The Arab Spring of 2011

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.Our guest is Michelle Meinhart, a reader in musicology and cultural history at Trinity Laban Conservatoire in London. We start by hearing about a Mexican song that captivated lov ...  Show more

Max Pearson presents a collection of the week's Witness History interviews from the BBC World Service.We start with the launch of Expedition Robinson in Sweden in 1997 and discuss how reality TV began around the world with our guest Misha Kavka, Professor of Cross-Media Culture a ...  Show more

In the early months of 2011 demonstrators took to the streets across the Arab world in what became known as the Arab spring. In February, protests in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi soon turned into an armed revolt seeking to overthrow the dictator, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. S ...  Show more

In 2011 Egyptians took to the streets calling for the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, whose regime had been in power for nearly 30 years. Their uprising was part of a wave of pro-democracy protests in the Arab world aimed at ending autocratic rule. Women were at the forefro ...  Show more

Protests erupted across the Arab world in 2011, people wanted change, an end to tyranny and dictatorship. But in Syria the unrest, and its put down by the authorities, led to civil war, years of violence and the survival of the Assad regime. One eye witness to events was Rami Jar ...  Show more

The Arab Spring erupted eleven years ago when a wave of "pro-democracy" protests spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa. The effects of the uprisings reverberated around the world as regimes fell in some countries, and civil war began in others. This week, we remember ...  Show more