In this panel we will examine the similarities between structures of oppression in the region beyond campist approaches to understanding the raging conflicts as if they are struggles of the forces of good against evil.
Through a conversation about modes of displacement, incarceration, ethnic and gender discrimination, as well as long histories of oppression, we will discover how regional rule has depended on war and oppression to enrich the few, while millions are displaced, facing imprisonment, erasure and murder.
How do oppression and war feature in today's regional framework conflict between the US and Iran?
Mariam Kirollos (moderator) is a human rights researcher and senior advisor for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International Norway. She holds a Master's degree in International Law from SOAS, University of London, and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science and Sociology from the American University in Cairo. Mariam has worked on various human rights issues in the MENA region since 2008.
Nadim Khoury (panelist) is a Palestinian Academic from occupied East Jerusalem. He is currently an associate professor in international studies at the University of Inland Norway, where he teaches courses on the history of political thought and international relations. Nadim's research interests include memory politics, transitional justice, nationalism, and colonialism, with a focus on Palestine/Israel. He has published on these themes in leading international journals and publications.
Maryam Al-Khawaja (panelist) is a Danish-Bahraini human rights defender and international human rights advocate. She is a leading voice for human rights and political reform in Bahrain and the Gulf region and she has been influential in shaping official responses to human rights atrocities in Bahrain and the Gulf region by leading campaigns and engaging with prominent policymakers around the world. Maryam Al-Khawaja has served on the boards of CIVICUS, Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, International Service for Human Rights, and Urgent Action Fund.
Pardis Shafafi (panelist) is an applied anthropologist and associate researcher at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Politique (LAP/EHESS, Paris). Her work confronts Iranian state violence, trauma politics, and systemic impunity, focusing on state-led practices of "enforced forgetting," the weaponisation of historical memory, and grass-roots accountability initiatives.
This work is further developed in her academic publications, notably in the upcoming co-edited volume, The Long Iranian Revolution: Counter-Memories, Violence and the Afterlives of 1979 (Bloomsbury, 2026). Alongside her work on Iran she researches technopolitics as an extension of and new terrain of political struggle.
