SPAIS Lunchtime Talks are a chance to hear SPAIS lecturers and researchers offer their take on some of the big issues of the day. Talks will draw on their research and expertise, inviting us to think critically about events and ideas shaping popular discourse on politics and international relations today. Talks will last approximately 25 minutes, followed by a Q&A session.

In this talk, Dr Filippo Dionigi will offer an introduction to the most recent events concerning the dramatic social, economic, and political situation of contemporary Lebanon. This country, though small, is in a crucial geopolitical context bordering with Syria and Israel and, following a history of instability, since 2019 is going through a set of multi-layered crises that include sovereign debt default, popular uprising, political institutional failure, and internal as well as regional conflict. None of these crises is new to Lebanon, yet, the current situation has reached unprecedented levels of gravity causing skyrocketing inflation, the impoverishment of the local and refugee populations, emigration, and the exacerbation of infrastructural failure especially as concerns the provision of electricity. Since a few days, Lebanon does not have a president anymore and is left only with a caretaking government: this new phase of increased uncertainty raises the question of what will come next and what it will take to rebuild a degree of stability and find a way towards recovery.