Seminar: Understanding Syria through Syrian Voices: Refugees’ Stories...

Understanding Syria through Syrian Voices: Refugees’ Stories of Revolution, War, and the Struggle for Home

Speaker: Professor Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University, USA

Over 13 years, Northwestern University Professor Wendy Pearlman has interviewed more than 500 displaced Syrians around the world about their experiences of authoritarianism, the popular uprising against it, and the subsequent war and refugee crisis. In this presentation, she shares and explores their stories collected in her two books, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (2017) and The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (2024). These oral histories help explain the origins and trajectory of the Syrian conflict and the lived experience of displacement, while also offering broader lessons about migration, belonging, and the search for dignity.

Bio: Wendy Pearlman is the Jane Long Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of political science at Northwestern University, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal Perspectives on Politics. A scholar of Middle East politics, social movements, conflict processes, and forced migration, she is the author of six books and more than 40 journal articles or book chapters.

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