Welcome to the inaugural issue of the APSA MENA POLITICS SECTION NEWSLETTER, the official publication of the MENA POLITICS Organized Section. The first volume of the Newsletter was edited and produced by a dedicated team of early career scholars from the region, with support from the APSA MENA Network team (see their note in this issue). With this issue, we relaunch the Newsletter with a new editorial team and a new mandate.
The newly relaunched Newsletter is intended to become a central form for the community of political scientists working on and in the Middle East and North Africa, available to Section members and to the broader academic public. The Newsletter will publish a wide range of provocative and compelling essays of interest across the field. Essays and special sections will feature original research, provocative reflections on fieldwork and methodology, discussions of emergent research programs, reviews of multiple new publications, and provocations designed to stimulate debate. We invite suggestions, proposals and submissions from all Section members. To guide this exciting new forum, we have recruited a diverse and talented Editorial Board to steer the Newsletter’s strategic direction: Holger Albrecht, Nermin Allam, Alexandra Blackman, May Darwich, Kevan Harris, Shimaa Hatab, Lisel Hintz, Lama Mourad, Jillian Schwedler, Nadav Shelef, Stacey Philbrick Yadav, and Sean Yom.
WELCOME MESSAGES
RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM
Researching Hope & Failed Expectations, Nermin Allam
Revisiting the Origins of Political Islam, Steven Brooke and Neil Ketchley
Polling an Islamic Republic: The Iran Social Survey, Kevan Harris and Daniel Tavana
Writing about Insecurity and Global Politics in Beirut, Waleed Hazbun, Karim Makdisi, and Coralie Pison Hindawi
Pop Culture as Alternative Subject and Data Source, Lisel Hintz
Is there an Islamist advantage at war? Marc Lynch
The Ethical Challenges of Field Research in the Syrian Refugee Crisis, Daniel Masterson and Lama Mourad
The Marginalization of Iraqi Islamists in Political Science, David Siddhartha Patel
Qatar and the GCC Crisis and the Impact on Scholarship on the Gulf, Kristian Ulrichsen
Three Ways of Discussing Identity Politics in the Study of the IR of the New Middle East, Morten Valbjørn
Yemen Offers Lessons at Different Scales, Stacey Philbrick Yadav
ANNOUNCEMENTS AND NEWS