Andre Gaspard, founder of Saqi was among the speakers at an event last week at AKU-ISMC, entitled The Landscape of Arab Publications: Challenges and Opportunities.
Hosted and devised by AKU-ISMC’s Muslim Civilisations Abstract Project (MCA) the evening set out to better understand the ambiguity and complexities of the publication industry in the Arab World, seeking views from the perspectives of publishers, academics and authors, librarians, translation agencies and bibliographical and research projects.
Owner of Saqi books, Andre Gaspard spoke about the many and varied challenges and issues facing Arab publishers including the absence of statistics on the size of the market, piracy, the effect of poverty, censorship, the growth of the digital market, and a changing attitude towards the importance of reading for children.
Dr Mohammed Almahfali spoke about the complexi realtionships between Arab authors/ academics and publishers (private or government). He also talked about censorship, lack of national recognition for authors, writing in a war environment, and the RAPP project he is working on and his collaboration with the MCA.
Dr Walid Ghali explored the role of Arab libraries and associations such as the association of Arab publishers in the landscape of Arab publications. He also touched on the lack of national bibliographic projects in the Arab world.
Dr Charlotte Whiting spoke about the opportunities the Aga Khan University, as a not-for-profit mission-based publisher, has with particular reference to the In Translation series.
Mr Mohamad Meqdad addressed the objectives of the MCA and its aim of shedding light on Arab publications and developing its role as an initiative that could improve access to literature in impenetrable contexts through reviews and collaborations with authors, publishers and academics.
Actively encouraging participation from the audience in an in-depth Q and A session offered a broader scope and range of views and experience as well as sharing the aims and objectives of the MCA’s work.
Notes
Much valuable and original work published in societies with significant Muslim presence remains largely un-translated and therefore unknown in Europe and America. Thus, scholarship about Muslim societies has developed with little significant academic input from Muslim majority countries. The Muslim Civilisations Abstracts Project (MCA) was conceived to allow equal access to these materials, and highlights the universal relevance of issues facing Muslim societies by providing a platform of short book reviews (abstracts) about works on Muslim civilisations.
Chair
Dr Leif Stenberg is Director of AKU-ISMC in London and a Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Aga Khan University. Previously, he was Director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at Lund University, Assistant Professor in History of Religions at Uppsala University, a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University and at the Institut Français d’Études Arabes de Damas (IFEAD) in Damascus, Syria.
Speakers
Mr André Gaspard is founder of Saqi, the Middle East specialist bookshop, and publishing houses in London and Beirut. Mr Gaspard has dedicated his life to promoting international culture and literary excellence, encouraging dialogue between the Arab world and the West. He has published critically acclaimed, award-winning books, originally written in Arabic and other languages. Mr Gaspard previously worked as a journalist and a solicitor in Beirut. He lives in Beirut, Lebanon.
Dr Mohammed Al-Mahfali is a researcher at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University on a fellowship from the International Institute for Education, Scholar Rescue Fund (IIE-SRF). He works on two projects, including Research and Public Policy Making in the Arab World (RAPP) and Political and Social Transformations in Egyptian Women’s Short Stories 2011-2017. Previously, he worked at Hadhramout University in Yemen as a Lecturer (2006-2010), and as an Assistant Professor in Arabic literature (2014-2016).
Dr Walid Ghali is Assistant Professor/Head Librarian of the joint library of AKU-ISMC and the Institute of Ismaili Studies and Assistant Professor at AKU-ISMC. Previously, he worked in various librarian roles at the American University in Cairo. In addition, he held several consultancy roles in and outside Egypt, including at the Ministry of Endowment, Qatar University and the Supreme Council for Culture in Kuwait. He is a chartered librarian of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP).
Dr Charlotte Whiting is Manager of AKU-ISMC’s Publications Department as well as the Institute’s Governance in Muslim Contexts Programme. Previously, she directed several large-scale research projects in the Middle East, and has published articles and books on the archaeology of the southern Levant. In addition to her academic work, she was Deputy Director of the Iraq Programme at the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (CARA), an initiative working to build research capacity at Iraqi universities.
Mr Mohamad Meqdad is Arabic Editor of the Muslim Civilisations Abstracts (MCA) Project. Prior to joining AKU-ISMC, he worked for over four years as a professional archaeologist at several national and international archaeological expeditions in Syria that explored hidden cultures, with the aim of preserving and displaying them to the public.
