Dr Hanan Toukan
BA (McGill) MA (LSE) PhD (SOAS)
Overview
Department of Politics and International Studies
Teaching Fellow
Centre for Palestine Studies (CPS)
Member
London Middle East Institute (LMEI)
Member
- Name:
- Dr Hanan Toukan
- Email address:
- ht14@soas.ac.uk
- Address:
- SOAS, University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG - Building:
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Office No:
- 221
- Office Hours:
- Thursdays: 1-2pm
Biography
My work addresses the intersection of contemporary art and politics from a variety of angles, exploring it from a range of disciplinary frames including politics and international relations, visual cultural studies and political philosophy.
My PhD titled "Art, Aid, Affect: Locating the Political in Post-Civil War Lebanon's Contemporary Cultural Production" was concerned with the institutional structures and related discourses that shape how people relate to and speak about cultural production. The thesis looks specifically at the role of international cultural funding institutions, ‘global’ and ‘local’ discourses on culture and the arts and travelling theoretical conceptions and enactments of what 'the political' holds in cultural production.
Teaching
Government and Politics of the Middle East
Mediated Cultures of the Middle East (with the Center for Media and Film Studies)
Research
Themes: critical theory; politics of aesthetics; translocality; ‘global’ arts institutions; civil society and civic practices; international cultural diplomacy; flows and practices of Arab representations and historiographies of resistance, trauma, memory and conflict in transnational spaces of production, exhibition and critique.
Publications
Book Chapters
Toukan, Hanan (2013) 'Negotiating Representation and Re-making War: Transnationalism and Contemporary Art in Post-Taif Lebanon.' In: Harb, Zahera and Matar, Dina, (eds.), Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communication Practices in Lebanon and Palestine. London: IB Tauris. (In Press)
Articles
Toukan, Hanan (2010) 'On Being the Other in Post-Civil War Lebanon: Aid and the Politics of Art in Processes of Contemporary Cultural Production.' Arab Studies Journal, 18 (1). pp. 118-161.
Toukan, Hanan (2008) 'From Dreamers to Employees: Civic NGOs, Funders and the Process of Change in Lebanon (published in Arabic).' Al Adab, 10 (11). pp. 19-26.
Toukan, Hanan and Seyfert, Karen (2008) 'Maintaining or Challenging the Status Quo? NGOs as Reproducers of Political Systems in Lebanon (published in German).' INAMO, 53 .
Toukan, Hanan (2008) 'The Field of Culture in Lebanon: The Last Remaining Bastion?' Bulletin of the Council for British Research in the Levant, 3 . pp. 101-103.
Book Reviews
Toukan, Hanan (2012) 'Lucia Volk. Memorials and Martyrs in Modern Lebanon.' Review of Middle East Studies, 45 (2). p. 285.
Other
Toukan, Hanan (2012) 'Writing Back to History: Take Two.' In: Spectral Imprints. Dubai: Abraaj Capital Art Prize.
