Research group leader: Prof Christopher Dent

Who we are: Our group comprises a number of social science scholars from different area studies (East Asia, Arabic and Middle East, French, German) and a wide breadth of academic disciplinary backgrounds: politics, geography, political ecology, international relations, security studies, development, gender studies, economics, socio-religious and socio-cultural studies, and international political economy.

What we do: In regular gatherings, we:

• Discuss major research issues and themes that connects with the group collective, such as globalisation, development, nationalism, climate change, governance, and society and culture
• Share our research ideas and information on how our research projects are developing
• Examine what research funding opportunities are available across the spectrum of our area studies and academic disciplines
• What opportunities for research collaborations exist amongst our group members
• Consider what impact our research is having, or could have on the public domain
• How our work on social science research connects with other research groups within the School and its postgraduate research community

Our Purpose: Our overarching aim is to mutually support the research endeavours of all group members, strengthening the sense of a social science research community within our School.

‘Arab Spring and Asia’ event, 25 February 2012

This one-day workshop brought together scholars from Leeds and other UK universities to discuss a number of inter-related subjects on this event theme. Its main aim was to examine and discuss recent political developments in the Arab world (the so called ‘Arab Spring’) and how they are having ripple effects across Asia in terms of fermenting political unrest in especially authoritarian regimes in the region, e.g. China and Vietnam.

Each of the four debate sessions were videoed

Session 1: New Social Movements, Media and Technology

Session 2: Democracy, Religion and Revolutions

Session 3: Who Rebels? The Demographics of Social Revolutions

Session 4: Language, Communications and Social Change

A transcript of the summary discussions for all the event sessions is available here

We intend to follow up this event with a seminar series, planned for the 2012/13 academic year.