The situation in Lebanon is vitally important for regional stability

Campion Hall, University of Oxford, has the privilege of welcoming Dr Cory Rodgers to deliver the Campion Lecture, ‘Stability, Security and Solidarity Stretched Thin: Reflections on “Social Cohesion” in Lebanon during the 2024 Israeli Assault’ on Tuesday 4^th March at 5.15pm, GMT. The lecture will be held at Campion Hall and will also be live streamed.

About the lecture

Relations among Lebanon’s constituent confessional groups or sects has been a long-standing concern both within the country and beyond, with decades of grassroots and international interventions attempting to build a more “cohesive” national body. Cohesion received renewed attention after the onset of the war in neighbouring Syria in 2011, this time with a focus on relations between displaced Syrians and their Lebanese “hosts”. Yet it is often remarked that definitions of cohesion are too numerous to give it “cohesive” meaning. Is it a quality of relations between collective groups, a product of inter-group perceptions held by individuals, or simply a lack of conflict and tension as people go about their lives?

About the speaker

Dr Cory Rodgers is Assistant Professor of Migration Studies at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. Prior to joining LAU, Dr. Rodgers was a senior researcher at Oxford’s Refugee Studies Centre, where he was the principal investigator of the Social Cohesion as a Humanitarian Objective project (2020-2023), which investigated the impact of interventions intended to promote “social cohesion” between displaced populations and their host populations. Rodgers was the Pedro Arrupe Fellow in Forced Migration Studies at Campion Hall from 2018-2020 and now serves on the Advisory Board for the Reconciliation Program of the Jesuit Refugee Service.

For more information about this lecture and to book tickets via Eventbrite, please click here.

Banner photo: Dr Cory Rodgers