2025-2026 Conference Season

Decolonizing Energy: The Past, Present, and Future of Energy Justice

This symposium on October 4-5, 2025, addressed the colonial legacies of our energy systems, while also considering historical and contemporary visions of “taking back power” and energy justice.

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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.

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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.

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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