The Special Commission on Social Science Research in the Middle East and North Africa is dedicated to developing guidelines for the conduct of responsible, ethical and constructive social inquiry. This initiative is housed at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, in collaboration with the Columbia Global Centers, the American University of Cairo, the Rabat Social Studies Institute, the Middle East Institute at Columbia University, and the Arab Council for the Social Sciences.
The two-year project animates an interdisciplinary network of scholars which assesses the landscape of social science research conducted in the Arab world, particularly some of the ethical, political and economic challenges related to carrying out such research responsibly. The aim is twofold. First, the Commission raises awareness of the structural context of social science research in the Middle East and North Africa. Then, working with academics, researchers and practitioners, the commission develops responses and remedies for the deficiencies identified in order to improve the quality of social science research on, and in, the Middle East and North Africa.
This initiative addresses a variety of challenges facing the increasing globalized field of social science research. In particular, it looks into the questions of how, when and where social scientists do and should collaborate, how they should interact with research subjects, what standards of candor and transparency should be observed where the research enterprise. Foreign (and too often paternalistic) dominance of the disciplines, regional government skepticism about the research enterprise and, most recently, the rise of consultants who provide bespoke research for governments, international organizations and private enterprises all represent challenges to the scholarly research enterprise in the region.
This project therefore undertakes the following:
(a) Identifies impediments - institutional, economic, political, sociological - to the conduct of social science research in the region today;
(b) Proposes long-term strategies for addressing such impediments and promoting and sustaining social science research there;
(c) Recommends mechanisms for greater cooperation among social science communities within and beyond the Arab Middle East and North Africa to strengthen research designed and conducted by local scholars;
(d) Develops guidelines for the ethical conduct of research in and on communities under duress and in circumstances of disparate power relations;
(e) Fosters shared perceptions of the value of social science research and of the circumstances that advance it, within the region and beyond, so as to nurture regional and international audiences for such research in the future.
REMENA Principal Investigator
Lisa Anderson - Special Lecturer and James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations Emerita at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
REMENA Steering Committee
Lila Abu Lughod, Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science in the Department of Anthropology at Columbia University
Rabab El Mahdi, Chair of the Political Science Department and Director of Alternative Policy Solutions at the American University in Cairo
Sari Hanafi, Chair of the Sociology, Anthropology & Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut, and the editor of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology, President, International Sociological Association, 2020
Stéphane Lacroix, Associate Professor and Researcher, CERI/Sciences Po
Seteney Shami, Secretary General, Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Beirut
Saloua Zerhouni, professor of political science at Mohammed V University and president of the Rabat Social Studies Institute (RSSI), Rabat
REMENA Project Manager
Aurelian Dragos Mohan, REMENA Project Manager, former diplomat and chief of staff in the Government of Romania
Walid Hammam, REMENA Strategic Advisor, Director of the Weatherhead Scholars Program at Harvard University
"The creation of a digital repository of publications about the region produced in the region would go a long way toward growing region-wide schools of public policy theory and method." - Noha El-Mikawy, Laila El Baradei
The project is generously funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and a number of partners at Columbia University, including the President's Global Innovation Fund, the Middle East Institute, and the School of International and Public Affairs.