The Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies is one of the foremost academic institutions in the UK offering research and taught degree programmes in a wide range of areas within the field of Arab, Middle Eastern, and Islamic Studies. We offer Arabic and Middle East languages as well as comprehensive education in the literatures and cultures of the Arab world and Middle East, the history, politics, economies, societies, and anthropology of the region and almost every aspect of Islamic studies from medieval to modern Islam. IAIS houses a number of dedicated research centres, including the Centre for Gulf Studies, Centre for Kurdish Studies, Centre for Persian and Iranian Studies, Centre for the Study of Islam, the European Centre for Palestine Studies, Centre for Islamic Archaeology, and Centre for Middle East Politics. 

The Arab Council for the Social Sciences is a regional, independent, not-for-profit institution that aims to support research and knowledge production in the field of social sciences in the Arab region. By supporting researchers and scientific and academic research institutions, the Council contributes to the production and publication of research on the social sciences, confirming its credibility and use, and enriching the public debate on the challenges facing Arab societies. The Council also seeks to enhance the role of social sciences in public life and to benefit public policies in the region.

In particular, the objectives of the Council include:

• Identifying and meeting the needs of social scientists and social science groups in Arab countries

• Strengthening the capabilities of individual researchers and academic and research institutions in the field of social sciences

• Encouraging the production of high-level independent research

• Providing platforms for exchange of views and communication between social scientists in the Arab region

• Strengthening the role of social sciences in promoting the public interest

• Supporting the principles of independent thought and critical thinking, and protecting and promoting intellectual freedoms for researchers and academics in the Arab region

• Supporting the formation of effective networks among researchers, academics, professionals and policy makers, as well as the public and the media

• Supporting the publication and dissemination of high quality social science research on a large scale in the Arab region

The ACSS has served as Secretariat to the InterAsia Partnership as of May 2021 and has been a contributing partner since 2013. The InterAsia Partnership connects and networks scholars, practitioners, universities and knowledge institutions in order to re-envision and reconfigure Asia as an interconnected formation, through developing transregional analytical frames that transcend conventional academic and geopolitical labels, promoting better understandings of historical and contemporary phenomena and processes in complex global settings and enabling collaborative and comparative projects and practices.

Since inception, the InterAsia Partnership has sought to promote frameworks and concepts for a new generation of scholarship that reconceptualizes Asia as a dynamic and interconnected formation spanning Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East (including Turkey), and Russia. All current initiative partners are guided by a commitment to creating pathways and opportunities for a new generation of transregional scholars as well as to sustaining a global infrastructure of campus hubs and collaborating institutions that can further these aims by hosting and nurturing working groups, incubate new thematic directions and develop practical and pedagogical resources. 

The Mapping Connections: China and Contemporary Development in the Middle East​ project is supported by a grant from Carnegie Corporation New York, a philanthropic foundation established by Andrew Carnegie in 1911.