After her trip to Paris, Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah’s Director General Sheikha Hussah Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah will fly to Florence, Italy and attend the 18th General Assembly and Scientific Symposium of International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) “Heritage and Landscape as Human Values” from the 9 – 14th November. ICOMOS is a non-governmental, non-profit international organization, committed to the conservation and protection of the world’s cultural heritage. The themes of this year’s symposium are sharing and experiencing the identity of communities through tourism and interpretation, landscape as a cultural habitat, sustainability through traditional knowledge, community driven conservation and local empowerment, and emerging tools for conservation practice.   November 10th 2014

“Whither the Arabic World? Revisiting Democratic Transition Theory” was a 2-day Conference organized by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (KFAS) and Sciences Po at the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA). It ended with more questions than answers, nevertheless it was extremely fruitful in capturing the conundrum facing the Arab world. The topics discussed by political and social scientists headed by the Co-Organizer of the conference Professor Ghassan Salame and Steffan Hertog (from PSIA) revolved around the political economy and political engineering of democratic transitions with an emphasis on fiscal and labor issues, constitutional debates, electoral dynamics, security issues and transitional justice. Dar al-Athar al-Islamiyyah’s Director General…