Young Thinkers in Charge Doha Hosts Student Organized MESSA Conference
The Middle Eastern Studies Student Association (MESSA) recently concluded their Second Undergraduate Conference on Middle Eastern Affairs held at Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Qatar (GU-Q) campus in Education City. The three day student-organized Georgetown conference saw the gathering of undergraduate participants from top universities across the U.S., as well as from Qatar universities, meeting in Doha to present their work to peers, scholars and policy practitioners, focusing on issues relevant to the Middle East region.
Dr. Mehran Kamrava, Director of the Center for Regional Studies at GU-Q, opened the conference, bearing the theme of ‘activism’ this year, with an appeal to students. “Everything you do in your efforts to understand the world, and to understand how to make it a better place for everyone, is activism. It starts in the papers that you will be presenting during this conference, and it will end in the changes your work will eventually create in the real world.”
The student organizers of the conference invited prominent young Yemeni blogger and civic activist, Sarah Ahmed, to give the keynote address at the opening ceremonies. The co-founder of the “Support Yemen – Break the Silence” campaign spoke about activism as both a “general popular struggle” that creates gradual social change, but also as an “inner uprising, the process of finding a home.” She asked the gathering of students to contemplate the motivations for engagement to make their their home, better. “Most of the time, people take their surroundings for granted. So what makes a person focus on a cause, and stand for it?”
Though only the second conference ever held for MESSA, research contributions from interested students were so numerous, the organizers “could only accept around 20 percent of submissions. Not only were there far more than last year, our first year, but the quality was much higher.” said Haya al Thani, a Qatari GU-Q senior, and co-president of MESSA.
The Dean of the Georgetown School of Foreign Service in Qatar, Dr. Gerd Nonneman, praised the hard work of the Georgetown student steering committee for the conference, saying “This conference fits perfectly with our strategy to encourage student research. It offers a forum where emerging young researchers can share their perspectives on the complex social, historical, cultural and political issues defining the region. Impressively, it is wholly student-initiated and student-run. This is a uniquely Georgetown Qatar campus event, and its success has encouraged the Washington D.C. campus to launch a similar initiative by and for students.”
Beyond the annual conference, MESSA organizers plan on publishing participants’ papers, as well as other independently solicited student research papers, in a peer-reviewed Journal of Middle Eastern Studies. Read about publication.