Articles
Downloadable Articles
On the Arab World
- Health and Ecological Sustainability in the Arab World: A Matter of Survival. The Lancet (co-authored), 31 January 2014.
- Obama’s Riddle of the Sphinx. The Age (Melbourne), The Brisbane Times (Brisbane) and WAToday(Perth), 7 February 2011.
- Evoking Past Conflagration is not Helping. The Age, 21 August 2006.
- The Tribes of War. The New York Times, 27 July 2006.
On Travel and Migration
- The Will of Others. Byron Bay Writer’s Festival, 2001.
- The Language of Travel and Migration. Byron Bay Writer’s Festival, 2001.
On Writing
- Dancing with Hyphens. Essay on writing in the global city, conference on Lebanese migrant literature, Beirut, April 2010.
- Interpreting Oneself: On Memoirs, Essays and Travel Writing (written version). Talk at Macquarie University, Department of English Research Seminar Series, 11 May 2009. (click here for the audio version)
- Language, Allegiance and Authenticity. Panel session at the Creative Writing Program of the American University of Beirut, June 2002.
- Potatoes or Butterflies? Writing Failure and Success. Melbourne Writers Festival, August 2001.
- Connecting Words: How it All Starts. Melbourne Writers Festival, August 2001.
- Covering One’s Track: Desert Roads from Memory to Fable. Essay on memory and loss, Overland, June 2000.
- Words, Swords and Insomniac Beauties. Essay on the 1001 Nights and the work of Eva Sallis, Meanjin, 1999.
On Engineering
- Surveillance, Weapons and the Ethics of Engineering. The Guardian Newspaper, 5 December 2013
- Does History Matter for Engineering? Talk at the University of Sydney library, 24 August 2010.
Other Articles
Time’s Arrow, HEAT Magazine, Issue 11, 1998.
Festivals of Grief, HEAT Magazine, Issue 10, 1998.
Living Up to Aleppo, Travel Arabia, issue 1, 2004.
From Rags to Riches: Beirut’s Green Line. Travel Arabia, issue 2, 2004.
Sluggish Countdown to War, essay published in Beirut Transit, editors Halasa and Khalaf, Al Saqi Books, London (essay also appeared in Australian Book Review ABR, Melbourne, May 2003 and TANK magazine, London, May 2004).
Mutilation Street: On Legs, Teeth and Foreign Tongues, essay on migration, Meanjin, Melbourne 2001, issue 1 (Essay also appeared in Anthology of Arab-Australian Writing, editor Ghassan Hage, University of Melbourne Press, 2002).