Project Wasta Podcast: A Middle East PhD Professionalization Conversation

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Welcome to Project Wasta

A Podcast dedicated to conversations about the Middle East PhD Job Market. Talking to people from tenured faculty to adjunct professors, librarians, think tank consultants, and more! All in an effort to better understand what awaits Middle East-related PhD grads post graduation. Understanding how people got to where they are and how the job market is changing.

Together as hosts, PhD students in Middle Eastern History Amy Fallas (UC Santa Barbra) and Tyler Kynn (Yale University), try to figure out the confusing possibilities of life after grad school. Interviewing guests on the twist and turns of the job market and posting one too many cat photos.

Defined by the ever so trustworthy Urban Dictionary as “is an Arabic word that loosely translates into ‘clout’ or ‘who you know’. It refers to using one’s connections and/or influence to get things done, including government transactions such as the quick renewal of a passport, waiving of traffic fines, and getting hired for or promoted in a job.” ( https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Wasta) Following this, the title of our podcast is a tongue and cheek remark on the sometimes black box nature of the job market and life after obtaining a PhD.

Follow out Podcast on Facebook (Project Wasta Podcast), and Instagram @projectwasta, and twitter. Or if you would like to volunteer yourself for an interview with us to talk about your experience with the job market email us at projectwasta@gmail.com

Episode 4: Interview with Heather Hughes

Mandatory Cat Photo provided by Heather Hughes

Heather Hughes has a BA in French from Smith College, an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from University of Washington, and an MSIS from the University of Texas. She has worked as a researcher in Turkey, and as a project archivist at the Hoover Archives. She is currently Librarian for Middle East Studies at UCSB (UC Santa Barbara). Heather is also a co-editor for the Hazine blog (http://hazine.info/), a collaborative online repository for all things related to the study of the Middle East, North Africa, and Islamicate Societies. In this interview we chat with Heather about her academic trajectory and how she came to be a Middle East Librarian.

New Episode: EP 3 with Nora Barakat

This week we had the opportunity to interview Nora Barakat, currently Assistant Professor of History in the Arab Crossroads Studies Program at NYU Abu Dhabi. In this episode we discuss the challenges and opportunities provided by early career teaching in the Gulf at either the national universities or at the satellite campuses. We have also cut down on our intros and outros – let us know how you like the streamlining change!

Episode 2: Interview with Assef Ashraf

Episode 2: Assef Ashraf

This week we interviewed Assef Ashraf about his experience in the academic job market. Assef is a lecturer in Eastern Islamic Lands and the Persian-speaking world at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Prior to Cambridge he received his B.A. from New York University in 2005, where he received the Rumi-Biruni prize for excellence in Persian Studies. He attained his Ph.D. in History from Yale University and followed that with a Post Doctoral Fellowship at Bryn Mawr College. His academic bio can be found here – https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/people/dr-assef-ashraf

Assef’s research interests “include the history of the Muslim world and the Middle East from the early modern to the present, comparative empires, travel literature, and the culture and economy of gift giving. His current research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Iran, state-society relations, and the construction of political authority in Qajar Iran.”

He has also helped to edit the newly published book The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere Brill (2019)

Thanks again to Assef for sitting down with us for this interview