Livelihoods in times of uncertainty

Over the past 24 months, Lebanon has faced significant challenges in regards to livelihoods arising from the uncertainty caused by the financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic and the Beirut blast. These events had severe impacts on individuals’ life choices, opportunities and outcomes. This session will explore such challenges and impacts on income, employment and food security by presenting newly collected and analysed data on formal and informal labour markets, citizens’ outcomes post covid and on food insecurity and urban agriculture. Building on research insights of these topics, the session will aim to provide and discuss bottom-up solutions that could mitigate the adverse effects of the aforementioned crises.

Moderator:

Frank Hagemann,

Deputy Regional Director, Arab States, International Labour Organization (ILO)

Frank Hagemann is the ILO’s Deputy Regional Director for the Arab States. He also heads the ILO’s Decent Work Technical Support Team for the region. Since 2012 he has been advising governments, trade unions and employers in the Mashrek region on labour and employment issues. This includes, amongst others, youth employment; social protection; and labour migration. The development of a job-rich response to the Syrian refugee and Covid-19 crises, along with supporting large-scale technical cooperation programmes, has been one of the central pillars of his work over the last eight years.

Mr. Hagemann is a German national and has been working for the ILO for more than 25 years. Prior to his current assignment, Mr Hagemann was Chief of Policy and Research at the ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) in Geneva. His work focussed on aligning child labour policy with broader employment, social protection and education strategies. A particular emphasis was laid on the economics of child labour. While in Geneva, Mr Hagemann also managed IPEC's Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC), which has carried out hundreds of child labour surveys around the world.

Before joining ILO headquarters in 1997 he headed the entrepreneurship and employment promotion division of a large development consulting firm in Germany. His experience also includes several years as an expert on small enterprise development and employment policy in regional ILO teams in Delhi and Bangkok, respectively, and a number of long-term research and advisory assignments in Indonesia and Benin.

A political scientist and development economist by training, Mr. Hagemann read at the Université de Montréal and Freie Universität Berlin. He is also a graduate of the German Development Institute.

Speakers:

Diala Makki (RELIEF Centre)

Diala Makki is an urban researcher and social scientist. She holds an M.Sc. in Urban Planning and Policy from the American University of Beirut (Lebanon). She is interested in research-oriented around basic services and refugee studies. This includes power relations and their impact on decision-making processes, knowledge production and self-help mechanisms in informal settlements in the global south, water resources, social and economic integration of refugees including informal adaptive mechanisms, planning theory, and political ecology. She is currently a researcher with the RELIEF Centre and working on the following projects: ‘Prosperity in the age of mass displacement - Prosperity Index for Lebanon’ and “Supporting Macroeconomic Stability and Prosperity in an Age of Mass Displacement”.

Mona El Hallak (AUB NI)

Mona El Hallak is a Beirut-based architect and the current director of the Neighborhood Initiative at the American University of Beirut. The Initiative’s mission is to mobilize the full power of AUB for the public good in Ras Beirut, promoting the neighborhood’s livability, vitality, and diversity through innovative outreach activities and multidisciplinary research. Their work encourages critical citizenship, giving AUB faculty and students the opportunity to apply critical thinking through practical problem-solving. She has coordinated and implemented several urban interventions and projects to address social and environmental issues, activate public space and engage the community in reclaiming their neighborhood, bringing together community leaders, designers, artists, NGOs, public and private institutions. An AUB alumna (B Arch ’91) with a master’s of architecture from Syracuse University-Florence Program, Hallak joined AUB in January 2017.

Dr. Ala'a Shehabi (RELIEF Centre)

Ala’a Shehabi is the deputy director of the Institute for Global Prosperity. She is a transdisciplinary researcher work on alternative ways of thinking about development and prosperity in the Middle East at University College London as part of the RELIEF Centre.  Her research interests include energy justice, environmental and spatial equity, and critical Gulf studies.  She is a data manager and holds a Ph.D. in Econometrics from Imperial College London. She is a department Inclusion Lead committed to EDI and decolonised thought and methods. She is on several boards and committees: British Society for Middle East Studies Campaigns, the planning committee of the SSRC’s trans-regional collaboratory on the Indian Ocean, and the steering committee for UCL’s Middle East research centre. 

As an activist, she has been involved in a decade of organising since the Arab Spring on human rights, accountability, workers and land rights.

Dr. Georges Melios (RELIEF Centre)

Dr. Georgios Melios is an economist and political scientist currently holding the position of Research Fellow at the Institute for Global Prosperity of University College London and a visiting scholar at the Quality of Governance Institute of the University of Gothenburg. Before joining UCL, he held associate positions at Yale University and New York University (NYU) - AD campus.

He has completed a Doctorate (Dphil) in Economics from Swansea University, an M.Sc. in Financial Economics with distinction at Cardiff University and a B.Sc. in Economic and Regional Development at Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences. His research has attracted substantial funding from the European Commission, the Economics and Social sciences Research Council (ESRC UK), Public Choice Society and the Wales Institute for Social and Economics Research and Data (WISERD) and includes forthcoming and working papers in political economy, violence, radicalisation, corruption, and impact evaluation. Besides his academic work, Georgios Melios is working as an academic consultant combining academic research and innovation to derive policy recommendations in topics related to policy impact evaluation. Prior to his doctoral studies, he has worked as a financial analyst at Grant Thornton and at the press office of the Permanent Delegation of Greece in NATO and EU. His rich experience in both academia, EU institutions and the industry on projects related to comparative research on violence, political institutions and radicalisation will be valuable for his role in the proposed project. Dr Melios' research aims to further our understanding regarding individuals’ beliefs, political institutions and violence as well as to connect such philosophical and social enquiries with policy that delivers more inclusive and prosperous societies. His research has focused on violence, radicalisation, other criminal activities (corruption) and how individuals interact with formal institutions.

Currently, George’s research focuses on two main areas. At first, he is developing a novel indicator that measures prosperity (The Prosperity Index) in various contexts including Lebanon, Kenya, Tanzania, and the UK. Simultaneously, George is working on multiple empirical research projects that focus on the interrelation of micro-meso-macro institutions and policies and citizens’ lived experiences.