[Drs. Cornelis Hulsman, Editor-in-Chief of Arab West Report (AWR): Sebastian Elsässer made extensive use of our Arab-West Report database for his PhD research which he completed in 2011. He earlier wrote about his work in Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 46: 1, 131-150, “Press Liberalization, the New Media, and the ‘Coptic Question,’ : Muslim-Christian Relations in Egypt in a Changing Media Landscape.” Following the completion of his work he wrote this recommendation]

I would like to stress how important Arab-West Reports and its database have been for my research. Social scientific research about the Copts is still at the beginning, and the information and analysis provided by Arab-West Report gave me the orientation that I could not get anywhere else.

Arab-West Report has collected material about complex social, legal, and theological issues, in addition to the editors' comments and analysis, all easily accessible through search categories. As a young researcher without previous knowledge in the field, I could not have possibly done without Arab-West Report in some difficult fields like family law issues, sectarian strife, etc., considering the difficult access to newspaper archives for the period until ca. 2005, but also the sheer amount of unreliable information and doubtful journalism that since then has flooded the internet. If Arab-West Report had not relieved me of the burden of regularly reviewing the content of one to two dozens of newspapers and magazines and bundling the significant pieces of information, the general quality of my dissertation would certainly be much lower.

I think that Arab-West Report, if it manages to keep up the generally outstanding quality of its work, and its database with topical categories and personal files, it will continue to be an enormous asset to the research community. Coptic studies are growing in Europe and the USA; I know about several projects interested in current social, political, and religious developments among the Copts. However, not all young researchers are fluent in Arabic and have the time to spend long periods of time in Egypt. This means that they need a point of entry like Arab-West Report for a quick and reliable access to information, which allows them to focus more on the time-consuming work of text analysis, interviews, or field-work.

Sebastian Elsässer
Cedej/FU Berlin