Monday, March 30, 2026
9:30 a.m. - 10:45 a.m. (GMT+02:00) Barcelona
Location: Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona and Livestream
Modern Arab intellectual and literary cultures emerged in the great cities of Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo in struggles against European imperialism. Post-colonial states adopted many of their forms, but their failures and weaknesses led to a stalemate. What are the resources available for the creation of a new Arab culture and identity? What contributions can the Arab world make to addressing global challenges, including climate crisis and the AI revolution?
Participants
Nesrine Malik
Nesrine Malik is an acclaimed British Sudanese author and journalist known for her wide-ranging commentary on issues of race, identity, politics, and international affairs. She is the author of We Need New Stories: Challenging the Toxic Myths Behind Our Age of Discontent (2019) and has columns in leading outlets including the Guardian, New York Times, and Washington Post that address topics ranging from Islamophobia and feminism to African politics, with deep insights into the ways colonial and postcolonial legacies shape our contemporary world. Malik received the 2021 Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism.
Ranjit Hoskote
Ranjit Hoskote is an Indian poet, theorist, and curator whose influential work centers on the complex history and presence of cultural pluralism from the local to the global. He has authored eight books of poetry—including Icelight (2022), Jonahwhale (2018), and a translation of a fourteenth-century Kashmiri mystic-poet, I, Lalla: The Poems of Lal Dĕd (2011)—and the acclaimed book Confluences: Forgotten Histories between East and West (2012, with Ilija Trojanow). Hoskote has curated more than 50 showcases of Indian and global art over the past three decades, including India’s first national pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Omar El Akkad
Omar El Akkad is an author and journalist who has covered news stories ranging from the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt to the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. His debut novel, American War (2017), was longlisted for the 2018 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. His most recent book and nonfiction debut, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (2025), won the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction. El Akkad was awarded Canada’s National Newspaper Award for investigative reporting and the Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists, as well as three National Magazine Award honorable mentions.
Safwan Masri
Safwan M. Masri is dean of Georgetown University in Qatar and distinguished professor of the practice at Georgetown’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Prior to joining Georgetown in October 2022, Masri was executive vice president for global centers and global development at Columbia University, where he was also a senior research scholar at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Accessibility
Please email globaldialogues@georgetown.edu by March 25 with any accessibility requests. A good-faith effort will be made to fulfill all requests made after this date.