Sandra Nasser El-Dine conducted an online course titled “Love, Marriage and Dating in the Arab World: Anthropological Perspectives on Contemporary Practices” at the Finnish Institute in the Middle East (FIME).
The course focused on the anthropological study of love, marriage, and dating practices in the Middle East. Its goal was to provide an ethnographically grounded overview of the diversity of dating and marital practices across different regions of the contemporary Middle East and offer tools to assess various frameworks for examining this subject. The course featured lectures by a total of eight anthropologists from various European universities who spoke about their research topics, providing insights into everyday life in different parts of the Middle East. The lectures covered topics such as the evolution of family law in Egypt, LGBTQ relationships in Lebanon, and transnational marriage practices among Kurds. The course also explored culturally embedded notions of intimacy, including the interplay between emotions and material dimensions. Participants included undergraduate and postgraduate students from various Finnish universities who shared common interests, providing them with a valuable opportunity for networking.