Ph-Done, as they say. I’m feeling relieved to be done, happy to have passed, privileged to have so many wonderful friends around me, tired after a hectic week, and excited for what comes next.

Had the pleasure to serve on the examination committee today at Lund University for @jwa.bsky.social brilliant PhD dissertation on feminist activist solidarity and mobilization in Egypt and Tunisia. An insightful work, rich both theoretically and empirically.

Me, today

Me, tomorrow

To be awarded a PhD, you first have to ”defend” your thesis. In Sweden, this is a public event—anyone can come and ask questions. Thus, the thesis is nailed to the wall of the department in advance, where it can be read. Luckily, it can also be read online: portal.research.lu.se/en/publicati...

📄 Joel W. Abdelmoez, PhD student at CMES, was interviewed in Göteborgs-Posten. (In Swedish) 👉 www.gp.se/nyheter/varl...

The full write up is here: Was It Something The Democrats Said? A Response to Third Way’s Political Language Memo open.substack.com/pub/dcinboxi...

One of the best parts about summer is that I have more time to officiate weddings, and today is an extra special occasion as I will be officiating my first gay wedding, and the first one ever in the Swedish House of Nobility.

”I’ve been working on this field of famine, food crisis and humanitarian action for more than 40 years, and there is no case, over those four decades, of such minutely engineered, closely monitored, precisely designed mass starvation of a population as is happening in Gaza today” - Alex de Waal

Briljant mamma om regeringens högskolepolitik och dess effekt på hälso- och sjukvården: www.dagensmedicin.se/opinion/deba...

USApodden (SR) översätter ICE till ”migrationsmyndigheten.” Tycker inte riktigt det fångar vad ICE är, inte heller förklarar det något om protesterna mot ICE.

In case you're wondering, authoritarians use this strategy of escalation to manufacture crisis, provoke outrage, then use the reaction to justify repression. It’s not about restoring order, it's about creating a spectacle of chaos they can claim only they can control.

This is important and significant but Uppsala University, and all higher education institutions in Sweden, should also cut ties to Israeli institutions. Israeli academia is embedded and complicit in apartheid and genocide.

Received a Call for Papers for a conference. Participation fee is USD 200 which includes coffee breaks, refreshments at the venue, and “a CD containing abstracts of all presented papers.” A CD? Might as well offer a floppy disc!

Det som tidigare verkat omöjligt har hänt. Jag håller med Hanif Bali.

the best I’ve seen

Dags att utse efterträdare för #drinkklubben, så jag nominerar min bror @jesperwiklund.bsky.social!

The United States is not safe to visit at the moment, not even for academics attending a conference. www.france24.com/en/americas/...

När det börjar bli varmare så börjar jag dricka Michelada! Nyligen hörde jag om Mezcal Michelada, så det blir mitt bidrag till #drinkklubben. Lika delar Mezcal och tomatjuice, lite limejuice, några skvättar Worcestershire sauce, och toppa upp med ljus lager. Gud vad törstig jag blev nu!

Super excited to join the lambda nordica editorial board as book review editor. lambda nordica is an open-access academic journal of LGBTQ studies, the oldest of its kind in the Nordic region, and it’s been an invaluable resource in my studies so I’m thrilled to be part of developing it further!

The latest meltdown on “the other app” shows both what it could be at its best (a place to find out about really cool new research and connect with the cool people behind it) and what it has become (hordes of bots and trolls harassing a young female scholar for daring to be proud of her achievement)

Friends, my colleague has an amazing student who got accepted to an Ivy League MA program in international affairs: A Palestinian, first-gen, Muslim woman. The cost of the program is prohibitive. Can anyone point me to funding sources that can help cover her tuition? #menasky #poliscisky

After spending too much time on “the other app” coming here is such a breath of fresh air. Rather than genocide apologia and bots, my timeline here is filled with Palestinian voices, solidarity, and good politics.

Returning to Egypt for the first time in five years, this spring. Will be a visiting PhD student at the Center for Economic, Legal and Social Studies and Documentation (CEDEJ) in Garden City. All my Egyptian friends, hit me up if you are in town in March/April/May.

Back in Tunis!

”As Palestinian queers, our struggle is not only against social injustice and our rights as a queer minority in Palestinian society, but rather, our main struggle is one against Israel’s colonization, occupation and apartheid; a system that has oppressed us for the past 75 years" - PQBDS

Scott Long uploaded his entire library of books on Palestine/Israel to the cloud, in digital form (mostly pdf and epub). It's a little over 1700 books. Nearly all are in English. You can download any that interest you individually, or the whole library (about 13 GB). And feel free to share this.

Preparing slides for my students in Intro to Middle Eastern Studies. Gonna talk about (among other things) sex and Orientalism.

Going to ISA in San Francisco in April 🤩 Super excited as this will be my first non-MESA conference in the US, and my first time on the west coast.

My hearing-impaired self really love Americans for the fact that they speak so loudly!

The app formerly known as Twitter just announced they will remove the block feature. Expecting user experience to take a dive so I’m hoping that Bluesky will take off instead.

As of today, I am officially allowed to officiate weddings in Sweden!

Was asked to write a chapter for a handbook. Was a bit embarrassed that I handed in my first draft a few days after the given deadline. Turned out I was the first one to submit, and six months later there are still four contributors who have not submitted theirs. Must be stressful being an editor!