Jalsa | جلس‪ة‬ Arab Reform Initiative | مبادرة الإصلاح العربي

في الحلقة الأولى، تستضيف مقدمة البودكاست ريم أبو زيد، الناشطة النسوية البارزة، وأستاذة الأدب الإنجليزي في جامعة القاهرة، الدكتورة هدى الصدة. تتحدث الدكتورة هدى عن إرثها من النشاط النسوي، وكذلك فهمها لكيفية تحوّل مواقف الحركة النسوية المصرية من التعاون مع الدولة من مرحلة تاريخية إلى أخرى. في هذه الحلقة، تختلف الدكتورة هدى مع الخبراء والخبيرات والأكاديميين/ات المؤيدين/ات لوجهة نظر تشتت النشاط النسوي المعاصر مع صعود وسقوط الربيع العربي. تقتفي كذلك أثر الخط التاريخي الذي تطور من خلاله النشاط النسوي وفقاً للعناصر السياقية المحيطة به، والذي سيواصل تطوره إلى مستقبل يعكس مثل هذا الطابع المحلي. وتتطرق هذه المحادثة الممتعة إلى النشاط النسوي في الأوساط الأكاديمية المصرية، ووسائل التواصل الاجتماعي بوصفها إحدى أدوات النشاط، وحملة "#الولاية_حقي" الأخيرة، التي تتناول قانون الأحوال الشخصية. 

Host Malek Lakhal speaks to Libyan activist and researcher Asma Khalifa. They talked about long-distance fieldwork, the difficulties inherent to conducting fieldwork in environments where war has torn the trust between people, and how to make sense of the counter-intuitive idea that war can be seen as an opportunity for women.
Asma is a non-resident fellow (2021-22) at the Arab Reform Initiative.  Her work in Libya includes improving women’s participation in local government and addressing gender-based violence. She is currently a PhD candidate at the German Institute for Global Area Studies, researching the impact of civil war on inter-gender relations. Asma just published a research paper with ARI on what the conflict in Libya has changed in the lives of young people. 

From classrooms to private sports clubs and shopping malls, Egyptian anthropologist Noha Roushdy conducted ethnography in a relatively poorly studied space: that of the upper classes. She questions the tension between national belonging and cosmopolitism in the Egyptian upper classes through an ethnography of for-profit international private schools. With her, host Malek Lakhal discusses how entering the space of the upper means moving to the suburbs, why one needs sometimes to make them think you are a foreigner and the decolonial aspect of knowing that the people you interview are able to read your research once it is published. Noha Roushdy is currently pursuing her post-doc at the Centre d'études et de documentation économiques, juridiques et sociales in Cairo.

In this episode, Malek Lakhal speaks to Moutaa Amin El Waer about the difficulties inherent to entering a fieldwork you are intimate with, how to create distance with friends when they become interviewees and how to navigate generational differences with people who see you as an elder comrade. Moutaa is a sociologist currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Montréal on student unions in Tunisia. He was very active in student unions when he was studying in Tunis. His fieldwork led him back to the unions that he used to be active in, but this time as a researcher. 

In this episode, Malek Lakhal is speaking to Hamza Hamouchene about how to conduct fieldwork with very little time and how to make sure your research is available to the general public. Hamza is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist and commentator. He is the programme coordinator for North Africa at the Transnational Institute.  Hamza has a PhD in cancerology, but he made a U-turn to work on environmental justice in the Arab Region, focusing on energy and extractivism.

Episode 6 covers positionality as a woman researcher, changing power dynamics when your fieldwork is closely linked to previous work as an international development worker and the kind of relation one builds with interviewees during fieldwork. Lana Salman, a Lebanese researcher in Urban Governance and International Development, will be discussing these as part of her work on local politics in Tunisia after 2011.