The fall of the Assad regime might not only mark a political collapse for Assad and Assadism in Syria, but would also unravel long-standing barriers that have shaped how researchers engage with the country's complex legacy. This legacy includes research sites that were once inaccessible, often built on deeply intertwined theoretical and methodological foundations. One such site is the Syrian political prison system. In this talk, Eylaf Bader Eddin reflects on how visiting Sednaya prison can reshape our epistemological approaches to fieldwork and perception of researched fields, drawing on research he conducted on Sijniyya-prison songs secretly performed in Sednaya between 1987 and 1996.
This talk is part of the lecture series “Syria at a Crossroads”, a collaboration between the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg, Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europea (EUME), and the Merian Centre for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb (MECAM) in Tunis.
For online attendance, please follow this link.