Report on the visit of Dr. Mazin S. Motabagani

Dr. Motabagani arrived in Oxford on the 4^th of July 2008. He met with the director of the Centre on the same day. He joined the staff luncheon while some of the researchers were still at the centre. He was introduced to them and had a chance to give a brief summary of his research and short discussion took place. However, another meeting would take place before his departure with the directors and some of the researchers.

While at the centre Dr. Motabaganai visited the Bodleian Library and obtained the necessary pass where he was able to look at material pertaining to his research.

Dr. Motabagani seemed well versed in his topic in historical terms as he is familiar with the Scarborough, Hayter and Parker’s reports. These reports were produced by Government commissions to look into the needs of  Britain in the fields of  middle East and Oriental Studies. They were published in the years 1947, 1961 and 1986 respectively.

 Moreover while at the Centre he obtained a vast amount of material and reports from the Higher Education Funding Council and other British Governments agencies such as the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Economic and Scientific Research Council.

Dr. Motabagani looked at the reports and articles published by Brismes (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies). On major article gave a summary of the proceedings of the Edinburgh university conference on the Study of Islam and Middle Eastern Studies at United Kingdom universities.

Dr. Motabagani interviewed our Deputy Registrar Dr. Basil Mustafa, which gave him an insight how one of the major Centres in the country functions.

Dr. Motabagani also visited Middle Eastern Studies Centre at St. Antony College of Oxford University to meet the Director of the Centre Professor Eugene Rogan and other Colleagues of the Centre. He also received a copy of the Centre’s report on the Centre’s fiftieth anniversary. Motabagani has also sent a questionnaire to Dr. Rogan about the support of the British government to the activities of the Centre.

To make use of his stay in England Dr. Motabagani visited the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Cambridge University and met with Professor Amira Bennison, and visited the University of Cambridge Library.  Dr. Motabagani will also attend a conference to be held in Manchester University titled” Representing Islam” and attend one day of the Brismes graduate students conference in London on 8-9 Sept.

Unluckily since the visit of Dr. Motabagani happened during the summer vacation he could not meet many researchers in the field to help answer many of the pertaining questions to his topic.

Finally Dr. Motabagani was able to make good use of his time while here to obtain good knowledge of his topic which he feels will be translated into a monograph or more than one conference paper in the next few months.