Doha: The Doha Institute (DI) for Graduate Studies in cooperation with the American Political Science Association (APSA) organised a four-day workshop entitled ‘Engaged Research in the Middle East and North Africa.’
The programme convened 20 advanced doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and early-career PhD-holding practitioners from across the MENA region, who are undertaking research that consciously employs participatory and engaged research methodologies in the region.
The programme aimed to build on growing interest in the methodological, practical, and ethical questions that arise from the use of political science research in non-academic or academic-adjacent contexts and support political science graduate students and practitioners in applied research settings, lead by Lara Khattab (Doha Institute), Stacey Philbrick Yadav (Hobart and William Smith), Sarah E. Parkinson (Johns Hopkins University), and Ammar Shamaileh (Doha Institute).
Sessions combined thematic seminars, facilitated discussions with experts, panels, and collaborative group exercises to equip participants with methodological tools and a shared professional vocabulary that render applied and engaged research legible, rigorous, and relevant in academic and policy environments. Topics included, among others, research and human rights advocacy, research collaboration for track II diplomacy, negotiating ethical challenges in participatory research, and data reliability for applied research.
The workshop was organized through APSA’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Programme, a multi-year effort funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York to support political science research and networking among early-career scholars across the Arab MENA region.
Following their participation, fellows were awarded a complimentary one-year membership to APSA, joining a growing network of alumni from the MENA workshops.
This workshop marked the fourth methods training workshop organised by APSA’s MENA Programme, following the launch of the MENA Methods Programme Initiative in 2023.
