A Genealogy of Conflict: Interior Views of the War in Yemen

A Genealogy of Conflict: Interior Views of the War in Yemen

Date & Time: Thursday, March 11th 1PM EST (Online Zoom Webinar; Registration Required)

Abstract:
Over the last years, the war in Yemen has developed many internal and external dynamics. The focus of international observers and the media is often more on its regional political contexts, thereby largely disregarding the local dynamics of this conflict whose roots go back far into the history of Yemen. This lecture gives an insight into the local history of this conflict, with a special focus on the roots of Zaydi revivalism in highland Yemen and the emergence of the Zaydi “Houthis” (also called Ansar Allah), as well as interlinked tribal, socio-historical and political dynamics in Yemen that explain the Houthi conflict’s onset, persistence, and expansion.

Speaker:

Marieke Brandt is a senior researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology (ISA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. Her research focuses on tribalism, tribal genealogy and history, and tribe-state relations in Yemen. She was PhD fellow of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, DAAD fellow in Sana’a, Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) fellow of the European Research Council, and project leader of the New Frontiers Groups Programme (NFG) project “Deciphering Local Power Politics in Northern Yemen” funded by the Austrian National Foundation for Research, Technology and Development. She is the author of award-winning Tribes and Politics in Yemen: A History of the Houthi Conflict (Hurst/OUP 2017).

Moderator:

Dr. Payam Mohseni, Director of the Project on Shi'ism and Global Affairs.

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