DOHA : College students from top schools around the world will be converging on Doha to attend Georgetown University in Qatar’s (GU-Q) fourth annual Middle Eastern Studies Student Association’s (MESSA) Undergraduate Research conference.
The conference ‘Narrowing the Gap: The Conversation between the Governing and the Governed in the Middle East’ which will take place at the Georgetown Auditorium starting today and continuing until March 19. The opening address and student sessions are open to the public.
The dean of GU-Q, Dr Gerd Nonneman will launch the conference. Following introductions, H E Dr Issa Saad Al Jafali Al Nuaimi, Minister of Administrative Development, will deliver the keynote address. A panel of GU-Q faculty and students will then discuss and debate current ongoing security issues in the region. The panel will include Dr Mehran Kamrava, Dr Abdullah Baabood, Dr Rory Miller, Dr Birol Baskan, and senior Georgetown students Maram Al Dafa and Talal Al Naama.
The MESSA student association, which serves to voice undergraduate on a wide range of topics in international affairs, received more paper submissions for the conference this year than ever before. MESSA communications officer Sara Omar, a GU-Q senior majoring in International Politics, said: “We chose a total of 18 papers to be presented, of which 6 are international, including submissions from Harvard university and the University of Southern California, to name a few. We will also have 2 submissions presented over live video stream from main campus in Washington DC and one pre-taped video submission.”
Explaining this year’s theme, Sara said: “We wanted to focus on an issue relevant to the events happening today, but we also wanted it to be broad enough that student submissions could go beyond politics to include economics and culture, for example. So the conversation between ‘the governing and the governed’ isn’t just talking about politics; it can also be about cultural aspects like changing social behaviour in regards to attitudes on marriage, where both citizens and governments have a role to play.”
Participating students can expect new elements this year, such as a planned debate between students at the conference and students from Gaza, to be conducted over Skype. This year, they have also opened the conference to artwork and three students will be presenting their submissions under this year’s theme. A film screening and cultural presentation will be part of the closing ceremony on the final day.
This year’s student paper submissions will also be included in The Journal of Georgetown University-Qatar Middle Eastern Studies Student Association, the first academic political science journal that is produced by university students in the Middle East, published by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing.The Peninsula
