As Michaelmas Term begins, a welcome from DPIR's new Head of Department Professor David Doyle
New & Jew, Zionism and the Quest for National Culture
The Zionist claim to Palestine was based on a very old story; so old that it became a myth. And since the distance between the Jewish present and the Jewish past was vast, the wish to make Palestine a home for a modern Jewish nation called for creating that nation anew. It was an immense claim that required an equally immense innovation. The lecture reexamines this well-known story by looking at some of the cultural innovations of Zionists - body culture, space, art, music - and considering their fraught legacy a century later.
Saving Soviet Muslims: the politics of protection at Jerusalem's General Islamic Congress of 1931
Historians of the Middle East have extensively explored how imperial powers and international institutions during the interwar period used the idea of “minority rights and protection” to solidify their rule and influence over large parts of the region. Rather than focusing on the Eurocentric premises of this idea, the present lecture considers the role of Muslim anti-colonialists in challenging the utilization of the humanitarian discourse of protection by colonial powers.
Sirianne Dahlum
Kamissa Camara
Kamissa Camara currently pursues a DPhil in Politics at the University of Oxford, specialising in military coups in francophone West Africa and the anti-coup norms by the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
Kamissa Camara
'Last child of the Risorgimento'? Zionism and the legacies of 1848”
Isaiah Berlin famously described the new state of Israel as the "last child of the European Risorgimento". This paper seeks to unpick that claim by exploring the relationship between the revolutions of 1848 and the foundation of the State of Israel exactly one hundred years later.
Trade Networks Bridging Yemen, Israel, and Ethiopia: The Ḥibshūsh Family and Jewish-Muslim Commercial Relations in the 20th Century
This lecture examines the commercial legacy of the Ḥibshūsh family, a prominent Yemenite Jewish dynasty that played a pivotal role in the Red Sea basin trade from the 1880s to the 1970s. Utilizing a rich archive of primary sources, this global micro-historical study illuminates the intricate Jewish-Arab commercial networks that flourished across geopolitical boundaries, encompassing Yemen, Mandatory Palestine, Israel, Ethiopia, and beyond.
Simple Rajrah
Introduction
I am presently a third-year doctoral candidate in politics at the Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Oxford. My work is situated at the intersection of the history of political thought and feminist political theory, focusing on the intellectual history of anti-caste feminist movements in India. I have teaching experience in feminist theory, theory of politics and modern political thought.