Program: Coming soon

Location: MIT

 

CONFERENCE AND STUDENT WORKSHOP

Day 1:  April 10, 2026

 

 

STUDENT WORKSHOP

8:30 Registration and breakfast

9:00-10:30 Religion in the Political Sphere

Chair: Richard Nielsen (MIT)

Ekin Dursun (Yale University)
“How Poor Voters Judge Clientelism: Religious Venues of Exchange and Welfare Politics in Turkey”

Darren Janz (MIT)
“Modernization and Militancy? Sufism, Salafism, & Support for Religious Pluralism in Africa”

10:30-10:45 BREAK

10:45-1:00pm Causes and Consequences of Institutions

Chair:  Tom Pepinksy (Cornell University)

Daliah Al-Shakhshir(Stanford University)
“Development Effects of Social Eligibility Criteria for Temporary Migration”

Hannah Kazis-Taylor (Princeton University)
“A Learning Process: Age and Support for Negotiated Settlements to Conflict”

Andrew O’Donohue (Harvard University)
“Law versus Democracy: Judicial Selection Institutions, Court Capture, and Democratic Backsliding in Turkey”

1:10-2:15 LUNCH

 

CONFERENCE

2:30-3:45 Governance: Historical Approaches

Chair: Timur Kuran (Duke University)

Firat Kimya (Swarthmore College)
“The Omnipresent Sultan: Spying and Surveillance in the Late Ottoman Empire”

Kıvanç Karaman (Boğaziçi University) and Ezgi Kurt (Bentley Univerisity)
“The Geopolitical Roots of Institutional Divergence: Unstable fragmentation in the Middle East, stable fragmentation in Europe, and unstable unification in China”

 

3:45-4:00 BREAK

4:00-5:30 Politics of identity

Chair: Tahir Andrabi (Pomona College)

Hani Abdel-Warith (Princeton University), Gordon Arsenoff (Princeton University),  Huseyin Emre Ceyhun (Princeton University),  Amaney Jamal (Princeton University),  and Elizabeth R. Nugent (Princeton University)
“The Anatomy of Mosque Geography in Authoritarian Regimes: Evidence from Egypt and Turkey”

Lisa Blaydes (Stanford University)
“States and Social Hierarchies in Kuwait and the Arab Gulf Region”

 

Day 2: April 11, 2026

8:30 Breakfast

9:00-11:15 New Histories of Africa

Chair: Amaney Jamal (Princeton)

Aala Abdelgadir (University of Pittsburgh)
“Training the Vanguard: How Arab-educated religious elites catalyzed the institutionalization of Salafism in Africa”

Akwasi Ampofo (University of Adelaide), Umair Khalil (Deakin University), Laura Panza (University of Melbourne), and Francisco Silva (Deakin University)
“Slave Trade and the Spread of Islam in Africa: Theory and Evidence”

Fotini Christia (MIT)
“Art Extraction from Africa: Evidence from Museum Records”

 

11:15-11:30 BREAK 

11:30-1:00 Shocks and Human Capital

Chair: Fotini Christia (MIT)

Mahdi Majbouri (Babson College)
“Education Interrupted: The Long-Term Consequences of Large-Scale University Closures on Human Capital”

Alessandra L. González (Duke University), Jennifer R. Peck (Swarthmore College), and Xianglong Kong (University of Chicago)
“Policy Signals, Cultural Norms, and the Misallocation of Talent”

 

1:00-2:15 Photo and lunch

 

2:15-3:45 History of Ideas

Chair: Mai Hassan (MIT)

Arda Gitmez (Bilkent University), James A. Robinson (University of Chicago), and Mehdi Shadmehr (UNC)
“Missing Discussions: Institutional Constraints in the Islamic Political Tradition”

Steven Brooke (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Neil Ketchley (University of Oxford), Chris Barrie (New York University), and Thomas Hegghammer (University of Oxford)
“Discovering the World: Spatial Coverage in 125 Years of Arabic News”