The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Secretariat established the Committee for Undergraduate Middle East Studies (CUMES) in 2012 and since 2014 the committee has hosted annual undergraduate research workshops.

At the 2025 MESA Annual Meeting in Washington DC, we welcomed fifteen students from different universities in Canada, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq, and around the United States. The student papers represent the diversity of Middle East studies, coming from the disciplines of literature, history, sociology, political science, and international affairs. Students presented their research at MESA 2025 in small panels and publicly through two poster sessions.

• • Amal Shaqo (University of Guelph), From Exile to Uncertain Belonging: Generational Identity and Integration of Palestinian Refugees in Jordan

• • Ariana Mohr (U. of North Georgia), Linguistic Landscape of Israel–Palestine

• • Avery Ferguson (U. of Arkansas), Revolutionary Romanticism: Djamila l’Algérienne, Nation-Building, and Conflict

• • Charlie Fong (New York U. Abu Dhabi), The Pilgrimage of a Young Man: Dispatches from Morisco Spain

• • Charlotte Niblett (U. of Mary Washington), Storytellers of the Near East: Scheherazade and Enheduanna

• • Ibrahim Alkaseer (U. of Richmond), Beyond Regime Change: Refugee Return Patterns in Post-Assad Syria

• • Guillaume Jonquieres (St. Edward’s U.), How the Beautiful Game Turned Ugly: Sectarianism, Politics, and Identity in Syrian Football

• • Laura E. Connors (U. of Mary Washington), Where Did It Come From, Where Should It Go? Archaeological Exchange between Germany and the Ottoman Empire

• • María-José Lema (DePaul U.), Enlightened Universalism in the French Peripheries: The Case of Alsace and Ghardaïa

• • Nour Makhlof (North Carolina State U.), Politics and Garments: The Historical Transformation of Palestinian Embroidery under Displacement and Conflict

• • Sarah Attyani (New York U. Abu Dhabi), Enta mn Jordan? TikTok and the Notion of Social Progress in Jordan

• • Sara Marachli (U. of Guelph), Examining the Unprecedented Speed of Syria’s Transition

• • Taniya Noori (Middlebury College), Education in Conflict and Post-Conflict Zones: Afghanistan As a Case Study

• • Zelie Alvernhe Barton (St. Edward’s U.), Growing and Belonging As a Nation: Children’s Magazines during the Syrian Civil War

• • Zinah Al-Bayati (American U. in Iraq–Baghdad), Enhancing Healthcare and Representation for People with Disabilities in Iraq

This year, we awarded the inaugural Jeffrey A. VanDenBerg Undergraduate Research Award, recognizing the outstanding contribution of one participant’s research to the field of Middle East studies. This award was presented to Amal Shaqo for her work on the policy implications of multigenerational refugees. We are pleased to present a selection of five posters from the poster session in this issue of the Review of Middle East Studies.

If you or your undergraduate students are interested in being a part of the CUMES Undergraduate Research Workshop at MESA 2026, please email CUMES@mesana.org.