Women’s agency in the Levant in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

Professor Irene Kamberidou represented the Department of Sociology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens—with a presentation that spotlighted women’s agency and self-expression—at the 58th ARAM Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies international conference organized by the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies of the University of Oxford, UK on July 6-8, 2026.

The conference theme “Orientalism and the Levant during the Second Half of the Second Millennium (1500-2000) and Western Educational Missions in the Levant, 1300-1945” attracted globally renowned participants to Oxford. http://www.aramsociety.org/

In reconsulting primary sources and original materials, Prof. Kamberidou, the only participant from Greece, focused on women’s agency: social activists, journalists, missionaries, teachers-educators, founders of schools, volunteers, caregivers, nurses and physicians of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in different regions of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, women, she argued, played key roles, not only in education and establishing schools but in setting up hospitals, negotiating social care, public health and hospital management, showing initiative and innovation in crisis management. These women were not only agents of change, but they too were influenced, overwhelmed and changed by their experiences.

The Aram Society for Syro-Mesopotamian Studies was founded at Oxford University in 1986, with the support of the Oriental Institute and its staff. Aram Society is an independent, non-political, inter-religious, non-profit society concerned with all aspects of Syro-Mesopotamian cultures. Aram draws its name from Aramaic, which was the focal point of ancient SyroMesopotamian cultures.

However, Aram does not confine itself solely to the Aramaic culture but attempts to deal with all cultures of the geographical area influenced by the Aramaic culture, i.e. the Syro-Mesopotamian cultures, from the beginning of history up until the present time. https://www.aramsociety.org/about-us/