AGYA Panel at International DAVO Congress in Osnabrück

Publication

This cross-disciplinary and international publication brought together authors from Europe and different Arab countries, representing various academic disciplines including political science, agriculture, health science, and education, to discuss, through diverse disciplinary lenses, how the unprecedented and far-reaching crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic affected social, political, economic, cultural, academic and individual life in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries.

Based on a 2020 research project by the AGYA Working Group Dynamics of Transformation and its authors' workshop, Prof. Dr. Zeina Hobaika, Prof. Dr. Lena-Maria Möller and Dr. Jan Völkel initiated the publication “Arab Countries and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Impact, Implications, and Prospects”.

Several contributions to the publication will be presented as part of an AGYA Panel at the 27th International DAVO Congress in Osnabrück. The DAVO (Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft Vorderer Orient) is a non-profit association of people interested in contemporary research on the Middle East and its relations with other regions. One of the main goals of the DAVO is the exchange of information between the members of the association on interdisciplinary issues concerning the whole region and its worldwide interconnections. Its yearly congress aims to fulfil this goal and thus provides an ideal platform to present the upcoming AGYA publication. There are two panels with presentations by several authors of the publication.
 

Presentation of AGYA Publication Project at the DAVO Conference

PANEL 1 (September 18, 9:00 - 11:00 am): 
Host: Prof. Dr. Lena-Maria Möller, AGYA member

I Authoritarian responses to COVID-19: Risk governance in the Middle East & North Africa
Dr. Jan Claudius Völkel, AGYA alumnus

II Securitisation dynamics and COVID-19 politics in Morocco: old wine in new bottles?
Dr. Giulia Cimini

III Religion and pandemic: state, Islam and society in Saudi Arabia and Iran during the Corona virus crisis
Noël van den Heuvel

PANEL 2 (September 18, 11:30 am - 1:30 pm):
Host: Prof. Dr. Zeina Hobaika, AGYA member

I Discursive re-bordering during Corona times. An analysis of nationalism and othering in Arab media
Prof. Dr. Carola Richter, AGYA alumna

II The reverse impact of politics on the COVID-19 response: How Hezbollah determined the choices of the Lebanese government
Dr. Nassim Abi Ghanem

III The COVID-19 temptation? Sino-Gulf relations and autocratic linkages in times of a global pandemic
Dr. Thomas Demmelhuber