Panel discussion on the book, Diasporas of the Modern Middle East: Contextualising Community (Edinburgh University Press, 2015) with the editors, Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarian, and contributors May Farah, Maria Holt and Haris Theodorelis-Rigas. Approaching the Middle East through the lens of Diaspora Studies, the 11 detailed case studies in this volume explore the experiences of different diasporic communities in and of the region, and look at the changing conceptions and practice of diaspora in the modern Middle East.

In situating these different communities within their own narratives - of conflict, resistance, war, genocide, persecution, displacement, migration - these studies stress both the common elements of diaspora but also their individual specificity in a way that challenges, complements and at times subverts the dominant nationalist historiography of the region.

Case studies include, amongst others, the Cypriot Armenian community and Armenian diasporic tourism in Turkey.

Chair: Reem Abou–El–Fadl

Anthony Gorman is Senior Lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Edinburgh. He has taught at universities in Australia, Egypt and Britain and is the author of Historians, State and Politics in Twentieth Century Egypt: Contesting the Nation (2003) as well as a number of articles on the resident foreign communities of modern Egypt.

 Sossie Kasbarian is Lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Lancaster. She has taught at SOAS, the University of Edinburgh and the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and is the author of a number of articles on the diaspora communities of the Middle East.