This international workshop brings ethnographic research in the Middle East into conversation with anthropological debate on political agency. Its first aim is to bring together a group of scholars who have been seeking to bring the theoretical insights of recent anthropological work on political agency to bear on the study of political change in contemporary Middle East. Its second aim is to bring together scholars whose research in the Middle East has sought to develop alternative ways of thinking about political action and political subjectivity. 19-20 May 2016.