Interested in the Middle East — the reform movements, emerging capitalism, the rise of IS and the Syrian refugee crisis? Then gather on the UO campus for a conversation at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 19, with UO expert Angela Joya.
The informal event, open to the public, will be held at Falling Sky Pub and Pizzeria in the Erb Memorial Union. Order food and refreshments on your own tab and join around the tables in a back room of Falling Sky, which opened in June on the ground floor of the newly renovated EMU. Seating capacity will be limited to about 50 guests. Admission is free.
The pub talk is part of a public outreach effort by University Communications to tap public engagement with UO researchers. After those in attendance have had time to find seats, Joya will provide a brief overview of her research before opening up the roughly hour-long session into a general and question-and-answer format.
The outreach effort began Oct. 1 with Run with a Researcher, which is held on the first Saturday of each month. Pub talks at Falling Sky will be held monthly through December and expanded to twice monthly in 2017. The next Run with the Researcher is at 9 a.m. Nov. 5. An alternative group for walkers starts at the same time.
Joya, an assistant professor in the Department of International Studies, has been in news coverage of the Syrian crisis, has written about violence against Afghan women and was featured in the UO's Cascade magazine story on the rise of the Islamic State.
"My research focuses on the development of capitalism in the Middle East and North Africa and the implications for state and class formation," Joya said. "As such, I have examined more closely the processes of neoliberal reforms in Egypt and Syria and how these processes resulted in shifting class relations and the role of the state within these societies."
Her work gets at the nature of current conflicts in the region. She has studied how the Egyptian economy was integrated into the global economy in the 1990s. Her more recent work on Arab uprisings has provided insights into conditions in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia.
Subsequent pub talks will be held Nov. 16 and Dec. 7.
—By Jim Barlow, University Communications