Please see the Projects page for details of the Society's next biennial conference, "Death, Burial and the Transition to the Afterlife in Arabia and Adjacent Regions" to be held at the British Museum in November 2008.

22nd October: Dr. James Onley, The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers and the British in the Nineteenth Century
6.00 pm, Room G2 (Ground floor), School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Thornhaugh Street, London WC1H 0XG.
Drinks will be served after the lecture in room G3.

James Onley is Director of the Gulf Studies programme and Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern History at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. He was previously Assistant Professor of Gulf History at the American University of Sharjah in the UAE. He specializes in the history, society, and culture of the Gulf Arab states and holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford (2001), where he studied at St. Antony’s College. He is the author of The Arabian Frontier of the British Raj: Merchants, Rulers, and the British in the Nineteenth Century Gulf (Oxford University Press, 2007), which was partly funded by research grants from the Bahrain-British Foundation (1998) and the Society for Arabian Studies (1999).

22nd January 2009: Prof. Dionisius Agius, Classical Ships of Islam: from Mesopotamia to the Indian Ocean.
Prof. Agius will talk about his new publication and will sign copies of the book after the talk.
6.00 pm in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, British Museum
Joint lecture with the Palestine Exploration Fund and the Council for British Research in the Levant

Professor Dionisius A. Agius is best known for his work on Islamic material culture, maritime ethnography and Arabic language and linguistics. He is particularly interested in the history and provenance of traditional wooden ships, the people who built and sailed on them, resources and trade in the Mediterranean and Western Indian Ocean. He is currently the principal investigator for a MARES project (2008-2011), funded by the Golden Web Foundation, and with a team of 5 researchers, is studying the commercial, cultural and technological exchange in the Red Sea and Arabian/Persian Gulf harbour towns from Late Antiquity to the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean.

25th March 2009: Lecture and book launch by Dr. Anne Coles, on Windtower, the book she co-authored with Peter Jackson.
Joint lecture/book launch with Stacey International.
5.30 pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS

Dr Anne Coles is a social geographer, who lived and worked in Dubai from 1968-71. She has spent many years in the Middle East, combining research with family responsibilities. Anne is presently a research associate at the International Gender Studies Centre in the Department of International Development, Oxford University.

20th May 2009: The Society's Annual General Meeting, followed immediately by a talk by Dr. Chris Ward, title to be confirmed.
5.30 pm in the Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS.
Joint lecture with the British-Yemeni Society

Exhibition:

October 16th – December 13th 2008: The first-ever comprehensive exhibition of contemporary Saudi art, entitled Edge of Arabia will be held at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS.

Entrance is free. The exhibition is open between Tuesday and Saturday, 10.30 to 17.00.
More information from: www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/visit