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LGBTQIA+ and the Arab Diaspora: an Oral History Collection

Loren Weiss

May 18, 2026

Fihris: The Arabic Manuscript Archive

Read our exclusive blog discussing the relevance of Fihris to the field of public history, shared on the International Federation for Public History‘s blog, Bridging!

Feb 18, 2026

Reading the Unreadable: AI & Early Arab-American Stories

Arabic handwriting is notoriously hard to read. Now, a project called Fihris is using custom-trained AI to decipher the complex Ruq’ah script. We spoke with Arabic for Nerds to explain how and why Fihris came to be.
The homepage of Fihris.org, reading "Explore Arab American History" with a search bar.

Feb 9, 2026

Fihris.org

The Khayrallah Center is thrilled to announce that Fihris.org — your resource for searching and translating the archive’s Arabic manuscripts — is now available for public use. Fihris revolutionizes the Arabic archive as we know it. It renders previously inaccessible documents immediately accessible from anywhere in the world by not only hosting manuscript images but also…
An infographic displaying statistics for a socioeconomic profile of Lebanese Americans.

Feb 5, 2026

Lebanese Americans: a socioeconomic profile

Using data from the 2024 American Community Survey, the Khayrallah Center has compiled socioeconomic statistics about the Lebanese American population to compare them with the general U.S. population. The survey reveals that Lebanese Americans exceed U.S. national averages across many socioeconomic metrics, exhibiting higher income levels, greater educational attainment, and a heavy concentration in professional…

Oct 16, 2025

Khayrallah Center Thinks Bigger With Research Facilitation Service

Since the Khayrallah Center first released its Arab American Newspaper Database in 2020, the collection has grown to nearly 500,000 pages of historical texts. The database helps fill a digital gap in Arab American archival material, which is challenging to digitize with common optical character recognition software. 
WE NEVER LEFT Film poster - a character pointing at a plane flying over the ocean from a beach.

Oct 16, 2025

WE NEVER LEFT

This October, the Khayrallah Center collaborated with the Triangle Lebanese-American Center to host a screening of WE NEVER LEFT, a documentary-style film born of the Lebanese diaspora’s complex feelings during a traumatic period in Lebanon. WE NEVER LEFT follows three Lebanese emigrants as they struggle with their distance from home during civil protests, the worldwide…
Withers Hall during autumn.

Sep 29, 2025

Graduate Studies: Middle East Public History

Whether your goal is a career in academia, cultural institutions, or the public humanities, this program will prepare you to shape how Middle East history is researched, taught, and shared with the world. We’re thrilled to be a part of NC State’s groundbreaking graduate program in Middle East Public History — the first of its…
Call for Papers Public History in the Middle East

Sep 9, 2025

CFP: Public History in the Middle East

Conference Date: October 19–20, 2026Organizers: Qatar National Library’s Heritage Library & Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies (NC State University)Location: Qatar National LibraryContact: Dr. Akram Khater and Maryam Al-MutawaSubmission Deadline: January 31, 2026 As a field that began in the US in the 1960s, public history brings to the fore the history of those whose voices and lives have been omitted from colonial…
The backs of a family of two parents and three children staring out at a landscape.

Sep 2, 2025

Lebanese Diaspora Philanthropy Report

In 2025, the Khayrallah Center collaborated with Catherine Abou-Khalil to conduct a survey that studied the giving patterns of the Lebanese Diaspora, asking questions about remittances, donations, and more. Once the survey was complete, we compiled our findings into a report and compared them with insights from our 2016 study. Executive Summary The Lebanese diaspora…
A person holding Pride Flag looking out at a mountain range.

Jun 24, 2025

LGBTQIA+ and the Arab Diaspora: an Oral History Collection

The Khayrallah Center’s LGBTQIA+ and the Arab Diaspora Oral History Project seeks to record and preserve the lived experiences of LGBTQIA+-identifying individuals of Middle Eastern and/or North African descent. For Pride Month 2025, we want to highlight the first four transcripts from this series, all of which are publicly accessible via the Hoda Z. Nassour…