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The Department of Middle East Studies
The Department of Middle East Studies
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Community Outreach

Alongside the dissemination of knowledge within the academic community, the department also strives to enhance the wider public’s appreciation of the cultures, contributions, and complexity of the Middle East’s peoples and history. In keeping with BGU’s core mission to advance the Negev, the department also offers the region’s residents opportunities for participation in its lively intellectual environment.

Each semester, in cooperation with The Forum for Regional Thinking, the department-affiliated Chaim Herzog Center for Middle East Studies and Diplomacy hosts a well-respected series of panel discussions that are open to a general audience.

Featuring noted Israeli, Palestinian, and international scholars, journalists, authors, and public intellectuals, each series is organized around a central theme and emphasizes current events. ​

​The department organizes an annual series of gatherings for academics from every Israeli university involved in research on the history of Jewish and Christian communities in the Muslim world and their mutual influences.

The Forum frequently results in new scholarly insights and avenues for research.​

A collaboration of BGU and the World Organization of North African Jews, the annual Shaul Ben Simhon Prize honors a leading scholar in the field at an international conference regularly attended by Beer-Sheva residents.

The prize is intended to promote the study of North African Jewish history, the culture of North African Jewry in Israel, as well as past and present relationships between Muslims and Jews.​

​Throughout the year, the department organizes events with live Middle Eastern music and screenings of films on Middle Eastern subjects, accompanied by lectures by scholars from BGU or other universities.​

​The department celebrates its faculty members' contributions by inviting both the University and the local communities to join in events surrounding the publication of their books.

The department's active Facebook and Instagram pages feature researchers' insights into current events in the region, information on events open to the public, and announcements about new books and films related to the Middle East. ​