Webinar “The Arab Spring Ten Years On: The Ups and Downs of Political Transformation in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria”
Date of publication: March 2, 2021
Prague Centre for Middle East Relations (PCMR) of CEVRO Institute organized a webinar “The Arab Spring in Maghreb Ten Years On: The Ups and Downs of Political Transformation in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria.” The event was held online on Thursday, February 2021. Our distinguished guests were:
- Tereza Jermanová, Assistant Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Charles University and Research Fellow with the Association for International Affairs, Prague, Czech Republic.
- Kareem Taha, Deputy Executive Director at the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, Brno, Czech Republic.
- Jessica Northey, Researcher at the Center for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University, UK.
The session provided an update on the current state of the political opposition and overall political stability of Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria on the eve of the ten-year anniversary of the so-called Arab Spring. Speakers assessed the bumpy roads of democratic transitions as well as authoritarian turns in the said North African countries and identified likely pathways of further political developments.
The webinar was moderated by Tomáš Kaválek, Director of PCMR.
Tereza Jermanová is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Charles University and Research Fellow with the Association for International Affairs (AMO). My research lies at the intersection of the study of contemporary politics of the Middle East and North Africa and the comparative politics scholarship. I am interested in democratization, and especially in the question of how political actors navigate the intricate period that begins when autocratic leaders are forced to give up their power. I am now working on a book manuscript that explores the processes of writing new constitutions after the 2010-11 uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, drawing on original fieldwork in both countries conducted between 2013 and 2020. I earned my PhD in Comparative Politics at the University of Warwick in 2019 with and MA with honours in North African Politics at the University of Exeter in 2013. My research appeared in Political Research Quarterly and Acta Politica.
Kareem Taha is a Deputy Director of the Egyptian Front for Human Rights. He is an Egyptian human rights defender, who started his activism in 2008 with the 6th of April youth movement. He was imprisoned three times in 2010, 2014, and 2015. Kareem was subjected to physical torture, and in 2015, sentenced to life in prison because of his human rights activism. He fled from Egypt to the Czech Republic, where he currently lives as a political refugee for nearly six years. In 2017, Kareem succeeded in establishing the Egyptian Front for Human Rights (EFHR) in the Czech Republic. The EFHR conducts research, and engages in advocacy with the international mechanisms.
Jessica Northey is a researcher at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations at Coventry University where she was also Director of Postgraduate Research from 2018-2020. She has worked in Algeria since 2007 and authored the book Civil Society in Algeria: activism, identity and the democratic process, (I.B.Tauris, 2018). Currently principal investigator of the British Academy funded “Imagining the Future: Engaging young people on environmental challenges to create new and sustainable livelihoods in Algeria” Youth Futures programme, Jessica Northey is also a researcher on the Ferguson Trust funded project “Youth, Violence and Conflict Transformation: Exploring mobilisation into violence and the role of youth in peacebuilding”. She has been an expert with the Bertelsmann Foundation since 2013 and has conducted assignments for numerous national and international organisations including the British Academy, the Commonwealth Secretariat, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, UK Home Office, World Bank and the EU.