminars national and international guests will be sharing their “story behind the findings” with researchers from different departments, to have a profound reflection on methodological and ethical questions in performing empirical research.

Seminar: Methodological challenges in fast a-changin’ times: “the Egyptian Spring”

Practical

speaker: Maha Abdelrahman

Date: Wednesday 26/09/2012, 11:00AM
Place: Meeting room, Department of Third World Studies, Universiteitstraat 8 (1st floor), Ghent.

Sandwiches will be provided. For more information and registration, please contact sigrid.vertommen@ugent.be

Theme

For a whole decade, the Egyptian street was teeming with groups and networks that were characterised by decentralised and segmented organisational structures, diffuse boundaries and dependence on members rather than centralised leadership.

Over the course of only a couple of weeks, however, these activists found themselves transformed from protestors to the status of 'revolutionaries'. These newly-minted revolutionaries were suddenly expected either to capture or renegotiate state power, provide a vision for the future emanating from the iconic image of Tahrir and transform both polity and society.

This seminar engages with methodological challenges involved in the study of fast changing developments such as these and the unfolding events in Egypt in the aftermath of the 'Arab Spring'. It reflects on changing frameworks of analysis, dealing with rising research questions and finding new tools capable of answering these questions.

About Maha Abdelrahman

is a lecturer in Development Studies at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS).

Maha Abdelrahman has taught on a number of topics such as: Arab and Middle East Politics and Sociology, Social Movements, Development theories and approaches, Development Agencies, Institutions and Development, Globalization, and the State and Systems of Social Stratification.

Among her current research is: rising forms of political opposition and protest movements in the Middle East, in particular new alliances being formed from disparate, historically antagonistic, political groups.