What happens when a woman stands before an Islamic court and raises her hand? Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork and over ninety interviews across five court sites in Oman, this lecture offers an ethnographic account of gender, legal agency, and institutional power in one of the Gulf’s most under-studied legal systems. Through the cases of women who argued for divorce in real time, Dr. Al-Wahaibi illuminates the distance between law on paper and law in practice, and reflects frankly on what it costs, intellectually and personally, to produce feminist scholarship from inside it.
Sumaiya Al-Wahaibi, Postdoctoral Researcher on Women’s Mobilization of the Law project at the University of Copenhagen. She holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Otago and has worked with UN agencies including UNFPA, UNICEF, and UNESCO. Her forthcoming publications focus on state–society relations and gendered politics in the GCC.
April 27, 2026 (Mon), 17:30-19:00
Waseda Campus, Building 3, Room 701
To Register, please go to:https://forms.gle/GyKxC8CGvCVj9qkKA
