As part of our What Purpose Free Speech When No One Listens? programme, The Mosaic Rooms is delighted to present Youssef Courbage on:

Wednesday 30th May 2012, 7pm

Although much has been written about the economic and political origins of the upheavals in the Arab World, little has been said about their demographic dynamics. Youssef Courbage’s ground-breaking book, A Convergence of Civilisations – The Transformation of Muslim Societies Around the World, co-authored with the eminent French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd and published in 2007, foresaw inevitable change in the region through the uniquely original perspective of demography and anthropology, anticipating profound change on the basis of, for example, fundamental shifts in levels of female literacy levels, drops in the national birth rates, changing marital patterns, evolving family structures etc.

Youssef Courbage will be discussing this ground-breaking work in light of the Arab upheavals, as well as considering the Palestinian and Israeli conflict from a demographer’s perspective.

Born in Aleppo in 1946, Youssef Courbage spent his early life in Beirut where he studied Economics and Sociology at the St-Joseph and Lebanese Universities and later graduating in Demography and Urban Planning from the Sorbonne and Dauphine Universities.

Since then his career has mainly been devoted to demographic research and training, most notably with the UN. In 1990 he was appointed first as researcher then research director at the National Institute of Demographic Studies in Paris (INED). He has remained a member of the Institute, except in 2003-2005 when he headed the department of contemporary studies at French Institute of the near East in Beirut (IFPO).

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rsvp@mosaicrooms.org / 020 7370 9990