Opportunities

International Conference, LMU Munich, 10-12 September 2026

The German Middle East Studies Association (DAVO) invites submissions for its 32nd international annual congress. The congress will take place from 10 to 12 September 2026 at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich, Germany, and is hosted by the Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at LMU’s Institute for Near and Middle Eastern Studies.

The DAVO Congress is dedicated to advancing academic research and public understanding of North Africa, the Middle East, and West Asia, by examining questions of history, society, politics and economics, culture and religion, language and literature, health, and related fields, while critically engaging with pressing issues within Germany and Europe, including migration, antisemitism, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism, and societal transformation.

To reinforce our team’s work, we are looking for one new colleague. Based on your skills and experience, you may join us as an Associate Program Officer (APO) or as a Program Officer (PO).

Location: Basel, Switzerland
Starting date: 1 June 2026 (or by agreement); contract duration as APO: 2 years

The swisspeace Dealing with the Past (also referred to as transitional justice) team supports governmental and non-governmental actors working to overcome the legacy of massive human rights violations and breaches of international humanitarian law having occurred in contexts of colonialism, armed conflict and authoritarian regimes, and to prevent their reoccurrence.

Kohl is a progressive, intersectional and inter/trans- disciplinary journal that theorizes from and thinks with the Middle East, South West Asia, and North Africa regions. Kohl Journal is a biannual, multilingual, open access, and peer reviewed academic journal. It targets mainly, but not exclusively, graduate-level academics, fresh graduates, independent writers, activists, and researchers who are not affiliated with an academic institution.

At Kohl, we are calling for contributions in a new format: we would like to read and publish pieces of political analysis that allow us to piece together the different ways in which global imperialisms are connected in our region and beyond, while remaining anchored in our different locations. We are ideally looking for texts that focus on one or more facets of the ongoing imperial war (historical, current, or potential), such as land, oil, trade, popular uprisings, migration/displacement, the arms industry, military sites, state formations… in order to push past the fragmentation of our respective struggles and narratives.

We are accepting texts and abstracts throughout the month of March, which you can email to submit@kohljournal.press. Please note that we are happy to accept shorter pieces, personal essays, as well as voice-recorded commentaries that we can help you turn into written text. We encourage submissions in Arabic, and also accept texts in English.

The School of Government and International Affairs (SGIA) at Durham University seeks to appoint an exceptional scholar as an Assistant Professor with research and teaching expertise in Middle East Politics with a focus on the Arab world. Applicants with research and teaching expertise in the politics, political economy, or security of the Middle East, with a particular focus on the Arab states, are encouraged to apply. 

We particularly welcome applications from candidates whose research engages with state–society relations in the Arab world, with a particular focus on the Gulf. This may include (but is not limited to) governance and authoritarian resilience; political legitimacy, contestation, and repression; civic mobilisation and social movements; political participation and representation; public policy, welfare and service provision; identity politics and social cohesion; gender and the changing dynamics of citizenship, rights, and belonging. Applicants whose work addresses the intersection of domestic politics with major global and regional challenges of the Arab world are also strongly encouraged to apply. Relevant themes may include the international relations of the Middle East, politics of energy transition, climate governance, and environmental sustainability; migration, displacement, and demographic change; security governance and militarisation; and the international political economy of the Arab world. 

Conference, University of Cambridge, 17–18 September 2026

The Syrian Academics and Researchers’ Network in the UK (SARN UK) is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for its 2026 international conference, co-hosted with the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies (MAC) at Newnham College, University of Cambridge.

This year's theme, “Syria in Transition: Knowledge, Memory, and the Everyday Aftermath,” invites Syrian and Syria-focused scholars to reflect on the evolving role of academic, cultural, and intellectual work in shaping Syria’s futures. At a moment marked by deep political uncertainty, contested narratives of reconstruction, and widening gaps between exile and those inside the country, the conference offers a space to come together in critical solidarity.

We welcome papers that explore how Syrian scholars, artists, and practitioners — wherever they are — engage with the complex legacies of violence, displacement, and resistance, and how their work contributes to imagining more just, plural, and inclusive futures. We are particularly interested in proposals that bridge disciplines and challenge inherited binaries of inside/outside, past/future, victim/agent, or state/society.

We accept individual as well as co-authored paper proposals.

Papers are invited for the 3rd workshop of this multi-year research programme funded by the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS). The aim of this project is to involve scholars from a wide range of disciplines in the commencement of an organised effort to utilise an extensive range of sources to recover evidence of the ‘voices’ of ‘subalterns’ across the pre-modern and modern terrains of both rural and urban society across the Persianate world. 

The third workshop on subalterns across the entire Persianate world in the Zand and Qajar periods will be held at the University of Edinburgh, UK, on 27-29 October, 2026. 

Papers from PhD students, ECRs and unaffiliated scholars are encouraged.

RSVP to anewman@ed.ac.uk by Friday, 12 June, 2026.

The Global Digital Humanities programme at the University of St Andrews offers a flexible, fully online postgraduate route for students interested in the relationship between technology, language, literature, culture, and heritage. Taught jointly by the School of Modern Languages and the School of Computer Science, the programme combines humanities inquiry with computational methods including Python, machine learning, and data visualisation.

With PGCert, PGDip, and MSc pathways, students can build their studies around their goals and commitments while learning from anywhere in the world. The programme is designed for those who want to upskill, change direction, deepen their research practice, or prepare for doctoral study.

Applicants to the full online MSc may also be eligible for the Global Digital Humanities Online MSc Scholarship. Up to six scholarships are available each academic year, with each award worth up to £4,500 towards tuition fees for up to three years. Applicants can apply for the scholarship after submitting their course application and do not need to wait for an offer before applying. Selection is based partly on financial need and includes short statements on financial circumstances and course suitability.

Explore how digital tools are reshaping the humanities — and how you can help shape that future.

Find the full details and application information below and feel free to contact Dr Orhan Elmaz (oe2@st-andrews.ac.uk) with any questions.