CMES

Newsletter #32

November/December 2022

Study Arabic at CMES

CMES offers three Arabic language courses during the spring of 2023 for staff and students at Lund University: Modern Standard Arabic for Beginners, Part I; Modern Standard Arabic for Beginners, Part II; and Intermediate Modern Standard Arabic, Part II. 

For more information and application instructions, visit our website. The deadline for applications is 13 January 2023.

Lucia Mingle with Master Students

The Centre recently hosted Lund University's master students in Middle Eastern studies at a Lucia mingle with seasonal drinks and sweets and an opportunity to speak about their upcoming research projects with staff at CMES. The Master of Arts in Politics and Society of the Contemporary Middle East is a two-year master's program run by the Graduate School at Lund University.

Research Cooperation With Iran Is Precarious

CMES Director Karin Aggestam and Deputy Director Ronny Berndtsson were recently interviewed for an article in Lund University Magazine. Swedish universities and colleges condemn the violence in Iran where security forces have fired at protesting students. Academic cooperation and exchange with Iranian universities, researchers and students can therefore be precarious according to Karin Aggestam and Ronny Berndtsson at CMES. Read the interview with Karin and Ronny here.

Lina Eklund on Climate Migration

CMES scholar Lina Eklund has been interviewed in an article about climate migration in Göteborgs-Posten on 24 October. In a new report, the United Nations and the Red Cross argue that presently thousands of people die because of climate change every year. An increasing number of researchers are proposing planned relocations of people from areas that risk becoming uninhabitable and believe that resettlement projects should be included in climate adaptation, says Lina Eklund.

Rola El-Husseini Dean Receives Sabbatical Grant

CMES scholar Rola El-Husseini Dean has received a sabbatical grant from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Rola will use the sabbatical to complete her book manuscript Performing Gender Equality: Arab State Feminism and the Sectarian Exception. In this book, she argues that most Arab governments instrumentalize women’s rights to show the West their adoption of gender-equality norms and studies the link between gender and authoritarianism in Arab countries.

Sarah Anne Rennick on Youth in Tunisia

CMES scholar Sarah Anne Rennick has been interviewed about young people and democracy in Tunisia. What happened to the generation that experienced the Jasmine revolution in Tunisia as young? Sarah Anne Rennick has monitored these social movements in the area for a long time. Sarah also presented a paper at the Middle East Studies Association's annual conference in Denver (1-4 December): "Democratic (De)Consolidation among Marginalized Tunisian Youth: Assessing Political Grievance Formation Under Transition".

Joel Abdelmoez on Migrant Workers in Qatar

CMES doctoral researcher has been interviewed about migrant workers and the World Cup in Qatar in Forskning & Framsteg. The World Cup has been preceded by 6500 unexplained deaths of poor migrant workers. Some experts believe that it is probable that many more have died and that there are large numbers of unrecorded deaths, says researcher Joel Abdelmoez, and adds that it is therefore important that we continue to put pressure on Qatar even after the championship is over.

Maria Småberg on Yazidi Women

CMES scholar Maria Småberg gave a lecture at Filosoficirkeln in Lund titled "Disasters and Women - Giving Voice to Yazidi Women Then and Now" on December 6. Among other things, Maria spoke about the Swedish missionary and activist Maria Anholm, who was asked to set up a committee in 1922 to work for the Yazidi people. You can read more about Maria Anholm's work in the Swedish women's biographical lexicon in an article written by Maria Småberg.

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Groundwater Modeling

CMES scholar Amir Naghibi is co-editing a special issue in Remote Sensing MDPI with Biswajeet Pradhan. The special issue, "Applying Remote Sensing, Geospatial Information Systems, and Machine Learning Algorithms to Manage Groundwater Resources", is now open for submissions of original research articles and reviews. The deadline for manuscript submissions is 1 July 2023. More information and submission guidelines can be found on the CMES website.

Laleh Foroughanfar on Urban Place-Making in Malmö

CMES scholar Laleh Foroughanfar was recently interviewed about her PhD research about migration and urban place-making in the Swedish journal Arkitekten. The article describes Laleh's work on how migrants' investments (time, work, money, abilities and transnational networks) have created different kinds of infrastructures (spatial, socio-economic and temporal) that frame and sustain life along the street Norra Grängesbergsgatan in Malmö. Read the article in Swedish.

"How Can Sewage Sludge Use in Sustainable Tunisian Agriculture Be Increased?"

Authors: Ronny Berndtsson, Nidhal Marzougui, Nadia Ounalli, Sonia Sabbahi, Tarek Fezzani, Farah Abidi, Sihem Jebari , Sourour Melki, and Walid Oueslati

"Optimal Landfill Site Selection for Solid Waste of Three Municipalities Based on Boolean and Fuzzy Methods: A Case Study in Kermanshah Province, Iran"

Authors: Seyed Mohsen Mousavi, Golnaz Darvishi, Naghmeh Mobarghaee Dinan and Seyed Amir Naghib

"Detecting the Greatest Changes in Global Satellite-Based Precipitation Observations"

Authors: Majid Kazemzadeh, Hossein Hashemi, Sadegh Jamali, Cintia Bertacchi Uvo, Ronny Berndtsson and George Huffman

"Using machine learning to determine acceptable levels of groundwater consumption in Iran"

Authors: Sami Ghordoyee Milan, Zahra Kayhomayoon, Naser Arya Azar, Ronny Berndtsson, Mohammad Reza Ramezani and Hamid Kardan Moghaddam

"Analysis of Landscape Composition and Configuration Based on LULC Change Modeling"

Authors: Masoomeh Yaghoobi, Alireza Vafaeinejad, Hamidreza Moradi and Hossein Hashemi