Tue, Mar 15
|University of Manchester
Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State. A Conversation with Professor Dawn Chatty
Professor Dawn Chatty examines the history of Syria in the late Ottoman Empire and since World War One as it welcomed refugees from across the region, drawing conclusions regarding displaced Syrians' contemporary welcome in neighbouring states.
Time & Location
Mar 15, 2022, 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM GMT
University of Manchester, Oxford Rd, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
About the Event
The mass influx of peoples into Syria over the last 150 years, including Circassians, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, Armenian, Albanians and Kosovars, created a modern nation of great cultural hybridity. Until recently this was the source of its openness to contemporary waves of forced migrants including Palestinians, Lebanese, and Iraqis. Now with the tables turned, Syrians have sought refuge and sanctuary in its neighbouring states.
In conversation with Mazen Gharibeh, Professor Dawn Chatty will examine the history of Syria - Bilad-al-Sham – in the late Ottoman Empire and since World War One as it welcomed refugees and other uprooted peoples from across the region. She will also draw some provisional conclusions regarding displaced Syrians' contemporary welcome in neighbouring states.
Dawn Chatty is Emeritus Professor in Anthropology and Forced Migration and former director of the Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford. She is also a Fellow of the British Academy. Her research interests include: coping strategies and resilience of refugee youth; tribes and tribalism; nomadic pastoralism and conservation; gender and development; health, illness and culture. She has edited numerous books including: Deterritorialized Youth: Sahrawi and Afghan Refugees at the Margins of the Middle East, Berghahn Books, 2010; Nomadic Societies in the Middle East and North Africa: Facing the 21st Century, Leiden, Brill, 2006; Children of Palestine: Experiencing Forced Migration in the Middle East, Berghahn Books, 2005; and Conservation and Mobile Peoples: Displacement, Forced Settlement and Sustainable Development Berghahn Press, 2002. She is the author of Displacement and Dispossession in the Modern Middle East Cambridge University Press, 2010, From Camel to Truck, White Horse Press, 2013, and Syria: The Making and Unmaking of a Refuge State, Hurst Publishers, 2018.
Chair: Mazen Gharibah is a Syrian refugee, researcher and political activist. He works as a senior researcher in the Conflict Research Programme (CRP) at the London School of Economics (LSE). He is also the Executive Manager of the Syrian British Council (SBC), a UK-based Syrian lobbying body.