All Ages

Columbus & Islam

Christopher Columbus lived the vast majority of his life in a Mediterranean world in which the Ottoman and Mamluk Empires dominated the eastern part of the sea and were in constant economic, political, and confrontational interaction with the Christian states of Europe. This talk considers the importance of Islam in shaping Columbus’s life and voyages. In doing so, it thinks critically about the role of Islam in the Spanish decision to send him across the ocean and in the early history of the Spanish Caribbean.

PRFDHR Seminar: The Causes and Consequences of Ethnic Violence in Myanmar, Dr. Paula López Peña

The Rohingya crisis is one of the world’s worst ongoing human-rights atrocities, but its causes are contested and its consequences are poorly understood. Dr. López Peña and her co-authors marshal a variety of existing and original data to shed light on its drivers, characteristics, and human cost. First, in contrast with the government’s preferred narrative, they show that violence against civilians in Myanmar clearly responds to economic motives: it increases during times when international rice prices are high, in places suitable for rice cultivation.

PRFDHR Seminar: Growing up Under Forced Displacement: Evidence from Bangladesh and Jordan, Professor Sarah Baird and Professor Jennifer Seager

Cumulative trauma due to displacement and exposure to violence can lead to long-run impacts on mental health, with consequences for human capital accumulation. This may be particularly true for adolescents given that this is a time of intensified emotional distress and a critical period for development. Using mixed-methods longitudinal data from the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) study on over 6,000 refugee adolescents aged 10-17 and their local peers in Bangladesh and Jordan this research explores the challenges faced by adolescents growing up under forced displacement.

PRFDHR Seminar: Impacts of a Refugee Shelter Program: Experimental Evidence from the Syrian Refugee Life Survey, Professor Edward Miguel

With a record number of refugees moving across the globe, there is much debate among policymakers and academics on how best to provide for refugees’ humanitarian needs while also ensuring the stability of host countries’ political and economic institutions and preventing radicalization among affected groups. As a result, many non-profits and intergovernmental organizations have come together to implement programs that support both refugees and host communities.

PRFDHR Seminar: Prison or Sanctuary? An Evaluation of Camps for Syrian Refugees, Dr. Thomas Ginn

Camps are a controversial strategy to manage an influx of refugees. Host countries want to minimize negative effects on citizens, but relief organizations worry that isolation reduces employment and self-reliance over time. Using a large and representative survey, Dr. Ginn studies Syrians in Jordan and Iraq, comparing camp residents to other refugees who self-settle in the same country. He identifies the effects of camp residence with multiple strategies: controlling for a rich set of observables, and a difference-in-differences with Lebanon where camps were never opened.

PRFDHR Seminar: Refugee-led Responses to Overlapping Precarity: Views from North Lebanon, Professor Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh

Professor Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh traces the different ways that residents of Baddawi refugee camp in North Lebanon have been affected by COVID-19 since March 2020, and how they have been responding to protect themselves and other conflict-affected people in the midst of the pandemic. The latter include processes that resonate with a long history of refugee-led mutual aid initiatives.

InterAsia Online Lecture - Connecting People, Places and Things: Itineraries of Chinese Porcelain in around the Arabian Peninsula

In the early eighteenth century, the Red Sea served as the maritime crossroads for a number of different commodities that captivated global consumers, such as Arabian coffee, eastern spices, Chinese porcelain, and Indian textiles. But, the Red Sea was not only a transit route, these items were also consumed and used in the port cities around the coasts of this body of water and their adjacent hinterlands.

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