The Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University is seeking a highly motivated student to join a grant-funded digital archive project about the history of the Arabian Peninsula. A successful applicant for this position will be a skilled Flask Developer who is competent at writing Python code and has the knowledge to design and implement code using the Flask framework. The ideal candidate should be able to write modular, performant, and clean code; write unit testing with Python libraries to verify that the functionality of the application is correct; and acquire effective...

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies is seeking highly motivated students to join a grant-funded digital archive project on the history of the Middle East. A successful applicant for this position will be fluent in Arabic and have a demonstrated ability to read and understand eighteenth- to nineteenth-century Arabic chronicles. The student will primarily work on enhancing the performance of the project’s Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool through verifying the accuracy of its rendered text contents against an original source material. The student will perform all administrative...

In spring 2020, Keye Tersmette, PhD candidate in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies, was less than 100 days into what was to be a year of dissertation fieldwork in Oman when Covid-19 hit. Here is his account of research disrupted.

Mere minutes after I purchased my ticket from him, the man behind the desk received a phone call. Soon he was smiling, and began snapping his fingers to draw the attention of his colleagues. The explanation followed the moment the line was disconnected: starting tomorrow, all bus routes would be suspended. While the bus drivers and...

Within a few years of the historic Arab uprisings of 2011, popular mobilization dissipated amidst instability in many Arab countries. We trace the relationship between shifting macro-political conditions and individual-level political values in the Middle East, demonstrating that a preference for democracy and political trust are not fixed cultural features of populations but rather can shift rapidly in the face of perceived insecurity. Our empirical analyses employ longitudinal data from the Arab Barometer covering 13 countries and data from the 2015 World Values Survey, which includes...