Roundtable Discussion with Randi Deguilhem 

30 september 2010, 11:00 am, Columbia University Middle East Research Center. In the Framework of the forthcoming International Conference on the Centenary of Falastin Newspaper (June, 2011), "Creating Public Opinion throughout the late Ottoman Empire: Intellectuals and the Press from Libya to Bilad al-Sham",  A Roundtable Discussion with Dr. Randi Deguilhem (Historian, Institute for Research and Study on the Arab and Muslim Worlds, IREMAM)

Dr. Randi Deguilhem is research professor (director of research habil.) at the National Institute of Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, her position is with the Institute for Research and Study on the Arab and Muslim Worlds (IREMAM). As a historian of the modern and contemporary Arab and Muslim worlds, she is a specialist in 19th-21st century Syria where she has lived for a number of years, first as a Fulbright-Hays doctoral research recipient and then as a research fellow of the Institut Francais du Porche-Orient (IFPO). Her research interests include the law and practices of waqf, inlcuding the dimension of gender, as based on fiqh and the Ottoman tribunal records. From 2006 to 2008, she co-directed the “Law of Waqf” program at Harvard Islamic Legal Studies Program in the U.S. Her new seminar this university year 2010-11 on the phenomenon of waqf is at IISMM-EHESS, Paris. She has published on a variety of topics, with a particular interest on the pious foundations in modern and contemporary Syria, the intellectual life and educational systems in late Ottoman Damascus and on the French Secular Mission in Mandate Syria. She has published and co-edited 10 books as well as over 50 articles in international journals, over 10 book reviews and she has produced a documentary film on Syrian Women. She also created and organized several international research programs among which a program: “Intellectuals and Public Opinion in the Arab World”.