16.11.2012

Revolution vs. Refolution: The Case of Egypt

Open Lecture by Amal Hamada

On Wednesday, 21 November 2012 Amal Hamada will hold a public lecture entitled "Revolution vs. Refolution: The Case of Egypt". Her talk will start a 4 p.m. c.t. and will take place at room 124 in the Institute for Political Science.

The relationship between revolution and law is a very controversial one. On the one hand, a revolution is an illegal act against the existing political regime which is losing its legitimacy due to several factors. On the other hand, every revolution works on drafting a new legal system that is part of the new source of legality and legitimacy. Two years after the eruption of mass demonstrations in Egypt and the removal of Mubarak, things have been oscillating between revolution and law. This has led to a debate whether what happened in January 2011 was a revolution, or, as renowned sociologist Assef Bayat termed it, a “refolution“.

Dr. Amal Hamada is an assistant professor of Political Science at Cairo University (since 2008), and serves as deputy director of Center for Civilization Studies and Dialogue among Cultures. In 2008-2009 she worked as a Fulbright visiting scholar to the University of Lehigh, Pennsylvania. In 2008 she published her PhD-thesis on the Iranian experience in transition from revolution to statehood as a book (in Arabic). Currently, Dr. Hamada is a visiting researcher at the Institute of Political Science in Tübingen within the “German-Arab Higher Education Dialogue” funded by the German Foreign Office.

Dr. Hamada’s research interest covers the Middle East in general with a special focus on Iran and Egypt. She works on state-society relationships and their different manifestations, whether in high politics or in grass-root politics. Before 2011, her main research interest was blogging, alternative media and new social movements. Ever since 2011, she concentrates on civil-military relations, the “deep state”, street politics and arts such as graffiti, music and visual contestation of the authority. While her list of publications comprises numerous titles in Arabic, her latest paper is in English and deals with the relationship between the army and the deep state in Egypt.