Law, Society, and Culture from Basra to the Balkans

Nir Shafir
History
UC San Diego

Occasioned by the upcoming centennials of the peace agreements that created the Modern Middle East in the wake of World War I, this multi-campus research group considers the creation of the modern Middle East in its broader historical and regional context by conducting collaborative research and discussion about the longer transition from “early modern” to “modern” in the Middle East and the Balkans. Our goal is twofold: to work through the layers of rupture and continuity involved in Middle Eastern and Balkan law, society, and culture from the multi-religious empires of the eighteenth century to the world of nation-states in the twentieth century; and, to establish a sustainable scholarly network to leverage the tremendous expertise on the Middle East distributed across the UC system.