This presentation is part of a wider research project on social and political movements in post 2003 Iraq, with a particular focus on the 2019 ‘October Uprising’.
Indeed, most studies and research look at post Ba‘th Iraq through geopolitics and ethno-sectarian lenses, my research aims at locating continuities and breaks in the historical trajectory of secular groups, especially the Iraqi Left. The research will consider the gradual emergence of a significant secular protest movement in the country (protest cycles 2011, 2015-16, 2018-20) and, at the same time, the difficulties encountered by progressive activists in building up their own political and social base and their relations with the religious camp.
Gennaro Gervasio, a graduate of the University of Naples ‘L’Orientale’, is currently Associate Professor in History and Politics of the Middle East and North Africa in Roma Tre’s Department of Humanities. Previously, he has been the Director of the Centre for Middle East and North African Studies at Sydney’s Macquarie University (2009-11) and has been teaching and researching in Cairo from 2011 until 2016. His research interests include Marxism in the Arab world, the political role of Arab intellectuals, and civic activism and social movements in the Arab World (especially Egypt and Iraq). He is the author of al-Haraka al-Markisiyya fi Misr 1967-1981 (The Marxist Movement in Egypt 1967-81; Cairo 2010), and more recently has co-edited a special issue on Gramsci and the Uprisings in North Africa (2021). In the academic years 2022-24, he is an affiliated EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien.
Rashof Salih completed her BA in Social and Cultural Anthropology and Political Science and is pursuing her MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Free University of Berlin, focusing on the intersection of psychological anthropology, collective memory and politics. She is currently part of the EUME team at the Form Transregionale Studien.