Mediating the Makhzan: The Trials and Tribulations of Moroccan Dissidents

CCAS is pleased to host Dr. Miriyam Aouragh, a Dutch-Moroccan anthropologist and a reader at the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster., for a public presentation. This event will be held virtually. Please register here.  

Miriyam Aouragh grew up in Amsterdam as a second generation Dutch-Moroccan and has a background in anthropology and non-Western sociology (Vrije Universiteit Amsterrdam).She has studied the implications of the internet as it was first introduced (“Web 1.0”) in Palestine (PhD, University of Amsterdam, 2000-2008) to understand in particular the significance of techno-­social evolutions by analyzing how a “new” technology coincided with the outbreak of a mass uprising (Second Intifada 2000-2005). Aouragh subsequently (Rubicon NWO Grant) focused on the political role of new digital tools and spaces, such as how these earlier developments evolved to so-called “Web 2.0” as manifested through blogging and social networking (“Web 2.0”). Her ethnographies were conducted among grassroots activism in Lebanon and Palestine (Oxford Internet Institute, 2009-2011).  Aouragh (Reader) is a researcher at CAMRI and set-up a critical research project Leverhulme Grant (UoW, 2013-2016) to study the Arab (Counter-)Revolutions, in which she relates critical theory with online-offline dialects. Miriyam Aouragh writes about these themes in her books (Palestine Online (IB Tauris 2011); with Hamza Hamouchene, The Arab Spring a decade on about Revolution, Counter-Revolution and the transformation of a region TNI 2022;, Mediating the Makhzan about the (r)evolutionary dynamics in Morocco (forthcoming 2023;  with Paula Chakravartty) Infrastructures of Empire Sage 2024), and  numerous chapters and articles (see https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/researcher/884ww).