Under the patronage of HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal and in collaboration with the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies (RIIFS), the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL) organised this workshop with participants from different backgrounds and disciplines to debate and challenge some of the popular perceptions of division between ‘East’ and ‘West’ that are often encouraged for example in modern journalism and even some academic debate. 
By examining the long sweep of history from the ancient world to the present day we hope to show how there is nothing fixed or inevitable about these boundaries and we hope to continue this perspective with a final session on the present day including discussion for example on the Moslem population in Great Britain and perhaps elsewhere in Europe to help reduce some of the geographical categorization that develops in popular practices of understanding.

Papers during this 2-day workshop:

Friday 2nd February

Bill Finlayson & Rami Daher
          Introduction and Welcome
Steven Snape (University of Liverpool)
          East/West interconnections during the Bronze Age
Tamar Hodos
          A Phoenician past and present
Phiroze Vasunia (University of Reading)
          Hellenism, Orientalism, Imperialism
Mark Whittow (University of Oxford)
          Pirenne, Muhammad and Bohemond: before Orientalism
Andrew Peacock (University of Cambridge)
          Cultural identity and assimilation in a Christian-Muslim   
          frontier
Erica Hunter (SOAS, University of Cambridge)
          Dialogues between Muslims and Christians in the Abbasid
          era
John Bintliff (Leiden University)
          The Ottomans in Greece - archaeological perspectives
 

Keynote Lecture

Mike Robinson (Leeds Metropolitan University)
          Tourism and Inter-Cultural Dialogue: Translation,
          Transformation and Spaces of Belonging

Saturday 3rd February

Ben Fortna (SOAS, University of London)
          The notion of "divide" between East and West in the late
          Ottoman context
Martina Rieker (American University in Cairo)
          Geographic Inscriptions
HRH Prince Hassan bin Talal
          Shifting Boundaries
Rami Daher & Bill Finlayson
          Summary
 

Abstracts for some of the papers can be found here.

The proceedings of this workshop will be published in a special edition of the Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies.