9Acknowledgments
The collection of chapters in this volume represent some of the outstand-
ing results of a five-year project (2000–2005) organized by the Social
Science Research Council (SSRC) and funded by the Ford Foundation,
entitled “Reconceptualizing Public Spheres in the Middle East and North
Africa.” Foremost, therefore, thanks are due to the Ford Foundation
Program Officers, Toby Volkman (New York) and Bassma Kodmani
(Cairo), for their embrace and support of the project and its programmatic
and intellectual promise. The project involved promoting new approaches
to the study of public spheres in the Middle East and North Africa region,
designing and administering a research awards program to fund collab-
orative research (for group projects carried out by researchers residing in
different countries) and organizing a series of workshops, conference pan-
els and discussion forums. The nine funded collaborative research groups
have in turn produced many journal articles and book publications.
The project’s capstone conference was held in Beirut on October 22–24,
2004, in cooperation and co-sponsorship with the Center for Behavioral
Research at the American University of Beirut, and opened up the dis-
cussions to perspectives from beyond the Middle East and North Africa
region. (See http://web.archive.org/web/20050204234129/www.ssrc.org/
programs/mena/Beirut_Conference/index.page for the conference agenda
and abstracts of the papers presented.)