Upcoming Seminar 

Bologna, Thursday 30th July – Saturday 1st August 2026

The 59^th Seminar for Arabian Studies 2026 will take place at (and in collaboration with) the University of Bologna. Please submit abstracts by 30th March.

Instructions for Submission

Please note: that in order to submit an abstract the main author must be a member of IASA: https://iasarabia.org/membership/

ONLY Word documents submitted in English will be accepted. The information must be in the following order:

1. Type of Abstract to be considered: presentation or poster
2. Title of Abstract
3. Name of Author (s) and Affiliation (do not use footnotes)
4. Name and email address of corresponding author only
5. Five keywords
6. 200 word abstract
7. References

Guidelines:

1. Submissions must be in English only – please do not submit both in Arabic and English
2. Keep formatting (eg headings, indents) to an absolute minimum (this helps us to collate the abstracts)
3. Left justified
4. Single spaced
5. 12 point (max)
6. Times New Roman
7. Black text only
8. Please do not underline or include any images, please remove all hyperlinks
9. Max TWO A4 pages
10. Save the word doc as the surname of the corresponding author (in English) followed by 26 i.e. Smith26
11. Email the abstract as an attachment to: seminar.arab@thebfsa.org

Please ensure all information is as requested above, or your abstract will not be considered. PDFs are not accepted as they are difficult to collate. Word docs must be attached to the email, please do not send in the body of the email.

Note that the distinction between ‘Short rapportage’ and ‘Synthetic overview’ that was used at the Seminar in Paris 2024 has been dropped. All papers will therefore be 20 minutes presentation with 5 minutes for questions and discussion.

The Seminar has had an exemplary track record of timely publication of its proceedings and papers will, after peer-review, be eligible for publication.

Past Seminars

The 58th Seminar for Arabian Studies took place in Abu Dhabi, UAE, Friday, 12th of December to Sunday, 14th of December, 2025.

The main session was live-streamed and you can watch the conference on the Zayed National Museum Youtube site:  https://www.youtube.com/@znmuae

The 57th Seminar for Arabian Studies was held in Paris 27th-29th June 2024 

The programme can be found here:

SAS 2024 Detailed Programme 1 [Panoptic]

SAS 2024 Detailed Programme 2 [Enlarged]

The abstracts can be found here:

SAS 2024 – Abstracts

SAS 2024 – Abstracts [Arabic]

SAS 2024 – Abstracts – Special Sessions [Arabic]

The 56th Seminar for Arabian Studies took place at Moesgaard Museum and Aarhus University, Denmark. 4th- 6th August 2023

The 56th Seminar for Arabian Studies took place at Moesgaard Museum and Aarhus University, Denmark. In 2022 they celebrated the 70^th jubilee of the pioneering Arabian Gulf expeditions (est. 1953-). The seminar was  jointly organized by the department of Archaeology at Aarhus University and the Orient Department at Moesgaard Museum and is under the patronage of the International Association for the Study of Arabia.

The 2023 Seminar was generously supported by the C. L. David Foundation, the Carlsberg Foundation, the Frimodt-Heineke Foundation, the Dr M. C. Holsts Foundation, and the Beatrice de Cardi Fund of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

The programme is available here: IASA Seminar Programme 1 Aug rev

Abstracts are available here:

IASA Seminar Abstracts 2023 rev

Special Session 2023 Abstracts. docx

A brief history of the Seminar for Arabian Studies

The Seminar began as an informal study group set up in 1968 at the time of the first official British archaeological survey in Saudi Arabia, led by Peter Parr of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London. The purpose of the group was to promote archaeological research in the Arabian Peninsula and, after an initial meeting, the group formed itself into the Arabia Society, with John Dayton as Honorary Secretary.

After two relatively small conferences in 1969 and another two in 1970, the Seminar for Arabian Studies, as it had now become, settled into a pattern of annual conferences, of ever increasing size, in 1971, 1972, and 1973. From 1974 onwards, the present pattern had been established of a three-day conference in July, with the publication of its Proceedings in time for the conference of the following year. For many years, the conference circulated between London, Oxford, and Cambridge with occasional visits to Durham, Edinburgh and Manchester. From 2002 to 2018 it was hosted in London by the British Museum. In 2019 the Seminar took place in Leiden, Netherlands and in 2020 will be held in Cordoba, Spain.

Summaries of some of the papers presented at the first Seminar and a list of those given at the second (in January and June 1969 respectively) were published in the Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London 8-9, 1968-1969: 243-258. These were later republished, together with papers from the third to sixth Seminars (the 3rd Seminar held in January 1970, the 4th in June 1970, the 5th in September 1971, and the 6th in September 1972) in a cumulative volume together with the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies vol. 1-3 in 1973. This was in addition to the separate volumes of PSAS 1 (1971), 2 (1972) and 3 (1973).

From volume 1 (1971), containing the papers from the fourth Seminar held in Cambridge in June 1970, the Proceedings have been published each year and 2020 saw volume 50, containing the papers from the 53rd Seminar held in the University of Leiden in 2019.

Special Sessions

As well as the wide range of subjects covered in its main sessions, the Seminar also offers the opportunity for more detailed discussion of a particular area of research by invited speakers in a Special Session, lasting either half a day or a full day. The papers read at a Special Session will be considered for publication either in the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies (PSAS) or in a separate volume as a Supplement to PSAS.

Past Special Sessions:

2017: Languages, scripts and their uses in ancient North Arabia (published in a Supplement to PSAS 48, 2018).
2016: Textiles and personal adornment in the Arabian Peninsula (published in PSAS 47, 2017).
2013: Languages of Southern Arabia (published in a Supplement to PSAS 44, 2014).
2012: Museums in Arabia (not published).
2011: The Nabataeans in Focus: Current archaeological research at Petra (published in a Supplement to PSAS 42, 2012).
2009: The development of Arabic as a written language (published in a Supplement to PSAS 40, 2010).
2007: Defining the Palaeolithic of Arabia (a summary of the discussion was published in PSAS 38, 2008 and it was developed in M D Petraglia and J I Rose (eds), The Evolution of Human Populations in Arabia, 2010)