Over the past decade, there has been a burgeoning interest in the realm of art activism within the Southwest Asia and North Africa region, shedding light on the political implications of aesthetic representation. Nevertheless, a critical inquiry into how political aesthetics can formulate both discernible and imperceptible resistance strategies in response to resurging authoritarianism and counter-revolution after the 2011 uprisings in the region remains conspicuously absent.

This book delves into a comprehensive examination of diverse art forms, ranging from street art and cinema to performance art, as well as music and theatre, scrutinizing the manifestations of aesthetic resilience at the epicentre of the political resistance against oppression and authoritarianism in Sudan, Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Yemen and Syria. The editors employ a multifaceted approach to investigate artistic activism, encompassing analysis of visibility, ephemerality, and speech within the public sphere, the establishment and perpetuation of collective transnational solidarities, the portrayal of suppressed identities and narratives, and the innovation of alternative mechanisms for producing and disseminating a

The 2019 revolt in Sudan was seemingly the most successful uprising in the Arab world until the coup in 2021 and the outbreak of war in 2023. The Sudanese revolution of 2019 brought together a nationwide group of Sudanese youth who want change in their country. This chapter reflects on the various components of Sudan’s revolution which ousted its dictator Omar al-Bashir after decades of authoritarian rule. In the words of its own revolutionaries this is thanks to a strong commitment to non-violent values, a vibrant artistic public sphere on the streets and its connection to online digital dissidence. Visions for change can be seen and observed in the large body and collections of graffiti art and mural paintings throughout the public space in the city of Khartoum. Through extensive photographic documentation of revolutionary graffiti street art, ArcGIS story maps and interviewing young revolutionaries this study has documented graffiti and murals of the Sudanese revolution. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the ongoing resistance art in the increasingly difficult circumstances after the outbreak of war in Sudan in 2023 which is turning into a protracted conflict whereby artists and environmental activists are either forced to leave the country and continue their activism in a diasporic condition or to go underground inside Sudan.

Together with a growing number of migrants of Arab descent, Arab music, and tarab culture has grown in importance in the Swedish musical landscape. What is the contribution of Arab migrant musicians, and their music practice, to changes in the musical landscape in southern Sweden from a postmigrant perspective? Postmigrant music making includes processes of building connections and relations between Arab migrant, other migrants, and Swedish non-migrant musicians. We employ the concept of transtopia (Yildiz 2019; West 2019) in the analysis of Arab migrant musicians’ experiences of music-making, performing and teaching Arab music in southern Sweden, with the aim of disentangling how music-making forms spaces for innovation, translation, negotiations of representation, belonging, identity, cultural change and transformation within the context of increasing diversity in society. This study is based on participant observation, audio-visual recordings, fieldnotes and semistructured interviews during fieldwork within the local cultural production sector in the southern Swedish province of Skåne and particularly in the city of Malmö. The interviews were conducted with Arabic-speaking musicians who sing and play classical tarab music in performative and educational settings. The article contributes to a renewed scholarly interest in migrants’ music and to the ongoing debates on the role of migrant artists in cultural change in postmigrant societies.

This chapter reflects on inequalities in humanitarianism in a region marred with conflict: the West Asia and North Africa (WANA) region. The main focus is on how a combination of the security narrative of the Global War on Terror (GWOT), geopolitics at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) level and a colonial legacy, led to systematic inequalities in the provision of humanitarian aid. In the introduction, a brief history of origins of interventionism and inequalities in WANA is given, followed by a section on the linkage between the GWOT narrative and humanitarianism. In the third section, politics of humanitarianism are exemplified with vignettes of Palestine, Iraq, and an in-depth discussion of the case of in Syria. The chapter concludes that wider persistent problem of structural inequalities led to an erosion of the UN Charter and the ethics of humanitarianism in WANA. Where deemed necessary, suggestions for further readings are given.

The closing seminar titled “How can we contribute to International Collaborative Research being Fair and Productive?” focused on better understanding the challenges and recommendations for international collaborative research projects, particularly between low-income and high-income countries. The second cohort of grantees of the research program grant “Sustainability and Resilience–Tackling consequences of climate and environmental changes” participated in this event, representing 13 out ofthe 16 projects granted in 2018. A total of 18 participants from Sweden-based universities, 15 participants from universities in Africa, South Asia and South America and three participants from Swedish research funding agencies came together for two days at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University in Sweden. Through an iterative process, under Chatham house rules, participants engaged in a series of individual reflections, work in pairs, small groups, and plenary discussions, employing Time to Think and Forum Theater techniques. This process provided participants opportunities to discuss, exchange and reflect on their experiences. The aim was to allow for a deep understanding of challenges to fair, equal and productive partnerships in an open, inclusive and safe space and ground-truth potential solutions with what people have experienced. As a result, participants collectively worked on guidelines and recommendations for fair, equitable and productive international collaborative research. Based on the learnings and experiences from the represented projects,ten fundamental principles for international collaborative research were collectively identified such as clear and good communication, open dialogue, and explicitness, transparency and openness in all activities, accountability and availability, flexibility and adaptability and respect of differences and cultural values.In addition to these principles, three main workshop outcomes are presented in this report: 1)recommendations for funders related to calls for proposals, funding allocation and the role of funders during project implementation, 2)a list of recommendations for researchers to navigate the research process from seeking funding to the closing phase and 3) lists of challenges to international collaborative research.Overall, practical experiences from the projects showed that understanding local contexts, considering others’ perspectives, good communication, open dialogue, clear definition of roles and distribution of tasks and teamwork are crucial ingredients for effective collaborations. Building relationships, trust and capacities while being aware of differences and respecting them are also important aspects within international collaborations. We hope these guidelines can contribute to future collaborations.

My talk focused on the development of subversive documentary cinema in Syria since the early 1970s which is part of the multidimensional foundations for the popular uprisings and artistic protests that emerged in the streets of Syria in 2011. I read from my book "Documenting Syria", published in 2019. I argue that the subversiveness of Syrian documentary cinema is directly linked to the emergence of critical exchanges between Syrian and Palestinian filmmakers who collaborated artistically and experimentally on cinema and political dialogues in Damascus (Damascus Cinema Club) and Amman (Palestinian Film Unit). This nexus continued to influence a younger generation of Syrian filmmakers throughout the first decade of the rule of Bashar al Assad of whom some became icons and martyrs of the Syrian Revolution. 

I exemplified this cinematic development with several cinematic works by Mohammed Malas, Rami al-Farrah, and Bassel al Shehadeh and the 2021 film by Abdallah al Khatib “Little Palestine, Diary of a Siege” filmed in the biggest Palestinian refugee camp – Yarmouk, in Damascus, Syria.

In 2019, protesters led by the Sudanese Professionals Association (SPA) mobilized to ignite a revolution that dismantled decades of authoritarian rule. Over the past decade, scholarship of Communication for Development and Social Change (CDSC) and Strategic Communication Management (SCM) has had a blind spot for social change events that emerged outside of the professional fields of international development communication. The Sudanese Revolution, part of what is now called the ‘second Arab Spring’, is such a point in case. This chapter fills part of this scholarly gap and applies a generic CDSC and SDM framework on an empirical case of social movement communication in Sudan. The purpose of this chapter is thus to draw empirical insights on how the SPA communicated, organized, led the protests that led to the ongoing process of socio-political transformation in Sudan. The SPA prepared and developed national action plans and visions for the ongoing governance and sustainability challenges that face Sudan, such as corruption, inflation, extreme poverty, violence, climate change and famine. Insights from the Sudanese Revolution and the role of the SPA as a case-study, through the lenses of CDSC and SCM, will be valuable for further theoretical reflections on public participation, citizen engagement and strategic communication for social change. 

Under the global pandemic, the webinar has become a popular tool of digital communication to reach global audiences. Aimed at shedding light on how misinformation affects diasporic political communication, this chapter investigates how Syrian pro-democracy activists and diasporic political entrepreneurs use the webinar to counter mis/disinformation and conspiracies about Syria. During the Covid-19 pandemic, alignment between conspiracy narratives on both the far right and the left became stronger, forming a so-called red-brownist alignment (Bevensee, 2020). These narratives include anti-vaccination arguments and mis/disinformation about Syria. In August 2020, a webinar series entitled Common Sense on Syria, by Just World Educational (JWE), provided a platform for communicating misinformation narratives about Syria, which Yassin al-Haj Saleh calls a ‘top-down anti-imperialist discourse’ (al-Haj Saleh, 2021). Syrian diaspora actors countered with another webinar series, The Syrian Revolution: A History from Below, to unpack the root causes and context of the Syrian revolution. Through the method of discourse analysis, with the webinar as unit of analysis, this chapter unpacks the discursive structures and narrative intentions of these two webinar series, which represent polar positions on the spectrum between conspiracy theories, mis/disinformation and fact-based opinions about Syria.

Over the past 5 years, immersive media technologies continue to provide new and challenging opportunities for participatory approaches in social sciences. In particular the use of small 360-video cameras for visual ethnographic work provides new innovative research methods for migration research and participatory action research (PAR). This paper describes and analyses the preliminary results of a 6-year research programme entitled 'Refugee Migration and Cities: Social Institutions, Political Governance and Integration in Jordan, Turkey and Sweden', led by Gothenburg University in collaboration with Malmö University, Sweden and Bogazici University in Turkey. How does immersive 360-video enhance the ability to understand the Other? This paper aims to give insight into ongoing longterm research on attitudes towards refugees of war, in which participatory 360-video is used as a methodology for ethnographic enquiry with Syrians in Sweden, Turkey and Jordan. The programme implemented a methodology based on the use of immersive 360-video technology for a visual multi-sited ethnographic study on refugee lifeworlds, encounters and conviviality, conducted in three different geographical locations with Syrian refugees. The study makes use of 360-video cameras to capture and document everyday life from the point of view of Syrian refugees in respectively Gothenburg, Sweden, Adana, Turkey and Irbid, Jordan. Providing preliminary conclusions, the author will reflect on building rapport with refugees in the field and various levels of agency and authorship of the research participants.