Statement in solidarity with colleagues at Exeter University

Dear Gulf studies colleagues,

You may already be aware of the recent announcement regarding a wide-ranging programme of job cuts and redundancies at the University of Exeter, which particularly affects many of our colleagues in the Centre for Gulf Studies (CGS). Exeter is home to one of the oldest Gulf studies centres in the UK, and CGS hosts an important archive for scholars of the region, and an important annual conference on Gulf studies in which many of us participate. All of our colleagues in the centre have received notices that their positions are at risk.

We at AGAPS are deeply concerned about the impact of these sweeping cuts on our academic community and the wider intellectual environment in which we work. AGAPS would like to extend our solidarity to our colleagues in the Gulf studies community affected by these developments.

We encourage peers in Middle East / Gulf area studies departments and scholarly associations to consider writing to the University of Exeter Executive Board to express our support for the work of the Centre for Gulf Studies at Exeter's Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, and highlight the potential risk to our field posed by their restructuring proposal.

For more information, please see this Jadaliyya article, and to sign a petition in support of our colleagues at Exeter, please see here.

In solidarity,

The AGAPS Board