THE COLLABORATORS: (From left) John T Crist, Director of Research at GU-Q, Mohamed Khalil Harb, GU-Q student contributor, Khawla al-Derbasti, Qatari student and the MESSA journal’s Editor-in-Chief; Dr Gerd Nonneman, GU-Q Dean.
GU-Q journal offers well-researched outlook on regional issues
By Umer Nangiana
The region’s first ever student-run, peer-reviewed academic political science journal launched by Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) on Tuesday promises quality of research and originality of the subject areas explored.
Articles included in this first-of-its-kind journal in the region were selected after a hectic process involving multiple checks for originality of the research, quality of the content and the currency of ideas.
The Journal, work of GU-Q Middle Eastern Studies Students Association (MESSA), and published by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, targets political affairs’ students in general and undergraduate students from across the world in particular as its audience. Besides available in print form throughout the region, the journal will be made public through the association’s website.
“We received a lot of papers and what we included in the journal was very selective. We had a specific criteria that these papers had to fit for us to publish them and they needed to reach a very high standard,” Khawla al-Derbasti, the MESSA journal’s Editor-in Chief, told Community.
“When you look through the journal you will see that the papers that are present are from top universities such Harvard, Princeton, John Hopkins, and, of course, our very own GU-Q,” she added.
Now in its third year, MESSA is a uniquely student-focused campus organisation, giving young people a chance to emulate their esteemed peers in the research community.
The focus of this first publication, which includes articles from students at top universities including Harvard, Princeton, and Tufts who presented their research at the second MESSA conference earlier this year, reflects the conference theme, “Globalization & the Middle East: Youth, Media and Resources”. Current and future topics will also include youth, gender issues, sectarianism, non-state actors, culture, economics, development, and the interplay of domestic, regional and international politics.
Highlighting the selection process, Khwala added that an executive team of students after a lengthy procedure selected the papers, reviewed and informed the authors about their conditional acceptability. The authors were then asked to improve them to make them in line with the overall conference theme.
“Once they are re-edited and sent back to us, a whole new selection process was put in place to see who meets the criteria,” the editor-in-chief added.
The criteria were very clear. The papers needed to be well-researched, showing evidence that authors had physically undertaken the research, the quality of the language (English), originality of idea and their currency so that people could relate to them. “We are very fortunate to have found those qualities in our journal,” Khwala added.
One of the researches included in the journal are from a GU-Q senior student contributor Mohamed Khalil Harb. It tackles the issue of disparity between two social classes of the city of Beirut, titled as “Living and Imagining the City: The Biartis and the Urbanistas in Beirut”.
Harb has lived in Beirut for 15 years before moving to Doha five years ago. The starting point of his research was based on what he saw in Beirut and what he saw outside. The image of Beirut that we see in the media and in the videos is on part of the affluent class that imagines the city in a very different perspective, he says.
“If you go to Beirut you would see that there is another group that I labelled ‘Biartis’ that lived in a completely different way as if you are entering another city,” Harb told Community.
This other group lives all around the city from the periphery to the middle to the centre and has different lifestyle. Usually they are the group that has more economic complaints from which may be social movements can arise, the young researcher added.
“So far the research has been a one year process hopefully I will be able to expand it in order to see if the experience that I mentioned in my research can extend to Syrian refugees. Would they be part of the lower group that lived in Beirut or are they still considered as outsiders on both sides. I would be interested to see that,” said the student contributor, adding that after a year he would be able to do more research, travelling back to Beirut and interviewing Syrian refugees.
His research presents a new perspective and a unique narrative that has not been touched upon before. “I think because of Lebanon’s history, most of the literature on Beirut has been from the perspective of sectarianism and focus more on civil strife and violence,” Harb added.
John T Crist, Director of Research at GU-Q and a MESSA advisory board member, said that it was the first undergraduate student journal that has been published in this region. “For scholars, that is quite an accomplishment because a peer-reviewed journal is a rare form of publication in which a lot of attention has been paid to the arguments and the quality of what is being published,” he told Community.
We are giving our students direct, hands-on experience with how to conduct their research, revise and upgrade it so that it reaches the publishable quality. “It is especially gratifying to see high-quality analytical work emerging among students that addresses head-on, some of the most complex and interdisciplinary questions pertaining to this dynamic region. It is an honour for GU-Q to be able to host this journal,” said the dean of GU-Q, Dr Gerd Nonneman, who also serves on the journal’s board of advisers.
“There is a lot of change happening around us, and this change is taking place at an expedited pace, this is what makes MESSA such a vital organisation. Fundamentally, our generation must become more aware and engaged with both local and international affairs to be prepared for the future that will demand our attention soon enough,” said Khawla, who oversees all the logistics of the journal -- from selecting the papers to the overall execution and publication.
MESSA serves to voice undergraduate research that is conducted at Georgetown University, whether in Qatar or the United States, and concerns issues which are pivotal to Middle Eastern affairs. Striving to foster and enhance undergraduate research, MESSA enables students, from Georgetown University and across the globe, to voice their research and facilitates a breadth and depth of discussion about respective economic, political and social affairs.
