Dr Andrea Teti is the keynote speaker for the Iraqi Cultural Day, organsied by the Iraqi-Australia Graduate Forum (IAUGF). The 2016 Iraqi Cultural Festival-Keynote Speaker is supported by the Australian Government through the Council for Australian-Arab Relations (CAAR) of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Iraq's modern history has been marked by a complex net of ethnic and religious divisions. However, in both much academic analysis and especially public debate these divisions are presented as ingrained, inevitable, essential, or inescapable characteristics of Iraq specifically and of the Arab-Islamic Middle East in general. This talk explores some of the ways in which that set of contrasting interests and identities has been produced over the history of the past century, often through both conscious and unwitting interventions by both colonial rulers and post-independence rulers. The talk uses quantitative and survey data from recent studies to challenge the myth that ethnic and religious identities are fixed and mutually exclusive, and shows the continuities in people's priorities both across religion and ethnicity, within Iraq and the Middle East generally, and beyond the region itself. These continuities within and beyond Iraq and the Middle East - above and beyond the more often-remarked differences - are the grounds upon which a different politics could be built."
Please follow the links below for further details
http://www.iraqiculturalfestival.com.au/events-1/2016/3/19/opening-keynote-speaker-session
http://whatson.sydney.edu.au/events/published/sydney-ideas-europe-and-arab-uprisings