Naomi Sakr delivers keynote at Law and Society in Saudi Arabia Conference

Prof. Naomi Sakr co-presented a keynote lecture at the Zentrum Moderner Orient in Berlin on October 10. The lecture, given jointly with Gianluca Parolin of Aga Khan University under the title, “Lawyering on Saudi Television in Ramadan Prime Time,” was the concluding session of a two-day conference on Law and Society in Saudi Arabia and, unlike the rest of the conference, was open to the public who could attend in person or online.

The conference adopted a broad understanding of law as conceptualised and applied by state institutions and legal professionals and also in terms of people’s everyday interactions with the legal system that provide insights into processes of social and political transformation in the kingdom, past and present.

The keynote explored the imaginary of law that state TV offered to Saudi viewers through a comedy series in Ramadan 2023, several years into the Vision 2030 programme and a year after the introduction of the Personal Status Code of 2022, and compared it with earlier portrayals, all within the context of structural changes affecting the television industry in Saudi Arabia since 2016.

Learn more about Law and Society in Saudi Arabia here.