What can we learn about the current era of youth-led radical uprisings when we look across the Middle East? Massive protests—captured on social media—have spilled forth on the streets of major countries in the region for over a decade. Join us for a conversation with renowned sociologist and scholar Dr. Asef Bayat to explore the Iran uprisings and Arab Spring, and what they reveal to us about the profound global shifts in protests and power.

DR. ASEF BAYAT is Professor of Sociology, and Catherine & Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Illinois, he taught at the American University in Cairo for many years; and served as the director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) holding the Chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University, The Netherlands. His research areas range from social movements and social change, to religion and public life, urban space and politics, and contemporary Middle East.

His recent books include
-Being Young and Muslim: Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (ed. with Linda Herrera) (Oxford University Press, 2010)
-Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam (Oxford University Press, 2013)
-Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2013. 2 nd edition)
-Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford University Press, 2017)
-Global Middle East: Into the 21 st Century (ed. With Linda Herrera) (University of California Press, 2021)
-Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring (Harvard University Press, 2021)