This month, we're pleased to announce two new Master's dissertation prizes in the field of Levantine studies for the academic year 2019/2020. We invite UK based heads of departments or chairs of departmental examination boards to nominate one final year dissertation in either: Levantine archaeology or history, or contemporary Levantine studies. Find out more here.

We're delighted to bring you news of publications from CBRL's community. CBRL Trustee and pilot grant recipient, Gerasimos Tsourpas, has recently published on transnational authoritarianism - you can read his open access article here. CBRL alumnus Hussam Hussein has also recently published a co-authored article on groundwater reallocation in Jordan, read the full article here. The winner of our Contemporary Levant best paper award for 2020, Dr Anne Irfan's ‘Petitioning for Palestine: Refugee appeals to international authorities’ and the runner-up, Dr Muna Dajani's 'Thirsty water carriers: the production of uneven waterscapes in Sahl al-Battuf' are now available as open access here.

If CBRL has supported your research at any point, please do keep in touch and let us know about your publications - we'd love to share news of this with our audiences. And whether you're a CBRL alumni or not, if you'd like to write a piece for our research blog, please do get in touch!

Over the summer we shared a membership survey with you. Thank you to all those who took the time to respond to this, your feedback and comments are extremely valuable. We were encouraged by your positive feedback regarding the quality and content of our events and webinars, that you value CBRL's scholarly community and that you consider CBRL membership excellent value for money. Over the next few months we will take on board your suggestions as we look to make CBRL membership ever more accessible and valuable to all those who work on, or are interested in, the scholarship of the Levant.

Finally, this month we're also pleased to share an open-call for a new early career researcher interdisciplinary seminar series on 'Politics of the Middle East' via CBRL alumna, Annie Evans. The series aims to offer emerging and early career researchers the opportunity to present and receive feedback on their work, to engage with contemporary research designs and theoretical debates, and to develop cross-disciplinary and cross-institutional relationships. Deadline for applications is 25th October 2020. To find out more and for details of how to apply, please see here.

Throughout the autumn we will continue to bring you a varied programme of online webinars featuring the latest world-class research on the Levant and if you’ve missed any of our webinars, you can catch up via our YouTube and SoundCloud pages – more details below.

We are pleased to announce two new Master's dissertation prizes in the field of Levantine studies for the academic year 2019/2020. We invite UK based heads of departments or chairs of departmental examination boards to nominate one final year dissertation in either: Levantine archaeology or history, or contemporary Levantine studies. Find out more here.

In our latest research blog, Reader at the University of Warwick and former CBRL trustee, Nicola Pratt, explores women’s activism in the making of the contemporary Middle East and the impact of national, regional and international events on women’s lives. Read more here.