News

  • Autumn 2012 - the PI has been invited by the European Union Centre for Excellence at the University of Illinois, US to give a talk entitled 'Facing EU Policy Failures in the Middle East and North Africa: the New Arab Awakening' as part of the Centre's Lecture series on the theme 'Europe and the Mediterranean: Transnational Spaces and Integration'. In 2011 the University of Illinois was one of only two US Universities to receive the prestigious Jean Monnet grant, and the only domestic University in the US with the privilege of earning a European Module award. This lecture series, based on the above theme, will be organised by the Centre for the next three years as part of this Jean Monnet grant from the European Commission. The lecture series and broader grant project are designed to present Europe and the Mediterranean as interdependent, multicultural and multinational spaces connected in both the past and present by cultural, economic, and migratory networks.
  • July 2012 - a Themed Issue of the journal Mediterranean Politics on the subject of the Arab Uprisings, co-guest edited by the PI and Francesco Cavatorta, has been published as Volume 17, Number 2. Michelle Pace also co-authored the Introduction to this Themed Issue together with Francesco Cavatorta and is entitled 'The Arab Uprisings in Theoretical Perspective', pp. 125-138.
  • 20-22 June 2012 - the PI participated at the 2012 International BISA - ISA Conference held in Edinburgh. For more information, please see the full Programme of the Conference. 
  • 1 June 2012 - the PI presented a paper entitled 'A Fusion of Horizons? EU Democracy Support in the Newly Emerging Middle East and North Africa' at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS), University of London, at the Workshop on Critical Perspectives on European - MENA Relations in light of the 'Arab Spring'.
  • 9-10 May 2012 - the PI presented a paper entitled 'A Fusion of Horizons? EU Democracy Support in the Newly Emerging Middle East and North Africa' at a Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden, on the EU and the 'Arab Spring', organised by the School of Business Economics and Law at Gothenburg University in cooperation with the Swedish Network for  European Legal Studies. The programme for the event is available at Gothenburg Conference Programme.
  • April 2012 - the PI has been involved in the setting up of a new state-building research group at the School of Government and Society of the University of Birmingham.The group is a research strand of the Institute for Cooperation, Conflict and Security. The first meeting of the group was held on April 27th with a discussion on 'Critical Debates on Liberal Peacebuilding'. On May 15th the group hosted Dr Dimitris Bouris from Warwick University who delivered a seminar presentation on 'State-building without a State: the EU's Role in the Palestinian Territories since the Oslo Accords'.
  • April 2012 - the PI published an article on 'Consociation in a Constant State of Contingency? The Case of the Palestinian Territory' in the Third World Quarterly (co-authored with Laurence Cooley).    
  • On 24 February 2012 a Symposium, entitled 'One Year on from the Arab Spring? Has Anything Actually Changed in the Middle East and North Africa and the International Community?' was held at the European Research Institute, University of Birmingham. Podcasts from the event are available at Middle East Symposium. The programme and abstracts of the presentations at the Symposium are available at ME Symposium (pdf). A Brief Report on the proceedings of the Symposium is available at Brief Report. The Detailed Report of the event can be downloaded from Detailed Report (pdf).  
  • The final events of the project took place in Brussels, Belgium between 1st and 3rd February 2012. For more details of these events see the Final Events page. 
  • Dr Michelle Pace was invited by the European Parliament to address the Meeting of the Working Group on the Middle East, jointly with the Delegation for relations with the Palestinian Legislative Council, held in Strasbourg on Wednesday 26th October, 2011. The meeting was chaired by former President of the European Parliament, Dr. Hans-Gert Pöttering. Michelle's presentation focused on the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement and intra-Palestinian dynamics. The other speaker on the same panel was H.E. Dr. Nassif Hitti, Ambassador of the League of Arab States in Paris who spoke about the Palestinian bid at the United Nations and the role of the Arab League. The presentations were followed by a lively exchange of views with various Members of the European Parliament.
  • The PI, Dr Michelle Pace, together with Dr Francesco Cavatorta from Dublin City University, participated at the UACES Arena Seminar entitled 'Facing EU Policy Failures in the Middle East - the New Arab Awakening', held in Brussels on 30 June 2011. A short report on this event is available here: Report, pp. 1-2.
  • The sixth meeting of the project's research group was held at Ghent University in Belgium on 24 June 2011. A follow up meeting was again held in Ghent between 16-17 December 2011. Please see Research Group page for more information.
  • The PI, Dr Michelle Pace, participated at a Round Table organized by the Greens/ EFA group in the European Parliament as part of the review process of the European Neighbourhood Policy. The Round Table took place on 14 June 2011 in Brussels, Belgium. For more details about this event see Franziska Brantner's website.
  • From April 2011 Professor Stuart Croft, a member of the advisory board of this project, was appointed to the ESRC Council as the representative for the Politics and International Studies Discipline.
  • On 1 September 2010, the Principal Investigator, Michelle Pace, was appointed as an Associate Fellow at the Politics and International Studies Department, University of Warwick, on the EU-GRASP FP7 project. For more information please see:  http://www.eugrasp.eu.
  • The fifth meeting of the project's research group was held on Friday 22 January 2010 at Sheffield University. For a programme and more information please visit the research group page.
  • The project’s workshop in Palestine was held in Jerusalem at the Kenyon Institute (Council for British Research in the Levant) on the 11th November 2009. The Principal Investigator also delivered two separate lectures, one at the Kenyon Institute on the 9th November and another at the UNDP/PAPP offices on the 12th November, 2009. For more information see Project Workshops and Conferences and Publications/ Project Impact pages.
  • The fourth meeting of the project’s research group was held on Friday 16 October 2009 at the University of Leeds.  For a programme and more information please visit the  research group page.
  • Two project workshops were held in Egypt at the Arab Forum for Alternatives, and the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service, in collaboration with the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung) facilities in Cairo between 10 and 11 October 2009.
  • This ESRC project has acquired affiliation status with the Council for British Research in the Levant and is now included in the ESRC’s Catalogue of projects with Research Impact.