Composed of six scholars and activists, who bring research, journalism, and art together to study ongoing transformations in the Middle East, North Africa (MENA), and beyond, the MENA cluster in IRGAC strives to scrutinize the dialectical relation between authoritarianism, political contestation, and counter strategies in and from the MENA. In tandem with the broader objectives of the IRGAC to exchange and share research findings on the rise of authoritarian politics across the world, the six individual projects and their coalescence within the IRGAC framework underline the significance of addressing the ongoing contestations and counterstrategies to authoritarianism, contentious politics, and revolutionary and counter-revolutionary struggles within the global capitalist order. By producing and disseminating knowledge around political contestation and counterstrategies during revolutionary times and transformation across the MENA and beyond, the significance of the six different projects draw not solely on the in-depth analysis of intricate socio-political dynamics idiosyncratic to the region but also emerge out of the theoretical horizons unveiled by such explorations.