Webinar “Talking Lebanese Crisis: Is There a Way Out This Time?”
Date of publication: April 19, 2021
Prague Centre for Middle East Relations (PCMR) of CEVRO Institute organized a webinar “Talking Lebanese Crisis: Is There a Way Out This Time?” The event was held online on Thuesday, April 15, 2021. Our distinguished quests were:
- Sami Zoughaib, Economist at The Policy Initiative, Beirut, Lebanon.
- May Tamimova, PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Research Associate at European University Institute for the Libya Initiative.
- Jan Daniel, Researcher at the Institute of International Relations, Prague.
The session provided an update on contemporary situation in Lebanon. It addressed the root causes of today’s ever deepening economic and political crisis the country is facing. We discussed historical institutional, political and socio-economic roots of the crisis and how these translate and magnify the current bleak situation and prospects for improvement. We also touched upon international, chiefly European, perspectives on the crisis and its resolution. Finally, a set of concrete recommendations was proposed to avert the further deterioration of the Lebanese state.
The webinar was moderated by Tomáš Kaválek, Director of PCMR.
Sami Zoughaib is an economist at The Policy Initiative, a Lebanese independent think-tank. He holds an M.A. in Public Policy from the University of Reading and a BA in Economics from the American University of Beirut. His research mainly focuses on Lebanese politics and political economy, namely international donor conferences, parliamentary elections, and monitoring legislative production and reform.
May Tamimova is a PhD student in Anthropology at the University of Oxford working on urban violence and politics of Islamism in Lebanon. She focuses specifically on the city of Tripoli where she conducted fieldwork between 2019-2020. She also has over five years of policy-research experience between Beirut and Florence, where she is currently working as a research associate at the European University Institute for the Libya Initiative.
Jan Daniel is Researcher at the Institute of International Relations Prague. He obtained his PhD in International Relations from the Charles University with thesis on peacekeeping practices and narratives in South Lebanon. His research mostly concerns links between international discourses of peace and security and their manifestations in local practices, as well as politics of security in the Central Europe and Eastern Mediterranean (in particular in Lebanon and Syria). He has published on political sociology of peace interventions or narratives of hybrid warfare. He has been also involved in policy research project done in cooperation with the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs or International Peace Institute and he has been a visiting researcher at the European University Institute or American University of Beirut.