2025-2026 Conference Season

Seeing Sudan: Politics Through Art

From September 18-20, 2025, a historic gathering of academics, artists, and activists drew attention to Sudan and generated critical insights into resilience in the face of violence and displacement.

See Highlights

Past Conferences

Launched in Fall 2023, the Hiwaraat Conference Series offers timely and topical conferences that draw together experts, practitioners, scholars, policymakers, and youth to discuss some of the most pressing topics of our time.

Seeing Sudan: Politics through Art

AI Uprising: Opportunities and Challenges for the Future of Work

See Highlights

Reimagining Palestine

See Highlights

Gender in Foreign Policy

See Highlights

On Palestine

See Highlights

Global Energy Cultures: How Energy Shapes Our Everyday Lives

See Highlights

Sustaining the Oasis: Envisioning the Future of Water Security in the Gulf

See Highlights

Afghanistan Regional Symposium: Confronting the Impasse

See Highlights

Global Histories and Practices of Islamophobia

See Highlights

PHOTO-2023-09-16-14-57-35-edited-2-2048x1152-2

The Invasion of Iraq: Regional Reflections

See Highlights

View All Past Conferences

439 Speakers
7878 Attendees

Through dialogue we understand the world better, and are able to plan for a better future…the dialogue doesn’t end here, it starts at this moment.

Dean Safwan Masri

One of the mistakes we make is to treat every one of the problems we face as an ordinary problem and to assume that it’s not necessary to be urgent or to be disagreeable.

Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times bestselling author

The involvement of women in peace processes has positive and sustainable effects on the promotion and sustainability of peace.

H.E. Alya Ahmed Bin Saif Al-Thani, Permanent Representative of the State of Qatar to the United Nations in New York

In the same way that people who believe in war are very vigorous in their advocacy for war, we need the same level of energy to ask for peace.

Victor Ehikhamenor, GU-Q Artist-in-Residence

The dilution and mainstreaming across the board of who deserves to be humanized lies at the heart of why we keep making these mistakes.

Nesrine Malik, Author and Journalist

At the end of the day, kids in Erbil, Basra, and Mosul all share the same vision, they want to have good jobs, dignity, and a decent future. The same applies to the Gulf. It’s time we move beyond the politics of the past.

H.E. Barham Salih, Former President of Iraq