The Arab Revolutions 10 Years On

This seminar is a collaboration between the University of Westminster’s CSD (the Centre for the Study of Democracy) and CAMRI.

From social justice struggles and mobilisations to massive uprisings and revolutions, in the last decade West Asia and North Africa witnessed momentous events. The region is still a cauldron of rebellion advancing demands of dignity, bread, social justice, freedom and sovereignty. In their book, Hamza Hamouchene and Miriyam Aouragh set out what they consider the Revolutionary Rehearsals. They will discuss the political, economic, digital and ideological intersection of resistance, and explore how the struggles can be remembered not as past but as a continuity in the present

Biography

Hamza Hamouchene is a London-based Algerian researcher-activist, commentator and a founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign (ASC), and Environmental Justice North Africa (EJNA). He previously worked for War on Want, Global Justice Now and Platform London on issues of extractivism, resources, land and food sovereignty as well as climate, environmental, and trade justice. He is the author/editor of two books: The Struggle for Energy Democracy in the Maghreb (2017) and The Coming Revolution to North Africa: The Struggle for Climate Justice (2015). He also contributed book chapters to Voices of Liberation: Frantz Fanon (2014) and The Palgrave Encyclopaedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (2016). His other writings have appeared in the Guardian, Middle East Eye, Counterpunch, New Internationalist, Jadaliyya, openDemocracy, ROAR magazine, Pambazuka, Nawaat, El Watan and the Huffington Post.

Dr. Miriyam Aouragh (Reader) joined the Westminster School of Media and Communication in 2017 and is a researcher at CAMRI. After an MA in Cultural anthropology and Non-Western sociology (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), and PhD in Media Anthropology at the Amsterdam School of Social Science Research (ASSR), Aouragh studied the implications of the internet as it was first introduced in Palestine and Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan. This coincided with the outbreak of the Second Intifada (2000-2005). She then focused on the political role of digital tools and spaces and how earlier techno-political developments evolved with them. Her ethnographies were conducted among grassroots activist groups in Lebanon and Palestine (Oxford Internet Institute, 2009-2011). Aouragh set up a critical research project (Leverhulme Grant 2013-2016) to study the Arab (Counter-)Revolutions. Apart from 4 books (Palestine Online, IB Tauris Bloomsbury 2011; The Arab Uprisings a Decade On: Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the Transformation of a Region, TNI, 2022 with Hamza Hamouchene; Infrastructures of Empire. (Sage 2023, co-authored with Paula Chakravartty; Mediating the Makhzan: (R)evolutionary Dynamics and Protest in Morocco, 2024), Miriyam Aouragh is engaged in several campaigns and has numerous publications.