Author: Nassef Manabilang Adiong

Nassef is the founder of Co-IRIS (International Relations and Islamic Studies Research Cohort), PHISO (Philippine International Studies Organization), DSRN (Decolonial Studies Research Network), and BRLN (Bangsamoro Research and Legal Network). He works on interdisciplinary research between Islam and International Relations and explores the Bangsamoro society as he heads the Policy Research and Legal Services (PRLS) of the Bangsamoro Parliament. Visit https://nassef.info/ for more details.

Middle East Politics and World Affairs

                 

Summer course in Middle East Politics & World Affairs (June 11-22, 2012)

The Lebanese American University offers an intensive two-week 3 credit hour summer course in Middle East Politics and World Affairs (POL421/INA814) at its Beirut Campus.

The course provides an ideal opportunity to examine relevant topics in the politics of the contemporary MENA region with particular reference to the following core thematic areas:

  • Introduction to the Politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
  • The Expansion of Civil Society and Media Roles in Contemporary Transitions
  • The revisited paradigms of political transitions in the Region against the backdrop of the uprisings
  • Political Pragmatism of Islamists and liberals
  • Transformation of Political Economy
  • Comparative MENA country survey and analysis
  • International Relations of the Middle East

With a strong policy-oriented component, the course offers graduate and undergraduate international students the opportunity to:

  • Interact with prominent guest speakers, politicians, and diplomats from the Region
  • Visit local organizations, media and research centers
  • Participate in focus group meetings with local activists in various extracurricular activities.

Syllabus:

Who can take the course?

  • Undergraduate students
  • Graduate students
  • Researchers on Middle East politics or international affairs

Class Time: Monday – Friday: 8:00 am -12:40 pm (June 11 – 22)
Cost: undergraduate course fees $1,569; graduate course fees $1,743
Student housing cost for the 2 weeks: $600 for single room; $450 for double room
Health insurance fees: to be announced
Students interested in acquiring or advancing their Arabic language skills may choose to continue their study on campus with the SINARC program throughout the following six weeks.

Eligibility requirements

  • Non-LAU students
  • Undergraduate student: at least at the junior level (2nd year), in good academic standing with introductory background in Political Science/International Affairs
  • Graduate student: in Political Science/International Affairs or related fields

Application process:

  • Applicants will apply online
  • When applying select the “Two weeks Summer program”
  • Deadline for applications is April 20, 2012
  • Application fees $50
  • Copies of supporting documents (see below) should be uploaded or e-mailed to the following address: admissions.beirut@lau.edu.lb

Original copies should be submitted at arrival, which is a requirement for issuing a transcript at the completion of the course.
Supporting documents:

  • A transcript from the home University.
  • Applicants coming from a university where English is not the language of instruction, are required to sit for the International TOEFL IBT and get a minimum score of 80.
  • A clear photocopy of the identity card or passport.
  • One passport size photo (digital)

Once you are accepted into the course, a non-refundable registration fee will be required by: May 6, 2012.

For further information you can contact:
Academic advisors:Dr. Imad Salamey
Dr. Tamirace Fakhoury
Study Abroad Coordinator:
Dina Abdul Rahman

We look forward to hosting you this summer at the
Lebanese American University, Beirut!

MA in Faith and Globalisation, Durham University

                     

The Faith and Globalisation Programme is a joint network of the School of Government and International Affairs and the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. It is aimed at providing teaching at Masters level and research at world class levels, in an atmosphere of vigorous intellectual exchange and collaborative work.
The Programme launched a taught MA in Faith and Globalisation in October 2010, runs a series of regular Research Seminars and other events and is involved in international research collaboration.Through these activities the interconnections of faith, spirituality and organised religion and global issues, contexts and dynamics are explored both in terms of scholarship and practical orientations. 
The Programme is fully interdisciplinary and involves staff from various departments across faculties, around areas such as science and technology, economics and finance, identity and culture, governance and politics, through the study of various faith traditions and forms of organised religion around the world.
Durham University is also the leading UK hub of the Faith and Globalisation Initiative, led by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation, and formed by top universities across the world.
Programme Director:  Dr. Joanildo Burity
For more information email: faith.globalisation@durham.ac.uk

Ways to Increase Your Academic Visibility

                    

Ways to Increase Your AcademicVisibility

by Adrian Andreescu , Associate Circulation Editor  IJTS
The Enigma
The aim of scholarly research is to make a contribution to the existing human knowledge. Still, many scholars are aware of valuable articles that are rarely cited in the academic literature. The innovative advances  delayed by the cumulative research impact lost cannot be accurately calculated at this moment. Probably eighty years from now, future studies willpresent detailed  insights into the causes and consequences of early  21 th  centur y’s  increased scholarship fragmentation.
One Motive (Among Others)
A large number of your peers (most of them outside your specific area of research) have a million and one reasons to do something other than spend long hours searching for articles from different fields and trying to find out which of them might offer (against the odds) some novel perspective or unexpected justification for their own research.
A Five–Step Solution to Increase Your Academic Visibility
1. Craft your articles for a larger audience.
There is no secret that papers grounded in and speaking to multiple fields often have the broadest impact and appeal. If most of your articles do not fall in this category, spend some time trying to identify a different academic audience that currently debates issues to which you could providean unexpected perspective (concentrate on publishing in international journals across disciplines). Remember that “We are not students of some subject matter but students of problems. And problems may cut right across the borders of any subject or discipline”. (Karl Popper)
As dissemination of scientific publications via the web is becoming more common nowadays, serendipity isintricately woven within the fabric of a casual Google search. Make sure you write “search-engine friendly” papers (read  here and here some useful tips).
Present your finding in ways that are credible and persuasive to the readers. Without engaging your expected audience into the text, a flawless logic of complex arguments might have in some cases alienating effects as many potential readers do not attempt to decipher those academic articles looking like an impenetrable thicket of words. In case you have been  socialized into the norms of writing through a process of implicit learning, you might appreciate some articulated suggestions on academic discourse from peers like Sternberg (here), Boellstorff (here and here), Ellis (here), Bem (here and here ), Caulley (here), Weick (here), Frank (here), Fernández–Ríos & Buela–Casal (here) or Knox

(here).
2. Submit your articles to suitable journals.
Don’t aim only at those journals that are rejecting over 80% of the manuscripts submitted for consideration as  this narrowapproach might imply in the end a lot of frustration for you, a delay in publication andan inefficient use of reviewers’ time and energy.
3. Self–archive your papers.
Why it is very important to  self archive your academic articles in a  repository? Because thegoal of your dissemination activity should be  to maximise research usage and impact. Try to avoid uploading your papers exclusively in institutional repositories that are not open to public access. Better  solutions are currently available (e.g.,  Social Science Research Network, The Social Science Open Access Repository, HAL, CogPrints, Hprints, OpenDepot, ResearchGate). Self–archiving is  easy ! As many articles can be self-archived in  compliance with publisher policy, put them on the paths that most scholars use when they explore the information jungle. Open repositories are especially useful when your are not publishing in journals that have sufficient mass to make your work rapidly visible to a wider international audience.
A brief synthesis relevant to theOA/non–OA debate, can be found in an  article published not long ago in Journal of Clinical Psychology:
“Harnad and Brody (2004) compared the citation counts of individual OA and non–OA physics articles appearing in thesame (non-OA) journals (The OA articles in non–OA journals were made OA by their authors through self–archived eprints).They found citation advantages for OA articles of 200 to 300%, depending on the publication year. Similar studies have compared OA andnon–OA articles in astronomy, computer science, electrical engineering, mathematics, philosophy, and political science, findingOA impact advantage rates of  25 to 250% (Antelman, 2004; Eysenbach, 2006; Hajjem, Harnad, & Gingras, 2005b; Kurtz et al., 2005a; Lawrence, 2001), with an average OA advantage of 93.2%in psychology (Hajjem et al., 2005a).[…] Scholars wishing to maximize the diffusion of their research among the professional community should deposit eprints of their work in OA archives. There are no copyright or other legal barriers to this OA strategy, with 91% of research journals (including all APA and Wiley journals) already giving theirexplicit green light to authors self–archiving of pre– or postprints (Eprints, 2008). One hundred percent OA is a reachable goal.” 

4. Be committed to disseminate the findings of your work.
A  “C ERN  for social  s cie nti sts ”  is unlikely to be created in the next decades. In this context, you should become more involved in the dissemination of your papers. As stated by Shelley E. Taylor in  her article, “marketing papers, a concept alien to some scientists, is increasingly important if we are to  reachthe multiple fields to which our work may contribute. […]We can send our papers out to a target audience that might otherwise not read the journal. Authors might be well advised to create a list of people in other fields unlikely to otherwise encounter the paper and e–mail it to them.”
5. Network curiously and habitually with other scholars.
You might consider creating an account on asite like Academia.edu. Your profile should not be limited to your name and the email address. Upload a photo, your papers, select at least some relevant research interests, “follow” the profiles of your peers, etc. Give others a chance to find out more about your work! Uncuriosity can be dangerously comfortable especially within the sophisticated, intellectual world of Academe. In the effort to raise your long–term visibility and impact, you must become aware of novel research opportunities. Also, remain curious about big, intractable problems and invest at least one hour/week for online interaction with scholars from outside your niche research area.  Keep in mind that theoretical innovation and new findings come often through cross–fertilization and  interdisciplinary research.
Note: You can help scholarly research circulate and interact more freely by forwarding the above educational  hypertext to your peers or by posting it on any academic blog or listserv, under the  Creative Commons – Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 3.0  . The author does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any party for any loss or damage resulting from the inappropriate useof information mentioned in Ways to Increase Your Academic Visibility (the webpages and their contents areprovided on an “as is“ basis, withoutwarranty of any kind, either express or implied from the author). Sept. 2010

CFP: Religion and Globalization

Special Issue “Religion & Globalization”

A special issue of Religions (http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/)

http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/religion_globalization/

Call for Papers

Whether globalization is considered as a worldwide structured system of interstate relationships (Friedmann, 1998) or as a world “in motion” (Tomlinson, 1999) crossed by human and cultural flows (Appadurai, 1998), it refers indisputably to a new set of environmental conditions for religions. Globalization is creating new dynamics of change including transnational expansions of traditions (Csordas, 2007), deterritorialized sites, cultic areas (even parishes), virtualized and networked “communities” of believers, electronic and mediatized gods (Stolow, 2010), the universalization of cosmopolitan values and the localization of universalized beliefs (Robertson, 1992). 

Also shifting religious geographies (for example, Christianity turning “southern” and “black”, Islam turning “Asian”, Buddhism turning “white” and “western”) have contributed to a reshaping of global geopolitics (Huntington, 1993), an “ecological” turn in religious beliefs (Taylor, 2005), a worldwide standardization of religious systems (Beyer, 1994, 1998, 1999) and re-enchantment on a global scale (Csordas, 2007). 
Migrations have been – and still are – major forces for the geographic redistribution of beliefs and cults, while the world is also becoming ‘proselytized’. This does not clarify the very specific modes by which each process of mobility affects the various ways different religions are acted upon by global forces in their specific contexts. Neither does it take into account the fact that global religious changes may have nothing to do with mobility (Friedmann, 1998) but rather with global systems (Beyer, 1994). 
A global perspective on religious changes and adaptations in the contemporary world requires a prudent examination of different case-studies as not all religions are subjected to the same forces and engaged with similar processes of changes. Indeed, the “great” historical religions do not face global changes like new expanding religious cults or sects do. Analysis must cautiously distinguish between globalizing religions in global conditions, the impact of globalization on religions, and the role of religions in the rise and the shaping of global (economic, political or ideological) forces.

This special issue aims at gathering papers in which scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds (religious studies, anthropology, sociology, political sciences, history, political economy or others) can explore, on an empirical basis and in clearly identified geographic, historical and cultural contexts, the effects of religion on globalization or of globalization on religions. Please contact Prof. Lionel Obadia, anthropologist, University Lyon 2 at: Lionel.obadia@univ-lyon2.fr

Keywords: Globalization, Global and globalizing religions, spiritual transnationalism, migration and missionary activism, mediatization of religions, religion and the Internet,  deterritorialization and new geographies of religions.

Expected deadline: September 30, 2012.

CFP: Classical and Contemporary Approaches to Qur’an and Sunna (Good Governance in Islam)

Summer Institute for Scholars – 2012

CALL FOR PAPERS 
Contemporary Approaches to Qur’an and Sunna
Good Governance in Islam: 
Classical and Contemporary Approaches

July 9 – 18, 2012

The International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) is pleased to announce its fifth Summer Institute for Scholars to be convened at IIIT headquarters in Herndon, Virginia, USA between July 9 and July 18, 2012. The purpose of the Summer Institute is to bring together and engage senior and young scholars with a particular interest or expertise in Qur’anic studies or Sunna in focused, organized discussions of topics related to a contemporary understanding and articulation of issues involving Qur’an and Sunna. The specific objectives of the seminar are:
-To develop methods or approaches of understanding Qur’an and Sunna that are both authentic and relevant to contemporary realities and sensibilities in the West and the Muslim world.
-To suggest means and instruments of engaging the scholarly community, the religious community, political leaders, the media and the public at large in learning processes, debates or experiences that make intelligible the wisdom of the Qur’an and the Sunna and their relevance to contemporary human affairs.
-To broaden the scope of conversations on issues pertaining to Qur’an and Sunna through the inclusion of social and physical scientists beside the scholars of the traditional Islamic disciplines.
The focus of this year’s program is on Good Governance in Islam: Classical and Contemporary Approaches. Deliberations will center around topics such as the issue of governance in Qur’an and Sunna; the evolution of governance as a category of thought in classical literature, the Muslim experience with governance and its implications on contemporary Islamic thought, comparative approaches to good governance, and the application of approaches such as Maqasid – or higher objectives of Islamic law – to governance, both theoretically and institutionally. A particular focus will be on Islamic approaches to governance within the context of the modern nation state and the current debates on constitution building in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya, among others.
Interested scholars should send a one page abstract to abubaker@iiit.org together with an updated C.V by March 26, 2012. IIIT will notify scholars whose abstracts are accepted by April 8, 2012. Final papers should be submitted to IIIT by email no later than June 4, 2012. IIIT will notify scholars whose papers have been accepted for presentation during the program by June 15, 2011. Papers presented during the program will be considered for publication in an edited volume to be published by IIIT.
IIIT will cover the cost of travel within continental USA and Canada and hotel accommodation in Herndon, VA for participants with accepted papers. In addition, each participating scholar will get $100 per day to cover living expenses during attendance of the program and another $1000 honorarium upon submission of a publishable paper for the volume.
For further information or questions, please contact Abubaker al Shingieti at abubaker@iiit.org or call 703 471 1133 Ext 101.