Tech Futures: The Science of Life, Death, and Ecology in the Middle East | 2026 IMES Annual Conference

The Institute of Middle East Studies is proud to present its 2026 Annual Conference, convening leading scholars to explore the intersections of technology, society, and power across the Middle East. Centered on the theme of “Technologies of Life, Ecology, and Death,” this year’s program highlights innovative research that interrogates how technological systems shape human and environmental futures in the region.

Panel 1, “Technologies of Life,” examines the intimate and embodied dimensions of technology in relation to health and care. Cortney Hughes Rinker (George Mason University) explores palliative care practices and pain management in Morocco, while Elham Mireshghi (University of Chicago) investigates organ donation and Islamic jurisprudence in Iran. Timothy Loh (Princeton University) analyzes cochlear implants and communication technologies among Deaf Jordanians. The panel is chaired by Amir Afkhami (The George Washington University).

Panel 2, “Technologies of Ecology,” turns to environmental challenges and sustainability. Kendra Kintzi (New York University) discusses climate finance and green growth in Jordan, while Katayoun Shafiee (University of Warwick) examines irrigation practices and ecological governance in Southwest Iran. Kali Rubaii (Purdue University) traces the lifecycle of weaponized metals from global south mines to battlefields. This panel is chaired by Diana Pardo Pedraza (The George Washington University).

Panel 3, “Technologies of Death,” addresses the entanglements of surveillance, warfare, and global capital. Shana Marshall (The George Washington University) explores Gulf investments in the arms industry, Sophia Goodfriend (University of Cambridge) examines AI in modern warfare, and Samer Abboud (Villanova University) analyzes Syria’s necrometrics regime for identification of deceased persons. The panel is chaired by Hatim el-Hibri (George Mason University).

The conference closes with a keynote address by Jonathan Guyer, titled Weaponizing Tech, which sets the stage for critical discussions on the geopolitical and policy dimensions of emerging technologies.

Together, these panels foster interdisciplinary dialogue on how technologies mediate life, the environment, and death in the contemporary Middle East.

Schedule:

All panels will be held in the Elliott School of International Affairs Room 602 (1957 E St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20052).

9:00am – 9:15am Welcome & Intro
9:15am – 10:45am Panel 1: Technologies of Life
10:45am – 11:00am Coffee Break
11:00am – 12:30pm Panel 2: Technologies of Ecology
12:30pm – 1:30pm Lunch
1:30pm – 3:00pm Panel 3: Technologies of Death
3:00pm – 3:15pm Coffee Break
3:15pm – 4:30pm Keynote

Panel 1: Technologies of Life

Panel 1 will examine questions of technologies and aging/palliative care, reproduction, disability, and medicine.

Cortney Hughes Rinker: Making Sense of Pain: Palliative Care and Tools for Pain Management in Morocco
George Mason University

Elham Mireshghi: “He Died Light”: Islamic Governmentality, Ethical Self-Cultivation, and Organ Donation in Iran
University of Chicago

Timothy Loh: The Biopolitics of Communication: Cochlear Implants and Sign Language Apps for Deaf Jordanians
Princeton University

Amir Afkhami (Panel Chair)
The George Washington University

Panel 2: Technologies of Ecology

Panel 2 will examine issues around climate adaptation and geoengineering; ecology and toxicity; and critiques of regional sustainability frameworks.

Kendra Kintzi: Decarbonization, “Green” Growth, and the Geopolitical Ecology of Climate Finance in and beyond Jordan
New York University

Katayoun Shafiee: Governing Soiled Futures along an Iranian River
University of Warwick

Kali Rubaii: The Extraction, Circulation, and Re-use of Weaponized Metals
Purdue University

Diana Pardo Pedraza (Panel Chair)
The George Washington University

Panel 3: Technologies of Death

Panel 3 will address matters around AI and surveillance, military tech, and their linkages with the humanitarian and financial sectors.

Shana Marshall: Gulf Capital & the Global Arms Industry
The George Washington University

Sophia Goodfriend: AI’s Killing Fields
University of Cambridge

Samer Abboud: Starting from scratch? Syria’s Necrometrics Regime
Villanova University

Hatim el-Hibri (Panel Chair)
George Mason University

Keynote

Jonathan Guyer: Weaponizing Tech

Speakers:

• Cortney Hughes Rinker is a Professor of Global Affairs and Director of the Global Affairs program at George Mason University. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from UC Irvine. Her research spans medical anthropology, Islam, aging and end-of-life care, reproductive health, and science and technology, with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa and the United States. She is the author of "Islam, Development, and Urban Women's Reproductive Practices" (Routledge, 2013) and "Actively Dying: The Creation of Muslim Identities through End-of-Life Care in the United States" (Routledge, 2021). Her current ethnographic project examines palliative care and pain management during serious illness in Morocco.

• Elham Mireshghi is an Associate Instructional Professor at the University of Chicago. Her research on Iran’s compensated living organ donation program has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. Her current work turns to Iran’s expanding altruistic brain-death organ donation system, examining the juridical, ethical, and political dimensions of transplantation beyond the compensated living-donation model. She is also developing research on Near-Death Experiences and their broader religious, moral and political implications.

• Timothy Y. Loh is an anthropologist of science and technology and a Cotsen Fellow in the Princeton Society of Fellows. At Princeton University, he is also a Lecturer in Anthropology and the Humanities Council. Bringing together medical anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and science and technology studies, his ethnographic research examines language, religion, and sociality in deaf and signing worlds spanning Jordan, Singapore, and the United States. His first book project, provisionally entitled "Assistive Modernity: Deafness and Technology in Contemporary Jordan," explores how “assistive” technologies for deaf people in Jordan, like cochlear implants and sign language-centered mobile applications, have shaped and continue to shape disability’s contours and manifestations in the Arabic-speaking Middle East/Southwest Asia and North Africa. He holds a PhD and SM in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MA in Arab Studies and BS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

• Amir Afkhami is a Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at George Washington University, where he serves as Vice Chair for Clinical Affairs and Director of Medical Student Education for the GW Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. He holds an MD from George Washington University School of Medicine and a PhD from Yale University. He completed his internship at Yale New Haven Hospital and residency at Weill Cornell Medical Center. A Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, his clinical and research interests include mood and anxiety disorders, cognitive behavioral therapy, and cross-cultural and global psychiatry. He has received the APA's Roeske Award for Excellence in Medical Education and the Washington Psychiatric Society's ‘Psychiatrist of the Year’ award.

• Kendra Kintzi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU, where her work examines how energy infrastructure and environmental media are changing landscapes and livelihoods in Southwest Asia. Through ethnographic engagement in Jordan and across the region, her research looks at how decarbonization is mediated through uneven urban and rural environments. A key piece of her work focuses on questions of climate and environmental justice, and how evolving practices of social mobilization reveal alternative visions of collective climate futures. She is trained as a political ecologist and digital media scholar, and draws on feminist, decolonial, and critical political economy approaches to ground her work.

• Katayoun Shafiee is Associate Professor Middle East History at the University of Warwick, Department of History. She is the author of "Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran" (MIT). Her forthcoming book, "Damocracy: Governing the Future along an Iranian River" (MIT) is a study of postwar development through the construction of a large scale dam in southwest Iran looking at the pivotal role of the economic and soil sciences in shaping political possibilities. My work draws on tools from Science and Technology Studies and post-colonial political theory to rethink historical and political analysis with specific regard to non-human actors.

• Kali Rubaii is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University, with affiliations in American Studies, Global Studies, and the Tech Justice Lab. She holds a PhD and MA in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a BA in International Relations from UC Davis. Her research explores the environmental impacts of militarism and how military projects reshape political ecologies. Her book project, "Counter-Resurgency: Outlasting the War on Terror," examines how farmers in Anbar, Iraq struggle to survive and recover from transnational counterinsurgency projects. She previously held postdoctoral fellowships at UC Davis and Rice University's Environmental Humanities Research Center.

• Diana Pardo Pedraza is an anthropologist interested in exploring the afterlives of war and humanitarianism in landscapes, post-conflict environmental politics, and multispecies relations of aid, care, and repair. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs at George Washington University and a former Harvard Radcliffe Institute fellow (2023-2024). Her book manuscript, currently under contract with Duke University Press, "Fields of Suspicion: Landmines, Humanitarian Demining, and a Peace Laboratory in Rural Colombia," examines efforts to dismantle the enduring material and affective relations produced by improvised landmines during the country’s decades-long armed conflict, while probing the fraught possibilities of ecological and political reconciliation. Her scholarship appears in Ethnography, American Ethnologist, Environmental Humanities, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Current Anthropology, and other journals. At GWU, she teaches courses on Latin American politics, the environmental impacts of war and militarization, and feminist science and technology studies.

• Shana Marshall is Associate Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies and Assistant Research Professor. Her dissertation, “The New Politics of Patronage: The Arms Trade and Clientelism in the Arab World” examined how Middle East governments use arms sales agreements to channel financial resources and economic privileges to pro-regime elites. Prior to GW, Marshall was a fellow at The Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University and the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University. Her current research focuses on patterns of military entrepreneurship in Egypt, Jordan, and the UAE.

• Sophia Goodfriend is an anthropologist whose research examines the impact of automation on military conflict. Her first academic book project is an ethnographic account of how Artificial Intelligence (AI) has impacted what it means to wage and live with war in Israel and Palestine. Alongside her academic work, Goodfriend works as a writer and civil society consultant. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from Duke University, an MA in social sciences from the University of Chicago, and was previously a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative.

• Samer Abboud is Associate Professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies and Director of the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at Villanova University. He is the author of "Syria" (Polity, 2018) and the forthcoming "Betrayal of the Homeland: Disloyal Subjects in Wartime Syria" (Columbia University Press). He is the editor of the Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.

• Hatim El-Hibri is Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies at George Mason University, where he is also affiliated with the program in Middle East and Islamic Studies. His academic interests are in global media studies, infrastructure studies, visual culture studies, urban studies, and media theory and history, with a focus on the Arab world and Middle East. He was previously a faculty member of the Media Studies Program at the American University of Beirut. His first book is "Visions of Beirut: The Urban Life of Media Infrastructure" (Duke University Press, 2021). He is currently working on a book tentatively titled "Streaming the Crisis."

• Jonathan Guyer is program director at the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group. He leads IGA’s flagship Independent America program, which is focused on interrogating the conventional wisdom of US foreign policy and informing the public about America’s changing role in the world. He hosts its podcast "None Of The Above." He has recently written for New York Magazine, The Guardian, and The Financial Times. He is a contributing editor at The American Prospect and, from 2019 to 2021, was the magazine’s managing editor. He has also worked as senior foreign policy writer at Vox. His accountability stories on Biden’s and Trump’s foreign policy teams have won national awards, including from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, Society of Professional Journalists, and Military Reporters and Editors Association. As a 2017-18 Harvard Radcliffe fellow, he researched Arab comics and the politics of art in authoritarian states. Jonathan speaks Arabic and Hebrew, and spent five years as a correspondent in Egypt.