2026-08-17 - Professor Laura Frances Goffman is a historian of the modern Middle East. Her first book, Disorder and Diagnosis (Stanford University Press, 2024), uses disease to write the social history of the Gulf. We...
2026-08-10 - Professor Rana Khoury is a political scientist who studies conflict, displacement and humanitarianism, with Syria as her main case. We spoke about the year in Damascus that started it all, the project she calls...
2026-08-04 - Professor Adam Osman is a development economist who studies poverty and small firms, with Egypt as his main case and fieldwork site. We spoke about his path into the field, what it takes to run experiments where the...
2026-07-31 - The Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies hosted Beyond the Textbook, a professional development Workshop for K-12 educators, on June 10 & 11 at UIUC. [Number] teachers from [districts/region] attended. The two- day long program combined scholarly background on the...
2026-07-29 - Professor Avital Livny is a political scientist who studies Kurdish and Islamic politics, with Turkey as her main case and fieldwork site. We spoke about her path into the field, the argument of her first...
2026-07-23 - Professor Mukhtar Ali is a scholar of Islamic philosophy and mysticism whose work centers on the school of Ibn ʿArabi. We spoke about his path into the field, his years of traditional study in Iran, the craft...
2026-04-15 - Congratulations to CSAMES Director Dr. ...
2025-03-09 - Historian Antoinette Burton recently published a thought-provoking new edited collection titled Biocultural Empire: New Histories of Imperial Lifeworlds, co-edited alongside Renisa Mawani and Samantha Frost. This groundbreaking volume challenges traditional histories of empire by questioning human...
2025-02-22 - Model Arab League 2025 Success! We are thrilled to share that the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign delegation had an outstanding performance at the Model Arab League 2025, proudly funded by CSAMES! Representing Oman, our dedicated students earned prestigious awards:...
2025-01-14 - We are delighted to congratulate CSAMES affiliate and former CSAMES Director Waïl S. Hassan on his recent...
2024-10-16 - The Global Academy, a unique international training program based in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) has kicked off its sixteenth year. With the goal of increasing the international impact of the participants’ professional work, the selected faculty and...
2024-09-25 - The Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies is excited to announce a new role within the center: the Faculty Director for South Asian Studies. Starting on August 16, 2024, the Center’s first Faculty Director for South Asian Studies will be Professor Rini Mehta (Comparative & World...
2024-08-07 - Antoinette Burton, who is the director of the Humanities Research Institute at Illinois, wrote a new book, “Gender History: A Very...
2024-08-01 - Congratulations to Susan Koshy for her recent receipt of a faculty fellowship with the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation. From OVCRI: "Faculty Fellows inform OVCRI thinking and policy-making while simultaneously learning about campus-level research administration and...
2024-07-09 - Mara Thacker, South Asian Studies & Global Popular Culture Librarian, is part of a team that has been awarded a $15,000 seed grant from the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity (CRE2) at Washington University in Saint Louis. The...