Where is the congress being held?

The congress will take place in Montpellier, FRA.

What is the primary focus of this congress?

The congress focuses on studies related to the Middle East and Muslim worlds, covering a wide range of academic disciplines and contemporary issues.

7e congrès des études sur le Moyen-Orient et les mondes musulmans

Name: 7e congrès des études sur le Moyen-Orient et les mondes musulmans
Start: 2027-06-14T00:00:00Z
End: 2027-06-18T00:00:00Z
Location: Montpellier

Jun 14–18, 2027Montpellier, FranceIn-person

Registration open

The upcoming congress in Montpellier, FRA, serves as a pivotal gathering for scholars and researchers dedicated to the intricate studies of the Middle East and Muslim worlds. This recurring event provides a platform for in-depth academic discourse, fostering a comprehensive understanding of the diverse regions it covers. Attendees will engage with current research, historical analyses, and contemporary challenges facing these significant global areas.

Committees & topics

Topics
Anthropology of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Archaeology and Art History of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Law in the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Economy of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Geography of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · History of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Islamic Studies and Religious Sciences · Linguistics of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Why it matters

The study of the Middle East and Muslim worlds is crucial for understanding global geopolitical dynamics, cultural exchanges, and socio-economic developments. This congress offers an essential forum for interdisciplinary collaboration, bringing together experts from various fields to share insights and advance knowledge. Such gatherings are vital for developing nuanced perspectives that move beyond simplistic narratives, promoting a more informed international dialogue.

The discussions at this event contribute to a deeper appreciation of the complexities inherent in these regions, impacting policy-making, international relations, and public understanding. By facilitating the exchange of research findings and methodologies, the congress helps to illuminate critical issues ranging from historical trajectories to modern political transformations and cultural expressions. This academic rigor is indispensable for navigating the multifaceted challenges and opportunities present in these parts of the world.

How to prepare

To maximize engagement with the congress, participants should undertake thorough preparation by familiarizing themselves with the latest academic literature and ongoing debates within Middle Eastern and Muslim world studies. A strong understanding of the historical context and contemporary issues will enable more meaningful contributions to panel discussions and networking opportunities.

Consider utilizing frameworks such as "Dynamic Analysis" to critically assess evolving situations, and "Engagement Strategies" to understand how different actors interact within these complex environments. For those interested in the human element, exploring "Gender Dynamics Across Cultures" can provide valuable insights into social structures. Additionally, understanding "Hidden Stakeholders" is crucial for a comprehensive view of power dynamics and influence in the regions under study. Preparing with these analytical tools will enhance the ability to engage with the diverse perspectives presented at the congress.

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

France

As the host nation, FRA provides a significant European academic hub for Middle Eastern and Muslim world studies.

Role in topic

FRA has a long-standing historical and academic engagement with the Middle East and North Africa, contributing extensively to research and cultural understanding. Its institutions often lead in organizing such international scholarly events.

Egypt

A central player in the Arab world, EGY offers rich historical and contemporary perspectives on Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.

Role in topic

EGY's historical depth, religious institutions, and significant geopolitical role make it a crucial case study and source of scholarship for understanding the region's past and present dynamics.

Morocco

Located at the crossroads of Africa and Europe, MAR presents unique insights into Islamic scholarship and regional geopolitics.

Role in topic

MAR's distinct cultural heritage, historical connections, and contemporary political landscape offer valuable perspectives on the diversity of Muslim societies and their interactions with global powers.

Türkiye

A pivotal bridge between Europe and Asia, TUR's history and modern trajectory are central to understanding the broader Muslim world.

Role in topic

TUR's Ottoman legacy, secularist traditions, and contemporary foreign policy make it a critical subject of study for its influence on regional stability, cultural identity, and international relations.

Iran

A major non-Arab power in the Middle East, IRN's unique political and religious landscape is a key area of focus.

Role in topic

IRN's distinct Shi'a Islamic identity, revolutionary history, and significant regional influence necessitate dedicated academic attention for understanding its impact on the Middle East and global affairs.

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Anthropology of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

The anthropology of the Middle East emerged as a distinct field in the mid-twentieth century, growing out of colonial-era ethnography and area studies frameworks established in Britain, France, and the United States. Early foundational works by scholars such as Edward Evans-Pritchard on the Sanusi of Cyrenaica and later Clifford Geertz's comparative studies of Morocco and Indonesia helped define recurring themes: tribal organization, segmentary lineage, honor and shame, saint veneration, and the relationship between Islam and local practice. From the 1970s onward, critiques by Edward Said and by scholars within the region itself challenged Orientalist assumptions and pushed the discipline toward reflexive, decolonial, and historically grounded approaches. Contemporary anthropological work on the Middle East and Muslim societies addresses urban transformation, migration and diaspora, gender and sexuality, political Islam, secularism, sectarianism, post-conflict reconstruction, and the lived experience of authoritarianism and revolution since 2011. Methodological debates center on access in conflict zones, the ethics of fieldwork under surveillance, and the integration of digital ethnography. The field today is increasingly shaped by anthropologists from the region working in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other regional languages, reshaping the canon away from a purely Western gaze.

Key players

Archaeology and Art History of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Archaeology and art history of the Middle East have deep nineteenth-century roots in European expeditions to Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Levant, and Persia, which produced both foundational scholarship and the dispersal of artifacts into European and American museum collections. The institutionalization of Islamic art history, pioneered by figures such as K.A.C. Creswell, Oleg Grabar, and Ernst Kühnel, established a canon centered on architecture, manuscripts, ceramics, and metalwork from the Umayyad period onward. Field archaeology has illuminated continuities between pre-Islamic and Islamic urbanism, the trans-Saharan and Indian Ocean trade systems, and the material cultures of Andalusia, the Maghreb, the Ottoman lands, Safavid Iran, and Mughal South Asia. The field now confronts urgent challenges: the destruction and looting of sites in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Libya since 2011; debates over restitution of objects held in Western collections; and the politicization of heritage by states and non-state actors, from ISIS's iconoclasm at Palmyra and Mosul to nationalist heritage projects in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Methodologically, the discipline has been reshaped by digital documentation, satellite archaeology, and collaborative projects with regional institutions, alongside renewed scholarly attention to long-marginalized regions and to material culture beyond elite production.

Key players

Law in the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Legal systems across the Middle East and Muslim-majority states reflect a layered history of classical Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) developed by the Sunni and Shi'a schools, Ottoman codification efforts culminating in the nineteenth-century Tanzimat and the Mecelle, and colonial-era transplants of French, British, and Dutch civil and common law. Post-independence states produced hybrid systems combining codified civil law, constitutional provisions referencing the shari'a, and personal status codes governing family, inheritance, and religious affiliation. The 1979 Iranian Revolution, the rise of Gulf legal codifications, and Islamist constitutional debates in Egypt, Tunisia, Sudan, and elsewhere have kept the relationship between religious and positive law politically central. Current scholarly and policy debates address reform of personal status and gender-related laws, the status of religious minorities, transitional justice in post-conflict states (Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya), the regulation of finance through shari'a-compliant instruments, and the application of international human rights and humanitarian law in the region. Comparative work also examines the role of constitutional courts, customary law, tribal arbitration, and the legal frameworks governing refugees and stateless populations, including Palestinians and the Rohingya within broader Muslim-world legal discourse.

Key players

Economy of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

The economic history of the Middle East and Muslim worlds spans pre-modern commercial networks linking the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and trans-Saharan trade; Ottoman fiscal and agrarian systems; and the integration of the region into a colonial and post-colonial global economy heavily marked by primary commodities. The twentieth century was decisively shaped by the discovery and exploitation of hydrocarbons, the founding of OPEC in 1960, the oil shocks of the 1970s, and the resulting rentier-state models in the Gulf, Algeria, Libya, Iraq, and Iran. Non-oil economies such as Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, and Turkey followed varied trajectories of state-led development, structural adjustment, and partial liberalization. Contemporary debates focus on diversification away from hydrocarbons (Saudi Vision 2030, UAE post-oil planning), youth unemployment and informal labor, the political economy of authoritarian bargains and the post-2011 uprisings, the rise of Islamic finance, migrant labor regimes in the Gulf, and the macroeconomic shocks from sanctions on Iran, war economies in Syria, Yemen, and Sudan, and currency crises in Egypt, Lebanon, and Turkey. Energy transition, climate vulnerability, and the geopolitical reorientation around China's Belt and Road and intra-regional investment flows are reshaping the region's economic outlook.

Key players

Geography of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Geographical scholarship on the Middle East and Muslim worlds engages a vast and heterogeneous space stretching from West Africa to Southeast Asia, defined less by physical contiguity than by overlapping cultural, religious, and historical circulations. Classical regional geography emphasized arid environments, oasis and pastoral systems, riverine civilizations along the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, and Indus, and the strategic significance of straits and chokepoints (Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, Bosphorus, Suez). Twentieth-century human geography mapped urbanization, agrarian transformation, and the imprint of colonial borders such as those of Sykes–Picot. Current research foregrounds climate change and water scarcity, the displacement of populations within and beyond the region (Syrians, Afghans, Sudanese, Rohingya, Palestinians), rapid urbanization and megacity growth (Cairo, Istanbul, Tehran, Jakarta, Karachi, Lagos), informal settlements, and the spatial politics of conflict and reconstruction. Geographers also examine resource frontiers, border regimes, infrastructural geopolitics (pipelines, ports, the Belt and Road), and the production of religious and political space, from pilgrimage geographies to contested holy cities.

Key players

History of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

The history of the Middle East and Muslim worlds extends from the rise of Islam in seventh-century Arabia through the Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Andalusi, Seljuk, Mamluk, Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal polities, and into the modern era marked by Ottoman reform, European imperialism, the post-World War I mandates, decolonization, and the construction of national states. Historiographically, the field has moved from a focus on dynasties and elite religious-political institutions toward social, economic, gender, and global histories that integrate the Muslim world into wider Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and Eurasian frameworks. Key historical debates include the formation of early Islamic society, the nature of pre-modern empires and their pluralism, the long nineteenth century of reform and integration into global capitalism, the legacies of the 1916 Sykes–Picot agreement and 1917 Balfour Declaration, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from 1948, the Cold War in the region, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the Lebanese and Iraqi wars, and the post-2011 cycle of uprisings, civil wars, and counterrevolutions. Access to archives — Ottoman, French, British, Iranian, and increasingly Gulf — continues to reshape what can be written.

Key players

Islamic Studies and Religious Sciences

Islamic studies as a modern academic field grew out of nineteenth-century European philology and Orientalism, with foundational contributions from scholars such as Ignaz Goldziher, Louis Massignon, and later Fazlur Rahman and Mohammed Arkoun. The discipline encompasses Qur'anic studies, hadith criticism, classical and modern theology (kalam), jurisprudence (fiqh and usul al-fiqh), Sufism, Shi'a thought, and the intellectual history of Muslim philosophy and science. Traditional centers of religious learning — al-Azhar in Cairo, the Zaytuna in Tunis, the Qarawiyyin in Fez, the hawzas of Najaf and Qom, and Deobandi and Barelvi institutions in South Asia — remain central interlocutors for the academic field. Contemporary scholarship engages debates over Qur'anic origins and manuscript traditions, the reform of Islamic thought, gender and authority, Salafism and jihadism, the politics of fatwa-issuing institutions, Sufi revivals, and Muslim minorities in Europe, the Americas, and Asia. The field also addresses how digital media and transnational preachers reshape religious authority, and how states instrumentalize religious institutions for domestic legitimation and foreign policy, including in the Gulf, Iran, Turkey, Morocco, and Indonesia.

Key players

Linguistics of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

The linguistic landscape of the Middle East and Muslim worlds is exceptionally diverse, encompassing Semitic languages (Arabic in its many varieties, Hebrew, Aramaic/Syriac, Amharic, South Arabian), Indo-European languages (Persian, Kurdish, Pashto, Urdu, Tajik, Ossetian), Turkic languages (Turkish, Azerbaijani, Uzbek, Kazakh, Uyghur), Berber/Amazigh varieties, and contact languages across the Sahel, Horn of Africa, and Indian Ocean. Classical Arabic, as the language of the Qur'an, has exerted profound influence as a prestige and liturgical language well beyond Arabic-speaking populations, shaping lexicon, script, and literary forms from West Africa to Southeast Asia. Contemporary linguistic research focuses on Arabic diglossia and the status of national vernaculars, language policy and the recognition of minority languages (Amazigh in Morocco and Algeria, Kurdish in Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria), endangered Aramaic and South Arabian varieties, sociolinguistics of migration and diaspora, digital and code-switching practices, and the politics of script reforms (Latinization in Central Asia, orthographic standardization). Historical linguistics continues to refine our understanding of Semitic and Iranian language families, contact phenomena, and the role of Arabic and Persian as cosmopolitan written languages.

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for 7e congrès des études sur le Moyen-Orient et les mondes musulmans.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Trump's Marijuana Reclassification

Miss Manners Unveils Elite Dress Code Chaos

Trump's Executive Order on Medical Research

Trump's Memorial Arch

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Frequently asked questions

7e congrès des études sur le Moyen-Orient et les mondes musulmans

Jun 14–18, 2027Montpellier, FranceIn-person

Registration open

Committees & topics

Topics
Anthropology of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Archaeology and Art History of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Law in the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Economy of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Geography of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · History of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds · Islamic Studies and Religious Sciences · Linguistics of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Where the most-relevant 5 countries stand on the core issues in play. Click through for the full country profile.

France

As the host nation, FRA provides a significant European academic hub for Middle Eastern and Muslim world studies.

Role in topic

Egypt

A central player in the Arab world, EGY offers rich historical and contemporary perspectives on Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.

Role in topic

EGY's historical depth, religious institutions, and significant geopolitical role make it a crucial case study and source of scholarship for understanding the region's past and present dynamics.

Morocco

Located at the crossroads of Africa and Europe, MAR presents unique insights into Islamic scholarship and regional geopolitics.

Role in topic

Türkiye

A pivotal bridge between Europe and Asia, TUR's history and modern trajectory are central to understanding the broader Muslim world.

Role in topic

Iran

A major non-Arab power in the Middle East, IRN's unique political and religious landscape is a key area of focus.

Role in topic

Topics & background

The background behind each topic and the actors that shape it.

Anthropology of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Key players

Archaeology and Art History of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Key players

Law in the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Key players

Economy of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Key players

Geography of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Key players

History of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Key players

Islamic Studies and Religious Sciences

Key players

Linguistics of the Middle East and Muslim Worlds

Key players

Resources

News, lessons, and country profiles to prep for 7e congrès des études sur le Moyen-Orient et les mondes musulmans.

Recent reporting to ground your prep

Trump's Marijuana Reclassification

Miss Manners Unveils Elite Dress Code Chaos

Trump's Executive Order on Medical Research

Trump's Memorial Arch

Lessons

Bite-sized lessons to build the basics

Hidden Stakeholders

Engagement Strategies

Dynamic Analysis

Stakeholder Mapping Workshop

Courses

Guided courses that go deeper on the topic

Advanced Negotiation

Multilateral Negotiation

Policy Brief Writing

Conflict Resolution

The states in play, with the data that shapes their stance

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

Country dossier

By committee

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

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Frequently asked questions

Committees & topics

Why it matters

How to prepare

Country perspectives

Topics & background

Resources

Related conferences

International Conference in Support of the Lebanese Armed Forces and Internal Security Forces

International Conference on Counter Terrorism and Human Security (ICCTHS) - Paris

International Conference on Computer Science, Programming and Security (ICCSPS) – June 22, 2026

International Conference on Amnesty, Peace, Politics and Human Rights (ICAPPHR)

Democracy or Digital Dictatorship: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

La nouvelle géopolitique – La France, l'Europe et le monde

Frequently asked questions