Knowledge, Power, and Resistance:

Reimagining Critical Muslim and Middle Eastern Studies in an Age of Genocide, Populism, Authoritarianism, and Neoliberalism

Graduate Student Virtual Symposium
University of Alberta
May 15, 2026

 

The ECMC Chair in Islamic Studies and the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (MEIS) at the University of Alberta, Canada, invites submissions for an interdisciplinary, graduate-level virtual symposium.

We welcome PhD and Master’s students from all disciplines whose research engages any aspect of socio-cultural, historical, religious, artistic, or political issues in Muslim contexts. We particularly encourage proposals grounded in critical and decolonial approaches that center the voices, lived experiences, and struggles of Muslims and other marginalized communities resisting systemic and epistemic violence.

In an age marked by genocide in Palestine, the rise of right-wing populism and authoritarianism, neoliberal crises producing dispossession and displacement, and the normalization of anti-Muslim racism, securitization, surveillance, and shrinking spaces for critical inquiry, Muslim communities—alongside other oppressed groups—continue to forge transnational solidarities and mobilize social movements that challenge entrenched structures of violence and exclusion.

This symposium seeks to explore the field of Critical Muslim and Middle Eastern Studies amid these overlapping crises. We invite proposals addressing (but not limited to) the following questions:

·   How might the study of Muslim societies, movements, traditions, imaginaries, arts, literature, history, and cultures respond to the normalization of genocide, systemic and epistemic violence, authoritarianism, and right-wing populism?

·   What are the epistemic, ethical, and political stakes of conducting critical scholarship under conditions of racialized capitalism, regressive religious and nationalist nativism, surveillance, and restricted academic freedom?

·   How do neoliberal governance, global populisms, and digital media ecologies reshape the production of knowledge about Islam, Muslims, and the Middle East?

·   What forms of intellectual and political solidarity emerge across geographies of resistance?

 

Submission Guidelines

Proposals must include:

·   Presentation title

·   Brief author bio

·   Abstract (maximum 300 words) outlining the main argument(s), research methods, and principal evidence and/or findings

Deadline for submissions: February 2, 2026
Notification of acceptance: March 2, 2026

ECMC Chair in Islamic Studies Graduate Paper Prizes

Participants may submit their full papers by May 31, 2026, for consideration in the Graduate Paper Competition (optional).

·   First Prize: $500

·   Second Prize: $300

Important Dates

·   Abstract submission deadline: February 2, 2026

·   Notification of acceptance: March 2, 2026

·   Virtual symposium: May 15, 2026

·   Full paper submission (optional): March 31, 2026

For more information about the symposium, please visit:https://meissymposium.wordpress.com/

For questions about the symposium, please contact: Wajiha Mehdi at wajihafa@ualberta.ca, or Reza Khodarahmi at rkhodara@ualberta.ca