Join us for a screening of the documentary Sh'hili, directed by Professor Habib Ayeb. The screening will be followed by a Q&A discussion with the director and discussants. 

This event has been organised in collaboration with The Asfari Foundation.

For several decades, people have been talking everywhere about the processes of climate change and global warming. Conferences, forums and publications are multiplying. The famous COPs (Conferences of the Parties) held each year in a different country bring together hundreds of delegations from all over the world. And yet there are few results, even though climate change phenomena continue to worsen.

Filmed across France, Italy, Tunisia, and Morocco, Sh’hili, addresses the multifaceted issues of climate change from a political perspective committed to climate justice, the protection of vulnerable populations, and resistance to all forms of colonial and neo-colonial policies.

Watch a clip from the documentary here.

Meet our speakers and chair

Habib Ayeb is a geographer, filmmaker/director and emeritus professor at University Paris 8. His research focuses on agrarian change, water resources, poverty and marginality. He has worked in the Ministry of Agriculture in Tunisia, American University in Cairo, CEDEJ (Centre d'Etudes et de Documentation Juridiques et Sociales) - Egypt, and the French IRD (Institute of Research for Development). Ayeb's research mainly focuses on the areas of Tunisia and the whole of North Africa. Ayeb's other documentaries include: Fellahin (2014), Gabes Labess (2014), Couscous: the seeds of dignity (2017) and Om Layoun (2021). Ayeb is co-editor of the volumes Marginality and Exclusion in Egypt (AUC Press, 2012) and Agrarian Transformation in the Arab World: Persistent and Emerging Challenges (AUC Press, 2014).

Muna Abbas is CEO of The Asfari Foundation. With more than 25 years of experience in the humanitarian and development sectors, prior to joining The Asfari Foundation Muna was the Country Director for Plan International in Jordan. She built programs to support both Jordanian and refugee communities across the country. Muna established a wide network of International Organizations, including Civil Society Organizations and Government Institutions with strong links to regional and global efforts playing a strong role in advocating for gender equality, girls’ and women’s rights, and youth empowerment. She also worked with Save the Children and UNRWA to design and lead programs responding to humanitarian needs of refugees and affected crises populations in the Middle East.

Ray Bush is emeritus professor of African Studies and Development Politics at the University of Leeds. He works on the political economy of Africa and the Near East. Bush is on the advisory board of the Tunis based NGO Observatoire de la Souveraineté et de l'Environnement (OSAE) and is a member of the Editorial Working Group of the Review of African Political Economy where he has worked for more than 35 years. He is also founding member of Thimar the Beirut based research collective on agriculture, environment and labour in the Arab world. In 2013 Bush was one of five appointed by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization to write a profile of ‘Family Farming in the Near East and North Africa’ marking the UN's year of family farming.

Michael Mason is Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. At LSE, he is also Professor of Environmental Geography in the Department of Geography and Environment and an Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. He is interested in ecological politics and governance as applied to questions of accountability, security and sovereignty. This research addresses both global environmental politics and regional environmental change in Western Asia/the Middle East.