The Layla & Majnun Lab

مجنون ليلى | ليلى و مجنون

Exploring a Millennium of Love, Translation, Imagination, and Politics

About the L&M Lab

The Layla and Majnun Lab is a collaborative project exploring the political and ideological afterlives of the Layla and Majnun tradition. Rather than a single text, Layla and Majnun is a living tradition whose political possibilities emerge through centuries of reinterpretation across languages, regions, and media.

This project uses digital tools and public-facing initiatives to investigate a humanities question: How has one story inspired such diverse political imaginations across time and place?

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Explore the Tradition

WHAT IS LAYLA & MAJNUN?

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TEXTS & TRANSLATIONS

ART & ADAPTATIONS

Current Projects

MESA 2026 PANEL: Local Resistance, Culture, and Political Change

Love, Politics, and Polarization in The History of Political Thought: Lessons from Layla and Majnun

J. London and E. Urban present a political reading of Layla and Majnun that explores how love, human connection, and political life intersect—and why the Layla and Majnun tradition continues to resonate across diverse cultures in a time of intense political polarization.

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