Sunday, March 29, 2026
9:15 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. (GMT+03:00) Doha
We have grown accustomed to national and international politics as arenas of pitiless interest competition. Hatred, envy, and pride constitute the often unacknowledged emotional substrate of our political life. In light of the larger existential threats we face, how can we make room for more positive emotions in the political sphere—for love, empathy, and solidarity? Can literature, with its insights into emotions in their complexity, illuminate potential paths for transformational change in our societies and our politics?
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.
Verónica Gago
Verónica Gago, a professor of social sciences at the University of Buenos Aires and the National University of San Martín, is a prominent political theorist and activist working on issues of feminism and the global political economy. Her most recent books include A Feminist Reading of Debt (2021, with Luci Cavallero), Feminist International (2020), and Neoliberalism from Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (2017). She is also a leader in Argentina’s #NiUnaMenos (Not One Women Less) movement as both a theorist and an activist.
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.
Nicoletta Pireddu
Nicoletta Pireddu is a specialist in comparative literature whose research focuses on modern and contemporary European literary and cultural relations, especially in Italian, French, and British contexts. Her work explores national and transnational identities, borders and migration, cosmopolitanism, Mediterranean and island studies, literary theory, anthropology and literature, history of ideas, early science fiction, and translation studies. She holds a laurea from Italy, a Dottorato di ricerca from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, and a Ph.D. from UCLA.
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.