Activist Challenges in Jordan

The ERC LIVE-AR project team is pleased to announce the 4th session for the year 2024/2025 of the seminar series “Trajectoires militantes et crises politiques”. It will take place on Apris 1th 2025, from 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. (Paris Time) and will be devoted to the research of Jillian Schwedler (City University of New York), who will present a paper entitled « Activist Challenges in Jordan».

The session will take place by videoconference on Zoom, in English.

For further information about the seminar and to register, please email the LIVE-AR project team (erclivear@ird.fr).

Summary

Jordan has one of the richest histories of protest in the MENA region, with hundreds and sometimes thousands of protests in any given year since 1989. Compared to neighboring countries, protests in Jordan are typically policed less violently. But the regime does not like protest and goes to great lengths to find ways of suppressing them. What are the challenges for Jordanian activists in the current political climate. Building on nearly 25 years of field research, this talk will examine patterns of repression and the experience of activists in Jordan over the past three decades.

 

Jillian Schwedler

Jillian Schwedler is Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York’s Hunter College and the Graduate Center. She is author of the award-winning Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (Cambridge 2006) and, most recently, the award-winning Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent (Stanford 2022). She was elected to serve on the highest governing boards of the Middle East Studies Association and the American Political Science Association.