10 Years After the Arab Spring: Protest Cycles in the Middle East and North Africa in Context

The lecture series is jointly organized by the University of Hamburg, the Leibniz-Institute for Global and Regional Studies (GIGA), Heinrich-Böll-Foundation Hamburg and Academy in Exile.

Ten years ago, popular uprisings challenged authoritarian systems across the Middle East and North Africa. The Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 and their aftermath, together with the Green Movement in Iran (2009) and the Gezi-protests in Turkey (2013), appeared to form part of a regional protest cycle. A decade later, these uprisings seem to have hardly left any traces,  and their memory is eclipsed by other events.

Over the course of this semester, we will look back at the events of the Arab Spring in its broader regional and international context. What were the root causes for the uprisings? What were the results? Why did they largely fail? To what degree are current protest movements in countries of the Middle East and North Africa related to the Arab uprisings of 2011?