Talking About the Egyptian Revolution in Oxford

I’m off to Oxford this weekend for an international conference on the Egyptian revolution, so don’t expect many posts.

The conference is entitled ‘The Egyptian Revolution, One Year On: Causes, Characteristics and Fortunes’. The conference will be held on Friday 18 and Saturday 19 May 2012 at the Department of Politics and International Relations, Oxford University.

The abstract reads:

The popular uprising of 25 January 2011 launched a revolution in Egypt that captured the imagination of observers worldwide, and whose reverberations continue to be felt throughout the Middle East, as well as in the world’s major capitals. The year 2012 is seeing many scholarly communities mark the first anniversary of this extraordinary development. This conference aims for Oxford University to be the meeting point, at the juncture of one year on, for a consideration of the causes, characteristics, and fortunes of the January Revolution. The conference stands out for its explicit aim to bring together scholars based inside and outside the Arab world, and for encouraging the participation of scholars on the ground in Egypt.

I will be speaking on Saturday on “In Search of Antistructure: The Meaning of Tahrir Square in Egypt’s Ongoing Social Drama.”

I’m excited. I haven’t been to England in a decade, and haven’t been to Oxford since…jeepers, since 1993! And it’s always fun to be surrounded by, and learning from, people who are smarter than I am.