The Role of Public History in Shaping the Middle East’s Collective Memory
19 - 20 October 2026
Organizers: Qatar National Library’s Heritage Library & North Carolina State University’s Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies
Location: Qatar National Library, Doha
Contact: Dr. Akram Khater and Maryam Al-Mutawa
Public history refers to the ways in which historians engage with the public, working in a variety of contexts such as museums, archives, historical sites, cultural institutions, government agencies and media. It centers the “subject,” and re-orients us away from “official” or “organizational” documents as the only source of history towards individual and family archives.
As a field that began in the US in the 1960s, public history brings to the fore the history of those whose voices and lives have been omitted from the archive whose contents often relay the dominant narratives of empires, nations, communities and individuals. It opens scholarly space for multivocality and shared authority in driving historical inquiry and study, effectively encouraging new perspectives in how the public views and interprets the past. and challenges the very nature of archives.
While public history is well-established in many regions, it remains in its relative infancy within Middle Eastern studies. Scholars, practitioners and institutions in the Arab World have been navigating questions of historical memory, public engagement and the politics of representation for a while now. However, the field remains without clear theoretical and structural framing, and these efforts have not fully coalesced into a sub-discipline of Middle Eastern studies. This conference seeks to map the current state of public history in the Middle East and foster dialogue on its challenges, opportunities and intersections with broader social, political and cultural processes.
The conference will be held in person in Doha. There are no participation fees; however, travel and accommodation expenses in Doha must be covered by the participants.