fourth Annual Medieval Middle East Meeting

We would like to invite you to the fourth Annual Medieval Middle East Meeting (see description below) to take place on 30 October 2026 at Utrecht University.

We invite abstracts of two different kinds; traditional papers and our format of short “pitches and presentations”:

• 15 min papers (followed by 10 minutes for Q&A);
• 5 min “Pitches and Presentations” (followed by 15 minutes for Q&A); see below.

In addition, there will be a roundtable (see below).

For the 15 minute-papers, abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to Antonia Bosanquet (a.s.bosanquet@uu.nl) by 25 September 2026.

Places will be allocated on a first-come-first served basis, but also with attention to balance in topic and seniority.

Graduate student “Pitches and Presentations”

For this format, we especially invite (Research) MA students and early-stage PhD candidates to send in 100-word abstracts for short presentations. Students will present for 5 minutes using a maximum of 2 PowerPoint (or equivalent programme) slides. They have the option to either briefly explain their research plans (“Pitch”), or to briefly present (preliminary) results or a source that they are planning to use in their research, and how they hope to use it, to solicit a focused discussion on methodology that will be directly useful to them (“Presentation”). The 5-minute pitch or presentation will be followed by 15 minutes of feedback from experts in the audience. Students are encouraged to raise questions and/or identify aspects of their research that they would like feedback or suggestions on. This format is aimed at providing an opportunity for feedback at an early stage.

Of course, students who would rather send in an abstract for a traditional 15-minute presentation in one of the other panels are more than welcome to do so.

Attending the entire Meeting and participating in the “Pitches and Presentations”-panel (or another panel) will earn ReMA students 1 EC. Alternatively, ReMA students will also still be able to earn 1 EC by attending the entire Meeting and handing in a written reflection outlining what insights they gained with regard to their own research. This latter option is intended especially for those students in the first weeks of their ReMA.

Roundtable

Each year we aim to have a roundtable on a specific theme. In 2026, the roundtable theme will be “Institutional connections, personal networks: Communication and Cooperation between Dutch and Middle East Research Institutions”.

As scholars working on the medieval Middle East, most of us rely on primary and secondary sources from the region itself, and many of us travel regularly to the Middle East to study the art and architecture there. Many of us are able to speak at least one of the languages used in the region and have a personal interest in the socio-political situation in one or more of the countries relevant for our research. However, the cooperation between Dutch and Middle Eastern research institutions remains relatively under-developed and most researchers rely on personal contacts with other scholars to approach local networks or to access source material. Underdeveloped contact with the region does more than limit our research possibilities; it also affects the way that we approach our sources, our research questions and our methodology. Publications from the Middle East are often omitted in Dutch research on the region, either because researchers are not aware of new work from the region, or because they have difficulty accessing these works.

The aim of this round table is to think about connections between academic institutions and about the collaboration between scholars in the Netherlands and the Middle East, to identify challenges and reasons for why some networks have not continued, and to recommend suggestions for improving these. We are interested in hearing from people with significant experience of cooperating with the region, both in an individual and in an institutional context. We would like to hear about examples of best practice or unsuccessful ventures and in exchanging ideas about what measures could be taken to improve connectivity with Middle Eastern research institutions, whether through a personal or an institutional level.

For further information on AMMEM, including past events, see: https://ammem.hcommons.org/