Early Career Fellowship Program

Suhad Daher-Nashif (MSc.; PhD) is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Sociology and Anthropology of Health, and Programme Director for MSc. in Global Healthcare Leadership in the School of Medicine at Keele University, United Kingdom. Her research dismantles intersectionality between science, society, politics, and bureaucracy within three main fields: Dementia, post-mortem practices, and medical education. Daher-Nashif has rich experience in building curricula and syllabi of humanities and social sciences within medical schools and other health professions programmes, and in establishing feminist qualitative methods within biomedical contexts. To follow her work, go to: Google scholar

Walid Marrouch is Professor of Economics at the Lebanese American University and Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and Research. He is also a consultant for several international organizations and an ERF and CIRANO fellow. His main research interests are in environmental and resource economics, energy economics, and development economics.

Karim Ouaras serves as a Professor of Sociolinguistics and Discourse analysis in the Department of French at the University of Oran 2, Algeria. His research focuses on multilingualism, Spoken Arabic, Berber languages, language planning,  graffiti, public space, discourse and power in North Africa. Central to his work is the interplay between languages, ideologies and power in North Africa. Currently, he emphasizes endangered languages, cultural heritage, and language policy, with a particular focus on Algeria. His research investigates the historical roots and components of linguistic and cultural issues in the region, as well as the discourses shaping their evolution over time.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University of Beirut

Project Title: Predatory Digital Enclosures: Uber’s Algorithmic Exploitation in Beirut and Montréal

Nationality: Syrian

Dr. Rahih Jamil is a Canadian/Syrian scholar and development practitioner with more than 15 years of experience in humanitarian and development work in the Middle East and Canada. Formerly, he worked with Beirut-based UN agencies (ILO, UNRWA, UNDP & ESCWA) and collaborated with a number of local NGOs. He has extensive experience in designing, managing and coordinating economic development and livelihood research and intervention with a focus on the context of migrant workers, refugees and the working poor in Lebanon and Canada. He also has more than five years of work experience on issues related to Syrian refugees and workers in Canada, Lebanon and Jordan. Dr. Jamil holds an MSc. In Development Studies from SOAS – University of London and a PhD in Sociology of Work and Organizations from the University of Montréal. Research interests: Digitization of work, organizational frameworks of electronic platforms, digital surveillance systems, migration, informal labor and digital ethnography.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Lebanese American University

Project Title: Unveiling Systemic Health Inequities: An Intersectional Analysis of Women, Refugees, and Persons with Disabilities in Lebanese Prisons

Nationality: Lebanese

Dr. Yasmine Fakhry is a public health researcher focusing on the complex intersections of health, nutrition, food security, health systems, conflict, political factors, climate change, and sustainability, particularly impacting marginalized populations like migrants, refugees, the disabled, women, and children. Her work is rooted in human rights, sustainable development goals, and social justice. A strong advocate for prisons research, Dr. Fakhry believes it yields crucial knowledge for Lebanese societal sustainability. She is a licensed dietitian with a decade of experience across hospitals, NGOs, and consultancies, an expert in nutrition and food management, and a member of the Lebanese Order for Dietitians and its prisons working group. She was a senior research fellow at LAU’s Institute of Social Justice and Conflict Resolution and a research affiliate with the University of East London’s Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging, Dr. Fakhry also advises Ahlouna NGO on strategy, policy, fundraising, and partnerships.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Birzeit University

Project Title: Servir d’intermédiaire entre le pouvoir colonial et les sujets colonisés dans le TPO

Translation: To serve as an intermediary between the colonial power and the colonized subjects in the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT)

Nationality: Palestinian

Dr. Khalil Allaham holds a PhD in Public Law, with a dissertation focused on the responsibility of the State for systemic violence. With a dual background in public law and in philosophy and social sciences, his postdoctoral research adopts a multidisciplinary approach and explores systemic violence, law in the colonial context, the Israeli colonial bureaucracy and the experiences of Palestinian institutions and individuals under military administration, the relationship between ethnicity and law, colonial constitutionalism, as well as state formation in the Middle East during the Mandate period and its subsequent transformations.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Birzeit University

Project Title: Assessing Ecological Constraints on Sustainable Development: The Case of Palestine’s Agricultural Sector

Nationality: Palestinian

Dr. Amjad Mizyed is a Palestinian attached to his land, loves Palestine, belongs to its cause, yearns for its freedom, and his work focused on Palestinian and Arab development. He holds a PhD in Water and Environmental Management from the Islamic University of Gaza in 2024. He obtained a higher diploma in diplomacy and international relations from Sabahattin Zaim University in Turkey. He worked as a project manager in several nongovernmental organizations and has ten years of practical experience (training, research, and consulting). His research focuses on water security and development and sustainable and environmental safety. He published many research papers in these areas, and participated in a number of international conferences.

Karim Ouaras is a Professor of Sociolinguistics and Discourse analysis at the University of Oran 2, Algeria, in the Department of French. He is also the Associate-Director of the Centre d’Études Maghrébines en Algérie (CEMA), a research Centre affiliated to the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS) which is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC). His research interests focus on multilingualism, Spoken Arabic, Berber languages, language planning, graffiti writings, public space, culture, identity, and Nation-State in North Africa. His central focus is understanding the complex relationship between languages, signs, public space, discourse, and power in North Africa. He has published various articles on graffiti and public space in Algeria, including ‘Tagging in Algeria: Graffiti as Aesthetic Claim and Protest’ (2018), ‘Les graffiti à Oran: pratique régulatrice du “chaos” urbain’ (2019), and edited a special double-issue of the journal Insaniyat which focused on Les graffiti en Afrique du Nord: les voix de l’underground (2019). More recently, he has published articles on the Hirak in Algeria, including ‘Le Hirak: Les ordres discursifs d’un mouvement en gestation’ (2020); ‘Le Hirak algérien ou l’émergence d’une rhétorique de rupture’ (2020); ‘Médias et contestation politique à l’ère du numérique. Esquisse d’une lecture sémio-discursive du Hirak algérien’ (2022). His current research focuses on endangered languages, cultural heritage, and language policy in North Africa. It specifically examines the constituent elements and historical foundations of the linguistic and cultural issue in Algeria, as well as the discourses that shape its continuities, transformations, and reconfigurations.

Suhad Daher-Nashif (MSc.; PhD) is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Sociology and Anthropology of Health, and Programme Director for MSc. in Global Healthcare Leadership in the School of Medicine at Keele University, United Kingdom. Originally trained as occupational therapist and medical anthropologist, and currently she’s completing her second MSc in medical education. Daher-Nashif applies her interdisciplinary background and approach in health and social sciences to dismantle the intersectionality between science, society, politics and bureaucracy throughout health and death practices in the MENA region. Her main research fields are post-mortem practices, medical education, and mental health (mainly among older adults). Daher-Nashif is passionate to build curricula and syllabi of humanities and social sciences within health professions education settings, and to establish feminist qualitative methods within biomedical contexts. She’s also an editorial board member at PLOS ONE and BMC Medical Education, and active member in scientific committees of international conferences on social sciences in health and medical education.

Walid Marrouch is Professor of Economics at the Lebanese American University and Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies and Research. He is also a consultant for several international organizations and an ERF and CIRANO fellow. His main research interests are in environmental and resource economics, energy economics, and development economics.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo)

Project Title: Recompositions politiques des acteurs partisans au Liban. Replacer Beyrouth sur la carte politique palestinienne.

Nationality: Palestinian

Docteure en science politique, relations internationales de l’Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, chercheuse associée à la chaire Histoire contemporaine du monde arabe au Collège de France et chercheuse associée au Centre Thucydide, elle s’est  intéressée, dans le cadre de ses recherches de doctorat à la place de la question israélo-palestinienne dans la politique de l’Égypte sous H. Moubarak (1981-2011). En parallèle à sa thèse de doctorat, elle a consacré l’essentiel de mes travaux de recherche à trois thématiques principales : la politique étrangère égyptienne concernant la question palestinienne jusqu’à nos jours ; les défis rencontrés lors de la réalisation de recherches dans des contextes “familiers” et surtout lorsqu’on enquête chez soi ; et enfin les sources, pratiques et mécanismes de pouvoir – ou de pouvoirs – ainsi que leurs rôles et dimensions symboliques dans la Palestine d’aujourd’hui. Elle a co-édité la publication d’un numéro spécial de la revue Confluences Méditerranée dédié aux « Pouvoir(s) en Palestine » paru en septembre 2021.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University of Beirut
Project Title: Against Defeat
Nationality: Bahraini

She is a research fellow on the inaugural RACE.Ed fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh. Previously, she worked as a Research fellow at the Mapping Connections (China-Middle East Relations)
at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (IAIS), University of Exeter, and a teaching fellow at the SOAS Department of Politics.

Broadly speaking, she is a scholar of mid-20th century political movements in the Middle East and North Africa, with a focus on Gulf linking the Palestinian liberation struggles. Her work thinks about questions of space and scale to link micro-histories
of locations and regions into the trajectory of Global History. She is also concerned with historiography and questions about archives/ing (materials and method) and takes an inter-disciplinary approach to incorporate a range of creative, multi-format
archival material to trace otherwise largely invisible histories.

Lisa Taraki is a sociologist and Co-Editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly, a journal published by the Institute for Palestine Studies. Her current research interests lie in Arab and Palestinian urban social history and contemporary social and class dynamics. She is currently working on a social history of the Palestinian city of Ramallah. Taraki has had the opportunity to take part in the building of a leading Palestinian institution, Birzeit University, through involvement in research groups and teaching, and through administrative work, including heading the Department of Sociology, directing the first Ph.D. program in the social sciences, serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and as Vice-President for Community Affairs. She served on the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences from 2015 until 2019.

Suhad Daher-Nashif (MSc. Health Sciences, PhD Sociology and Anthropology) is a medical anthropologist who has been dedicated to dismantling the intersectionality between biomedical, sociocultural, political, and bureaucratic structures, and the way it structures health and death practices in the MENA. Her main research fields are post-mortem practices, mental health, and medical education. She worked in several academic and research institutions in the Arab region, most notably in the College of Medicine at Qatar University (2017-2022), and currently working as Lecturer in Sociology of Health in the School of Medicine at Keele University-UK. From September 2023 she will be acting as the director of MSc. Program in Global Healthcare Leadership at the same institute. Suhad is an academic editor in PLOS ONE, a peer-reviewed international journal published by the Public Library of Science, and an active author and reviewer in many Q1 and Q2 journals. Daher-Nashif is also a member in several scientific committees of international and regional conferences on health, society, and health education.

Walid Marrouch is a Professor of Economics and the Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies & Research at the Lebanese American University (LAU). He served as the Associate Chairperson of the Department of Economics at Adnan Kassar School of Business between 2012 and 2018. He first joined LAU in 2009 as Assistant Professor of Economics. Between 2007 and 2009, he was part-time lecturer at HEC Montréal, from which he received his Ph.D. in Economics in 2009. He also holds an M.A. in Economics from Concordia University.

His main research interests are in environmental and resource economics, energy economics, development economics, and applied game theory.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institute for Palestine Studies

Project Title: التحولات والتناقضات في منظومة الاستعمار الاستيطاني الإسرائيلي: الأيدي العاملة الفلسطينية نموذجاً 1967-1977

Translation: Transformations and Contradictions in Israeli Settler Colonialism: Impact on Palestinian Workforce 1967 – 1977

Nationality: Palestinian

Holds his PhD in social sciences from Birzeit university in  2022; MA in Israeli studies from Jerusalem university in 2014; lecturer at Birzeit university Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies 2019-2022

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Northwestern University in Qatar

Project Title: Carcerality on the Move: The Circulation of Violence and Confrontation Practices across Israeli and Colombian Prisons

Nationality: Palestinian

Farraj is a Palestinian Anthropologist interested in questions of violence, carcerality, resistance and the mobility of carceral practices. He has long been thinking about these questions in multiple forms and across different geographies. Following his graduation from Earlham College, he was awarded the year-long Thomas J. Watson Fellowship during which he followed the paths members of the Palestinian diaspora had taken following 1948 and afterwards.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: The American University of Beirut

Project Title: From the Grand Serail to the Great Revolt: constitutionalism and revolution in Lebanon

Nationality: Lebanese

Cyma Farah is a cultural and legal historian of the Middle East with special interest in Palestine and Lebanon. Her interests are driven by an exploration of the gap between knowledge production and the reality they claim to represent. Her last two projects have focused on the (mis)representations of maps and state constitutions, and the popular violence that their inaccuracies may engender. While she completed her award-winning doctoral dissertation on the Lebanese constitution of 1926 at Rice University, her professional career began as a social studies teacher in Beirut. She holds a BA and MA in History from the American University of Beirut.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: University of Tamanrasset

Project Title: المدن الحدودية بين التطوّر الحضري وإشكالية التهميش: دراسة مقارنة للفضاء الحضري بمدينتي سوق الأربعاء في تونس وتامنغست بالجزائر 1910 و1954

Translation: Border cities between urbanization and marginalization: A comparative Study of Souq Al Arbi’aa in Tunisia and Tamanrasset in Algeria – 1910-1954

Nationality: Tunisian

Holds a PhD in History and Heritage with focus on contemporary history from Manouba university in 2021; MA from Tunis April 9 University 2014. Title of his PhD dissertation is: the Municipality and the Urban Space in Souq Al Arbi’aa between 1881 and 1956.

Lisa Taraki is a sociologist and co-editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly, a journal published by the Institute for Palestine Studies. Her current research interests lie in Arab and Palestinian urban social history. She has published in this area as well as on the Palestinian national movement, the informal justice system in Palestine, Arab Islamists and women, and Arab social science. She is currently working on a social history of the Palestinian city of Ramallah. Taraki has had the opportunity to participate in the building of a leading Palestinian institution, Birzeit University, through teaching and administrative work, including heading the Department of Sociology, directing the first Ph.D. program in the social sciences, serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and as Vice-President for Community Affairs. She served on the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences based in Beirut from 2015 until 2019.

Mounir Saidani is Professor of Sociology at the High Institute of Human Sciences, Tunis AL MANAR University, Tunisia. He is interested in socio-anthropology of culture, knowledge and art, socio-cultural change in contemporary Tunisia and the Arab World. He published several books and articles in Arabic, French and English in Tunisia and abroad. He also translated books and articles from French and English into Arabic. One of his latest publications is a 1418 pages report on the Religious State in Tunisia 2011-2015, a collective work which he supervised and was its chief editor. He is leading a multidisciplinary research unit working on “Knowledges, Cultures and Social Change”. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association. He gave lectures and presentations in A Coruña, Ajman, Ankara, Beirut, Brussels, Doha, Gottingen, Liège, Manama, Oran, Paris, Rabat, Santiago di Compostela, Taipei, Toronto, Tunis.

Samer Frangie received his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2009. He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Political Studies and Public Administration at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the director of the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies. His research and teaching interest includes the intellectual and political histories of the modern Middle East and  contemporary social and political theory. He has published a number of articles on the intellectual history of the Arab Left and is currently working on a book manuscript on the memory of the left. Aside from his academic work, he has published extensively in the Arab press.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University in Cairo

Project Title: Schooling Egypt’s New Elite: Class, Culture and Belonging in Cairo’s International Schools

Nationality: Egyptian

Noha is an Egyptian cultural anthropologist with more than fifteen years of experience conducting ethnographic, rights-based and policy-oriented research at the intersection between academia and civil society. She grew up in Cairo and received her BA in Middle East Studies and MA in Anthropology from the American University in Cairo (AUC). Between 2006 and 2012, she worked as researcher for multiple non-governmental organizations and research centers in Cairo, navigating the dynamic and volatile political and cultural life of Cairo in the years preceding and during the 2011 uprising. Noha moved to Boston, Massachusetts, in 2013 to pursue her doctorate in anthropology at Boston University. She returned with her family to Egypt in 2020, where she took up a  a postdoctoral fellowship  at the Centre d’Etudes et Documentation Economique, Juridique et Sociales (CEDEJ).

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Hassan II University

Project Title: الانسحاب السياسي بعد حركة 20 فبراير: مساهمة لدراسة انسحاب نشطاء الحركات الاحتجاجية من التنظيمات السياسية بالمغرب

Nationality: Moroccan

Researcher in political sociology, Sammouni  holds a PhD in political science from Hassan II University of Casablanca. He is working on collective action topics, protest movements and religious extremism. He has published several studies and research, including a book entitled “Masks of Extremism: The Sources of Religious Radicalism” (2017), published by “En Toutes Lettres” and a study on “Cultural Practices of Moroccans” (2016). He has jointly contributed to a collective book written in French entitled “The Cedar Tree in the Middle Atlas: An Investigation into slow torment” (2021).

Karim Makdisi is an Associate Professor of International Politics and Director of the Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He was the faculty research director of the UN in the Arab World Program at AUB’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, where he served as Associate Director from 2009-2014. Karim was a founding member and treasurer of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences from 2009-2013. Karim’s recent publications include The Land of the Blue Helmets: United Nations in the Arab World (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2017, ed. with Vijay Prashad); “Teaching Trump’s ‘America First’ In/From Beirut” in PS: Political Science and Politics (53:2, April 2020); and “Exploring the UN and OPCW Partnership in Syrian Chemical Weapons Disarmament: Inter-organizational Cooperation and Autonomy,”(2019, with C. Hindawi) in Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations (Vol.25, Issue 4, Dec. 2019).

Lisa Taraki is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Birzeit University in Palestine. Her current research interests lie in Arab and Palestinian urban social history. She has published in this area as well as on the Palestinian national movement, the informal justice system in Palestine, Arab Islamists and women, and Arab social science. She is currently working on a social history of the city of Ramallah. She has had the opportunity to participate in the building of a leading Palestinian institution – Birzeit University –  through teaching and administrative work, including heading the Department of Sociology, directing the first Ph.D. program in the social sciences, serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and Vice-President for Community Affairs. She served on the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences from 2015 until 2019.

Mounir Saidani is Professor of Sociology at the High Institute of Human Sciences, Tunis AL MANAR University, Tunisia. He is interested in socio-anthropology of culture, knowledge and art, and socio-cultural change in contemporary Tunisia and the Arab World. He published several books and articles in Arabic, French and English in Tunisia and abroad. He also translated books and articles in the field of his interest from French and English into Arabic. One of his latest publication is a 1418 pages Report on the Religious State in Tunisia 2011-2015, a collective work which he supervised and was its chief editor. He is leading a multidisciplinary research unit working on “Knowledges, Cultures and Social Change”. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association. He gave lectures and presentations in A Coruña, Ajman, Ankara, Beirut, Brussels, Doha, Gottingen, Liège, Manama, Oran, Paris, Rabat, Santiago di Compostela, Taipei, Toronto, Tunis.

Reem Saad is a social anthropologist based in Cairo. Her academic research and publications focus on agriculture and rural transformation. Her public engagement activities include advocating against the death penalty and initiatives to promote social science learning beyond institutional borders. She has previously held a number of positions at the American University in Cairo where she was an Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, the Director of the Middle East Studies Center, and a Research Associate Professor at the Social Research Center.

Samer Kherfi is an Associate Professor of Economics at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. He teaches Middle East economics, international macroeconomics, labor economics and econometrics. His current research focuses on education and labor market outcomes in the Middle East and macro forecasting. He has served as an economic and statistical consultant to a number of national and international organizations. His research appears in books by Oxford University Press and in academic journals such as Journal of Economic Education, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, and Journal of Economic Studies.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Doha Institute for Graduate Studies

Project Title: The Cost of Leaving: Syrian Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Revolution Under Globalisation

Nationality: Syrian

Zeina Al Azmeh is a political sociologist whose work focuses on social movements and migration. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cambridge. Supervised by Prof Patrick Baert, her thesis examines the role of exiled Syrian intellectuals in the Syrian uprising (2011-2018). Before joining Cambridge, she worked and taught at Qatar University and the Higher Institute of Music in Damascus, Syria. Educated in Syria, Lebanon, the United States, and the United Kingdom, she has two master’s degrees in music composition and social and cultural theory. She is the author of a book on music theory in the Arabic language and several peer-reviewed articles in cultural sociology and the sociology of education.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Morocco

Project Title: Indigenous Sufi Theatre in Tunisia: Performance, Epistemology, and the Legacy of Islamic Intellectual History in Contemporary Sufi Culture

Nationality: Palestinian

Diaa Barghouti holds a BA from Brown University and an MA and a PhD in Theatre Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on the indigenous performance traditions of North Africa, exploring how Tunisian Sufi rituals can create new avenues for theatrical experimentation. Her work also stresses the relevance of Islamic intellectual history to contemporary Sufi rituals practices, specifically the writings of the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi. She has also experimented with the Sufi modes of performance derived from her research on Sufi ritual through her own artistic practice as a playwright. She is interested in Sufi festivals in Palestine and contemporary theatre performances that draw on indigenous sources. Her plays have been performed at Ashtar Theatre, the SIN Festival of Video and Performance Art, and the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Center. Her work on theatre and Sufism has appeared in New Theatre Quarterly and Jadaliyya.

Postdoctoral Affilition: Ibn Tofail University, Morocco

Project Title: Digital religious authority: a study of the impact of digital religious content on the religious identities of social media users in Morocco

Nationality: Moroccan

Professor of Philosophy at the Regional Center for the Professions of Education and Training of Rabat-Kenitra region. She graduated as Valedictorian in Philosophy from the Ecole Normale Supérieure – Meknes, and holds an MA and a PhD in Sociology from the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences – Mohammed V University. She works in the field of social media sociology and the sociology of religions. Her relevant publications in peer-reviewed journals include: “The Virtual Social Network Paradigm: Towards a Reshaping of the Sociology Field and Its Domains” (2019) published in “The Researchers” journal; an article entitled: “Digital Non-Religious Identity and the Concept of the E-Family: A Netnographic Study of the E-Secular Link” published inthe “Hespéris – Tamuda ” journal (2020); and a study entitled “Moroccan Jews in the Digitally Documented Imaginary: A Socio-Netnographic Study of the Religious Representations of  Facebook Moroccans”, published “Believers Without Borders” (2021).  She also works on the digital space-related methodology and has published a relevant study entitled “The Virtual Society and the Dilemma of Renewing the Sociological Research Method: Towards Building a Computer-Assisted Model for Studying Electronic Interactions” (2019) in the “Omran” journal.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Birzeit University

Project Title: Landscapes of Muted Sensibilities

Nationality: Palestinian

Hadeel Karkar holds a Ph.D. in General and Comparative Literature from the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 in France. She did her Master degree in English Studies at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, and her Bachelor degree in English Language and Literature at Birzeit University. Dr. Karkar holds a temporary lecturer-researcher position at Université Grenoble Alpes. She is a comparatist specialised in Anglophone literature, civilisations and empires. She taught English language, and Anglophone literature and civilisations at universities in South Africa, Palestine and France. Her research tackles the construction of narrative in settler-colonial contexts where she presents novel paradigms for the analysis and criticism of settler-colonial texts. She worked extensively on Mahmoud Darwish, Ghassan Kanafani and Emile Habibi. Dr. Karkar also served as a consultant on Arab culture at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. She was the editor for children’s and adolescents’ books at Tamer Institute.

Mounir Saidani is Professor of Sociology at the High Institute of Human Sciences, Tunis AL MANAR University, Tunisia. He is interested in socio-anthropology of culture, knowledge and art, socio-cultural change in contemporary Tunisia and the Arab World. He published several books and articles in Arabic, French and English in Tunisia and abroad. He also translated books and articles from French and English into Arabic. One of his latest publications is a 1418 pages report on the Religious State in Tunisia 2011-2015, a collective work which he supervised and was its chief editor. He is leading a multidisciplinary research unit working on “Knowledges, Cultures and Social Change”. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association. He gave lectures and presentations in A Coruña, Ajman, Ankara, Beirut, Brussels, Doha, Gottingen, Liège, Manama, Oran, Paris, Rabat, Santiago di Compostela, Taipei, Toronto, Tunis.

Maha Abdelrahman is a Reader in Development Studies and Middle East Politics at the Centre of Development Studies, POLIS, University of Cambridge. Her major publications include Civil Society Exposed: The Politics of NGOs in Egypt (2004) I. B. Tauris, Egypt’s Long Revolution: Protest Movements and Uprising (2014) Rutledge and a wide range of academic articles. Before joining Cambridge, she was an Assistant/Associate Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo. She is a board member of the Journal Development and Change and of the Cairo Papers in Social Science.

Samer Kherfi is an Associate Professor of Economics at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. He teaches Middle East economics, international macroeconomics, labor economics and econometrics. His current research focuses on education and labor market outcomes in the Middle East and macro forecasting. He has served as an economic and statistical consultant to a number of national and international organizations. His research appears in books by Oxford University Press and in academic journals such as Journal of Economic Education, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, and Journal of Economic Studies.

Lisa Taraki is a sociologist and co-editor of the Jerusalem Quarterly, a journal published by the Institute for Palestine Studies. Her current research interests lie in Arab and Palestinian urban social history. She has published in this area as well as on the Palestinian national movement, the informal justice system in Palestine, Arab Islamists and women, and Arab social science. She is currently working on a social history of the Palestinian city of Ramallah. Taraki has had the opportunity to participate in the building of a leading Palestinian institution, Birzeit University, through teaching and administrative work, including heading the Department of Sociology, directing the first Ph.D. program in the social sciences, serving as the Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, and as Vice-President for Community Affairs. She served on the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences based in Beirut from 2015 until 2019.

Nisreen Salti is an associate professor of economics at the American University of Beirut. She was also a visiting professor of economics at Harvard University in 2019-2020. She works on development economics and political economy. Her research is on inequality and inequity in resources, access, and outcomes, with a focus on health. She is especially interested in marginalized communities, particularly refugees, including their labor market outcomes. Her work has appeared in Social Science and Medicine, the Lancet, Tobacco Control, the International Journal for Middle Eastern Studies and the Journal of Economic Studies among others. She has been an active participant in local and regional policy debates, engaging policy-makers and analysts in government and at various multilateral organizations and arms of the UN. She obtained her PhD in Economics from Princeton University in 2006, and a Master’s in Public Affairs in 1999.

Karim Makdisi is an Associate Professor of International Politics and Director of the Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He was the faculty research director of the UN in the Arab World Program at AUB’s Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, where he served as Associate Director from 2009-2014. Karim was a founding member and treasurer of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences from 2009-2013. Karim’s recent publications include The Land of the Blue Helmets: United Nations in the Arab World (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2017, ed. with Vijay Prashad); “Teaching Trump’s ‘America First’ In/From Beirut” in PS: Political Science and Politics (53:2, April 2020); and “Exploring the UN and OPCW Partnership in Syrian Chemical Weapons Disarmament: Inter-organizational Cooperation and Autonomy,”(2019, with C. Hindawi) in Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations (Vol.25, Issue 4, Dec. 2019).

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University of Beirut

Project Title: Determinants of Female Labor Supply in the Arab World

Nationality: Lebanese 

Ali is an economist with research interests in Labor Economics and Demography. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California in May 2019. He then joined the Department of Human Sciences at the Ohio State University as a postdoctoral researcher. His research focuses on how demographic factors – including fertility, longevity and health quality – determine dynamic labor supply choices and lifetime earnings. In his work, he employs a combination of quasi-experimental empirical methods and structural economic modeling to provide answers on important policy issues related to the labor market.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University of Beirut – Beirut Urban Lab

Project Title: The Lived Experiences of Lebanon’s Peri-Urban Dwelling Hijabis and the Impact of Expatriates

Nationality: Lebanese

Ali M. Kassem is a Lebanese researcher whose interests span postcolonial and decolonial theories, the Sociology of Islam, ethnic and racial studies, as well as migration studies. Ali holds an MA in Sociology (of religion) from the American University of Beirut (AUB) and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Sussex, UK.  Ali has held multiple teaching and research positions at AUB, LAU, the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich, CNRS/AixMarseilles University, and the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, among others. More recently, he was a resident visiting research fellow at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) – Centre d’études en sciences sociales du religieux (CéSor) in Paris. He served  as Steering Committee member at the Sussex Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and Management Committee member at the Sussex Middle East North Africa Centre. Ali’s research has been published in a number of  academic and non-academic outlets including magazines, websites and journals.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Groupe d’Etudes pour le Développement et l’Environnement Social – GEDES

Project Title: المجمّع الكيميائي التّونسي بصفاقس بين الرّغبات والإكراهات دراسة سوسيولوجيّة للتحولات الاجتماعيّة

Nationality: Tunisian

Ismahen Ben Fraj is from Sfax /Tunisia. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Tunis (2017). She taught at the University of Sfax /Tunisia. She has made many scientific interventions at national and international conferences in Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan and Egypt. She has published « Les représentations écologiques du pratiquant du sport de rue, étude de cas : la région de l’Ouest de Sfax » . Publié par Edition universitaire européenne (08/2019); Conflict between the industrial company for Phosphoric Acid and Fertilizers (SIAPE, Sfax) and the civil society: A problem of problem developmental or development. It was published in the “Algerian Scientific Journal Platform” (ASJP), Vol. 33, Issue 1, pages 7-28 (12/2019), in addition to an article entitled “Social and Solidarity Economy and Sustainability of Human Resource Development”, which was published in the “Mediterranean Thought” journal, Algeria, Vol. 8, Issue 15, pages 24-66) on 05/2019. She also published an article entitled “Publicity in the field of expression: the motives behind institutional building,” in the “Contemporary Writings” Magazine, Lebanon, Vol. 2936, p. 84, Issue 21 (06/2012).

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Laboratoire d’Analyse Socio-Anthropologique du Développement des Territoires (LASADET)

Project Title: Mixité sociale et urbaine en question dans la vallée du M’Zab en Algérie

Nationality: Algerian

Nora Gueliane is an architect. She holds a PhD in Urban Studies from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales de Paris (EHESS). She is currently a part-time lecturer at the University of Farhat Abbas of Setif. Her thesis focuses on the study of the social interpretation of the forms of solidarity’s evolution in M’Zab (Algeria) through a study of a series of projects entitled “the new castles”. Her research interests cover issues related to the correlation between human beings and their urban and architectural built environment – interaction between the social and the spatial. She is currently interested in the topics of forced migration, refugees and asylum seekers. She took part in several scientific events in the framework of her doctoral research; she has published one article and more to come.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Mohamed V University

Project Title: وضع “المرأة السوداء” في المجتمع المغربي. دراسة سوسيو-أنتروبولوجية لسيرورات إنتاج وصم الجسد الأسود الأنثوي

Nationality: Moroccan 

Yassine is a university professor and researcher in Sociology at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Tetouan. His research interests include the topic of the black community and racism in Morocco. He has published a set of articles related to this topic in Arab magazines. He recently published a book entitled “Life in a Slum” (Hayat Al Bararik).

Samer Kherfi is an Associate Professor of Economics at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates. He teaches Middle East economics, international macroeconomics, labor economics and econometrics. His current research focuses on education and labor market outcomes in the Middle East and macro forecasting. He has served as an economic and statistical consultant to a number of national and international organizations. His research appears in books by Oxford University Press and in academic journals such as Journal of Economic Education, Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, and Journal of Economic Studies.

Dida Badi has worked  on the changes of socio-political structures of Tuareg populations of the Sahara and the Sahel (Algeria, Libya, Mali), adopting perspectives of cultural and historical anthropology. He holds a PhD in Anthropology awarded by Bayreuth University in Germany (2010). He studied political effects of the installation of state borders in Algeria and Mali upon Tuareg communities. From the beginning of the recent political dynamics in the Sahel and Sahara region, in 2012, he did fieldwork in Algeria, Niger, Libya and particularly in Northern Mali (Badi 2013, 2015, Lecocq et al. 2013). Badi was senior researcher of the “Centre National de Recherches Préhistoriques, Anthropologiques et Historiques (CNRPAH)” in Algiers, then  consultant of the United Nations for the Sahara, and finally  senior researcher at Bayreuth University, in Germany since 2017. Dida Badi worked as an associate teacher of the Amazigh language at the Universities of Tizou Ouzou and Béjaia from 1992 to 2008. He also taught the module on Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage at the University of Bouira, Algeria from 2012 to 2014. Author and producer of several cultural programmes on channel II of the Algerian national radio from 2008 to 2014. Author of several articles (31) published in national and international scientific journals, as well as 07 monographs, all on the socio-cultural and historical anthropology of the populations of the Sahara and the Sahel region. He was awarded the prize for the best book on cultural heritage at the 8th edition of the International Book Fair in Algiers in 2008 for his book: L’Imzad : Une musique millénaire touarègue. Edit. ENAG, Alger, 2007.

Fadia Kiwan is Professor of Political Science and the Director General of the Arab Women Organization. She was director of the postgraduate program of political science in 2000, then founder of the Institute of Political Science in 2002 at the same University. As a researcher, she has published several books and hundreds of articles. She is very active in the field of advocacy for human rights, women’s rights, quality of education, democratization, and sustainable development. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Program at UNESCO since 2013. She currently serves as its chairperson. As a member of the Executive Board of the National Commission for Lebanese Women since 2003. She is also the representative of Lebanon in the Permanent Council of the Francophonie.

Islah Jad (Hossneya Gad) is an Associate Professor, currently linked to Qatar University, International Affairs Department since 2014. Jad is a lecturer on gender issues and politics at the Women’s Studies Institute and Cultural Studies Institute of Birzeit University, where she was its director from 2008-2013. She is a founding member of Birzeit University’s women’s studies MA program. She has written books and papers on the role of women in politics, Palestinian women and the relationships among them, Islam, and NGOs. She is also a consultant on gender issues to the United Nations Development Programme and is co-author of the UN’s Arab Development Report on Women’s Empowerment and author of two books: Women at the Crossroads: The Palestinian Women’s Movement between Nationalism, Secularism and Islamism (2008, second edition 2013) and Palestinian Female Headed Households (2002). Jad received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 2004.

Amina Elbendary is an associate professor (tenured) of Arab and Islamic civilizations at The American University in Cairo, where she teaches courses on early and medieval Islamic history, Muslim political thought and social and cultural history of the Arab Muslim world since 2009. Her publications include a monograph, Crowds and Sultans: Urban Protest in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria. The book explores reports of urban protest and dissent in the cities of Egypt and Syria under the late Mamluk and early Ottoman regimes, and analyzes both the historiography of protest and the intricacies of urban politics in the late medieval period. She is currently working on a research project related to popularization and late medieval historiography. Elbendary earned her PhD in oriental studies from Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (2007). Before studying at Cambridge, she studied at AUC, earning an MA in Arabic studies with a specialization in Middle East history for her thesis “Histories of the Muslim Hero: Medieval and Modern Perceptions of al-Zahir Baybars” (1999) and a BA in political science (suma cum laude, 1996). At AUC, she was a recipient of the Riyochi Sasakawa Young Leaders Graduate Fellowship. She was also the winner of the Middle East Medievalists award for best graduate paper on a medieval topic in 1998.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University of Beirut

Project Title: Red Flags in the Streets of Beirut: An Intellectual and Cultural History of the Lebanese Left, 1920-1948

Nationality: Lebanese

Sana Tannoury-Karam is a historian of the modern Middle East, with a specialization in the intellectual and social history of the Mandate Levant and a focus on the history of the political left, internationalism/nationalism, and the sociology of intellectuals. Her current book-project is titled, Red Flags in the Streets of Beirut: An Intellectual and Cultural History of the Lebanese Left, 1920-1948. Tannoury-Karam is a coeditor and contributor to the volume The League Against Imperialism: Lives and Afterlives (forthcoming Leiden University Press). Her chapter “No Place for Neutrality: the Case for Democracy and the League Against Nazism and Fascism in Syria and Lebanon, 1935-1945”, will appear in Anti-Fascism in a Global Perspective (forthcoming Routledge). She has a forthcoming article on anti-fascism among Lebanese communists during WWII in the Journal of World History (September 2019). She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Rice University.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Farouk K. Jabre Center for Arabic and Islamic Science and Philosophy at the American University of Beirut

Project Title: Articulating Epistemology, Ethics and Aesthetics through the Lens of Ghazālī

Nationality: Lebanese

Loumia Ferhat is an Algerian scholar of philosophy. After finishing her undergraduate studies in Modern philosophy at the Sorbonne Paris I and ENS Ulm, focusing on a potential conceptual filiation between Avicenna and Spinoza on the notion of essence, she decided to focus mostly on Islamic Medieval philosophy. She graduated with a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. Her dissertation was concerned with the heart in Ghazālī’s corpus and how such a notion is the gateway to a conception of knowledge that is embodied. She contends that such a notion overcomes the divide between epistemology and ethics. She is also a graduate from the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. On the side of her studies she has started a documentary on spoken word poetry in Baltimore as a vector of change, for which she was awarded the Saul Zaentz fellowship.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: CEDEJ

Project Title: Les espaces-temps militants, inégalités sociales et politisations différentielles en Egypte révolutionnaire

Nationality: Egyptian

Caroline Barbary holds a PhD in Political Sociology. She is currently conducting research on the modalities of political engagement and militancy in Egypt. Moreover, she reflects on the political fabric of the Actor–network theory and the fluctuation of space-time in a revolutionary context in Arab societies.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institute for Palestinian Studies

Project Title: Souvenir Business in Palestine: Development of 19th Century Craft Trade in Relation to Religious Tourism

Nationality: Palestinian

Maissoun Sharkawi, associate researcher at IFPO, and assistant professor at Palestine Technical University Khadouri, holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Lorraine- Nancy. Her thesis explores the social, historical and economic environment in which the concept of Palestinian cultural heritage has been formulated throughout the past two centuries. Her research focuses on the material archive that documents the economy of the village in 19th century Palestine. She taught a course on Introducing cultural heritage in the Arab world in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Aix-Marseille University. Sharkawi holds an MA in Cultural Heritage Studies on Conservation and Development of Cultural Industrial and Economic Heritage form the University of Nantes.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences at Ibn Tufail University – Quneitra

Project Title: Institutionalization of Violence, Creation and Provision Trends in the Western Sahara between the past and present

Nationality: Moroccan

He holds a PhD from Mohammad V University in Rabat. His main research focuses on the anthropology of violence and war in tribal communities and on oral narratives. He has several publications and papers. His publications include: War in Pastoral Communities (Center of Sahara Research: 2015) Pierre Bonet Anthropology of the Western Sahara communities (joint paper). Anthropological Path in the Western Sahara by Pierre Bonet (French: joint paper) He also co-wrote articles in collective books and journals.

Fadia Kiwan is Professor of Political Science and the Director General of the Arab Women Organization. She was director of the postgraduate program of political science at Saint Joseph University (USJ) in 2000, then founder of the Institute of Political Science in 2002 at the same University. As a researcher, she has published several books and hundreds of articles. She is very active in the field of advocacy for human rights, women’s rights, quality of education, democratization, and sustainable development. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Program at UNESCO since 2013. She currently serves as its chairperson. She has been a member of the Executive Board of the National Commission for Lebanese Women since 2003. She is also the representative of Lebanon in the Permanent Council of the Francophonie.

Islah Jad (Hossneya Gad) is an Associate Professor, currently linked to Qatar University, International Affairs Department since 2014. Jad is a lecturer on gender issues and politics at the Women’s Studies Institute and Cultural Studies Institute of Birzeit University, and was the Center’s  director from 2008-2013. She is a founding member of Birzeit University’s women’s studies MA program. She has written books and papers on the role of women in politics, Palestinian women and the relations between women , Islam, and NGOs. She is also a consultant on gender issues to the United Nations Development Programme and is co-author of the UN’s Arab Development Report on Women’s Empowerment and author of two books: Women at the Crossroads: The Palestinian Women’s Movement between Nationalism, Secularism and Islamism(2008, second edition 2013) and Palestinian Female Headed Households (2002). Jad received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 2004.

Mohamed Ali Marouani is Associate Professor of Economics at Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University, Deputy Director of the Research Unit “Development and Societies”, Member of the Board of the “Sorbonne Maghreb” Chair and Director of the Master’s Program “Economic Expertise in Development Policies and Projects”. He is a Research Fellow and Member of the Advisory Committee of the Economic Research Forum, Research Associate of DIAL (Paris-Dauphine University and Institute of Research for Development), Research Fellow of the Migration Institute and Secretary General of the Cercle des économistes Arabes. He is also a consultant for various international organizations, mainly the World Bank, the ILO and the UNDP. His research focuses on the impact of public policies on employment, on migration and refugees and on the determinants of structural change in the MENA region. Mohamed Ali Marouani is a Tunisian citizen and was born in 1973.

Nawar Al-Hassan Golley is Professor of Literary and Critical Theory and Gender and Women’s Studies at the American University of Sharjah, UAE. Al-Hassan Golley is the author of, Reading Arab Women’s Autobiographies: Shahrazad Tells her Story (Texas University Press: 2003), editor of Arab Women’s Lives Retold: Exploring Identity Through Writing (Syracuse University Press: 2007), co-editor of Mapping Arab Women’s Movements: A Century of Transformations from Within (American University in Cairo Press: 2012) and guest editor of HAWWA: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World‘s Beyond Boundaries: Exploring Arab Women’s Autobiographical Narratives (Dec. 2014). Al-Hassan Golley is the organizer of the first conference on Gender and Women’s Studies in the Arab Region (March7-9, 2012). She has organized several international conferences and has presented many papers at international conferences such as the Berkshire on the History of Women, National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) and the Middle East Studies Association (MESA). She has published book chapters and articles in prestigious scholarly journals, and translated literary and critical works by writers such as Adonis, Edward Said, Etel Adnan, and others. In both her research and teaching, Al-Hassan Golley adopts an interdisciplinary approach drawing on her research interests in Critical and Literary Theory, Autobiography Theory, Post-Colonial Literatures and Discourses, Feminism, and Arab Women’s Writings. Al-Hassan Golley is a regular commentator on gender-related issues in the media.

Pascale Ghazaleh is an Associate Professor of History at the American University in Cairo. Ghazaleh has taught in AUC’s history department since 2005. She is an expert on Ottoman history and 19th century Egypt. Ghazaleh received her PhD in history (très honorable, félicitations du jury) from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris in June 2004. Her dissertation was titled “Généalogies patrimoniales. La constitution des fortunes urbaines: Le Caire, 1780-1830” (Patrimonial Genealogies. The Constitution of Urban Wealth: Cairo, 1780-1830). She received her MA in Arabic studies, with a specialization in Middle East history, from the American University in Cairo in 1997. Her thesis was titled “Crafts and Craftspeople in Cairo, 1750-1850.” Ghazaleh holds a BA in Political Science and a minor in Development Studies from the American University in Cairo.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Center for Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology (CRASC)

Project Title: Atlas of Horses and Fantasia in Algeria

Nationality: Algerian

Mabrouk Boutagouga is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Algiers. He holds a Ph.D in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Mostaganem (Algeria). He is the founder of “Anthropos” (2010), the first and largest anthropology website in the Arab World. He is also the co-founder and Deputy General Supervisor of “Failoun” Center for Research in Anthropology in Algeria since 2015. He has also co-founded the journal “Anthropology” and served as its editor-in-chief since 2015. In 2016, Boutagouga chaired the preparatory committee for the establishment of the Algerian Association of Anthropology and Cultural and Popular Studies (under establishment) and was elected president.  He has also chaired and organized several scientific forums and training workshops. He has many scientific publications and he took part in national and international forums. He is a columnist in Assafir El-Araby Lebanese magazine and has written many articles and interviews published on websites. His research interests include heritage anthropology, urban anthropology, and digital culture.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Center for Human and Social Research and Studies

Project Title: The Demographic and Socio-Economic Bases for Collective Anger: A Longitudinal Approach to the Protests in Morocco

Nationality: Moroccan

Ben Ahmed Hougua is a sociologist with a PhD in political science. His dissertation addressed the relationship between political culture and the protest tendency in the Moroccan society. He received the Arab Prize for Social Sciences in its sixth edition from the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha, for his study of social capital and the bond of coexistence: the cultural and ethical foundations of political sociology in Morocco. He is also an ACSS grantee (Cycle 3 – 2017) on the topic: The Small Farmer in the Eastern Middle Atlas: Vulnerability, Sense of Injustice and Sad Resistance. He served as a member of the editorial board of Wijhat Nazar magazine in Morocco between 2009 and 2015.  He works on issues of political culture in Morocco as well as on Arab societies and their relationship to political stability in the MENA region.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Center for Lebanese Studies at the Lebanese American University

Project Title: Higher Education Expansion and Graduate Skills in Lebanon: Overqualification and its Discontents

Nationality: Lebanese

Ghia Osseiran has recently completed a PhD in Education at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Her research focuses on higher education expansion and its implications on graduate labour market outcomes, education and skills mismatch. Ghia has worked for over 8 years in development with international organizations and NGOs in New York and Lebanon. Since she completed her PhD in November 2017, Ghia has worked as technical expert for the International Labour Organization and for Tahaddi Lebanon. She also served as part-time instructor, teaching a graduate course in development at the American University of Beirut (Fall 2017).

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University in Cairo

Project Title: “Time out of Time”- New Social Movements and their Political Imaginaries: The Case of Revolutionary Youth in Egypt

Nationality: Egyptian

Dina El-Sharnouby is a PhD holder from the department of Political Science, at the Free University Berlin. For her PhD she received a fellowship at the Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies. Her PhD dissertation theorizes the Egyptian revolution from youth perspective by asking ‘What is the meaning of the 2011 revolution to Egyptian youth and particularly to members of the leftist Bread and Freedom party?’. El-Sharnouby obtained her Bachelors and Masters in Anthropology and Sociology from the American University in Cairo (AUC). For her Master thesis she received the ‘The 25th of January Award in Recognition of an Outstanding Master’s Thesis’. El-Sharnouby has taught as an adjunct instructor at AUC and taught more recently  a course on Youth and the Arab revolutions at the Free University of Berlin. Her research interests are on youth, political subjectivities, revolutions, the Middle East, political participation, and processes of democratization.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University of Beirut

Project Title: Encountering the State: Women and Intimate Lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Nationality: Lebanese

Zina Sawaf received her PhD in anthropology from The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in 2017. She holds an MS (2011) in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and an MS (2007) in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Her research interests in kinship and the state span the subfields of political anthropology and the anthropology of kinship, sex and gender. Her doctoral dissertation, titled “Encountering the State: Women and Intimate Lives in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia”, is based on long-term ethnographic research in the Arabian Peninsula. She coedited a special issue of Contemporary Levant on ethnographic practice in the Arab region, co-authoring the introduction and contributing a paper on ethnography in Riyadh. She has written and published on divorce and the state in Saudi Arabia (Arabian Humanities) and on the history of anthropology in Lebanon. She has taught part-time at the American University of Beirut.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Center for Lebanese Studies at the Lebanese American University

Project Title: Human Rights Education: A Palestinian Perspective

Nationality: Jordanian

Mai Abu Moghli is a Palestinian academic and education practitioner. Her research focuses on human rights education, education with and for refugees and education in emergencies. Mai holds a Master’s degree in human rights from the University of Essex and a PhD from the Institute of education – University College London. She is a policy member with Al Shabaka – The Palestinian Policy Network. She published on the issue of Palestinian Syrian refugees and political participation of Palestinian teachers. Her latest publication are on the Prospects of Tertiary Education for Syrian Refuges in Lebanon.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institute for Palestine Studies

Project Title: Going back home: Towards analyzing the experiences of Palestinian returnees

Nationality: Palestinian

Hadeel Fawadleh is an assistant professor in the geography department at Birzeit University. Her current research is  on Palestinian migrations and diaspora, focusing on Palestinian Christians in the US, Latin America, and Jordan. Her research analyzes their migration routes from the homeland towards migration countries aided by the familial networks. In addition, her research examines the relationship  between the integration of the migrants and their identities in the countries of diaspora. More importantly, her research explores the effect of  Palestinian migration on the emergence of transnationalism. Some of her published articles address:  The identity of the Palestinian Christian immigrants in the US”, in: Diaspora and Identity: The case of Palestine” in 2017; and, “The Migration of Palestinian Christians to the United States of America: From geographical and social perspectives”, in 2017.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Ibn Zohr Agadir University

Project Title: Natural and Cultural Heritage and its Role in Developing the Tourist Economy: The Case of the Daraa and Tafilalet Oases

Nationality: Moroccan

Abdeltif Elkhalifi is a researcher who holds a PhD in Geography (2017) from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Hassan II University, Casablanca, with the support of the National Center for Scientific and Technical Research (scholarship of excellence). He also has a Master’s degree (2011) in tourism and development from Hassan II University Mohammedia. He participated and presented  in more than 15 national and international conferences in Morocco and abroad. He published a number of articles on several topics of interest to the oases in Morocco, including an article on the “economic and spatial transformations in the oases” in 2017, and an article entitled “The Tourist Economy and its Role in Valuing the Architectural Heritage in the Central Oases of Daraa” in 2018. He served as a visiting professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities in Agadir during the 2017-2018 term. He is the author of an essay  on the topic of the “Desert Tourism and its Impact on Humans and the Oasis.” He is the head of the Oasis Center for Development and Strategic Studies in Zagora: He is also a graduate of the Civil Society Academy in Tunisia in 2016.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University in Cairo

Project Title: Legal Revitalism: The Shari’a Lawyers’ Bar Association Journal in 20th Century Egypt

Nationality: Egyptian

Mohamed Ayoub is an academic researcher who holds a PhD in Law from Alexandria University – Department of Law Philosophy and History (2017) on the topic of “Legislative Power in Egypt: a historical and philosophical study”. His thesis monitors the societal movement and debate during the period of ideological transformation in Egypt under Muhammad Ali and his family rule. Ayoub was a fellow of the ACSS  first New Paradigms Factory project on the topic of sovereignty and land (2012-2013). He is working on publishing his first book under the title “The Legislative Power in the modern Egyptian state: a historical and philosophical study” by Dar Annahda for publishing and distribution in Cairo.

Alaa El-Shazly is Professor of Economics at Cairo University. He earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Manchester. His areas of interest include the economics of uncertainty and information, quantitative methods in economics and finance, and financial engineering and computation. He is the author of articles in international journals and edited volumes. Prior to his academic career, he held economist positions at the National Investment Bank, Central Bank of Egypt, and the World Bank. His work experience lies at the intersection of economics, quantitative methods, and computer science. He also served as a board member of the Central Bank of Egypt and collaborated with the Egyptian Banking Institute in running specialized programs for practitioners in the banking and finance industry. El-Shazly is a recipient of awards in academia, industry, and sports.

Fadia Kiwan is a Professor of Political Science at Saint Joseph University of Beirut. She was director of the postgraduate program of political science in 2000, then founder of the Institute of Political Science in 2002 at the same University. As a researcher, she has published several books and hundreds of articles. She is very active in the field of advocacy for human rights, women’s rights, quality of education, democratization, and sustainable development. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Program at UNESCO since 2013 and  currently serves as its Chairperson. As a member of the Executive Board of the National Commission for Lebanese Women since 2003, she represents Lebanon in the Executive Board of the Arab Women Organization. She is also the representative of Lebanon in the Permanent Council of the Francophonie.

Islah Jad (Hossneya Gad) is an Associate Professor, currently linked to Qatar University, International Affairs Department since 2014. Jad is a lecturer on gender issues and politics at the Women’s Studies Institute and Cultural Studies Institute of Birzeit University  and served as  its director from 2008-2013. She is a founding member of Birzeit University’s women’s studies MA program. She has written books and papers on the role of women in politics, Palestinian women and the relationships among them, Islam, and NGOs. She is also a consultant on gender issues to the United Nations Development Programme and is co-author of the UN’s Arab Development Report on Women’s Empowerment and author of two books: Women at the Crossroads: The Palestinian Women’s Movement between Nationalism, Secularism and Islamism(2008, second edition 2013) and Palestinian Female Headed Households (2002). Jad received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in 2004.

Kmar Bendana is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of La Manouba (Tunisia) and an associate researcher at the Institute for Research on the Contemporary Maghreb. She has participated in collaborative research projects on such topics as pedagogy of research and scientific writing, in both French and Arabic. She also runs bilingual training sessions on reading and writing in social sciences, in Tunisia and the Maghreb in general. As a historian of the cultural and intellectual life in Tunisia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Bendana was involved in the development and coordination of journals and newsletters, namely Watha’iq, Correspondances, IBLA, Rawafid, and Année du Maghreb. Bendana’s work addresses the history of magazines/journals, cinema, and the conditions of knowledge production (textbooks, university, cultural institutions). She relies on translation (from Arabic to French and vice versa), colinguism, and historiography to study the intellectual and political evolution of contemporary, colonial, and post-colonial Tunisia.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: University of Mohammed V Rabat

Project Title: Mapping the Career State of Young Arab Scientists: The Cases of Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt

Nationality: Moroccan

Abdeslam Badre is a Moroccan social scientist and Fulbright alumnus. His research interests focus on women, youth, and early career policy development in the context of the Middle East and North Africa. His PhD on “Gender and Media Policy” at Mohammed V University in Rabat led him to a short-term Carnegie postdoctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Badre has been a visiting researcher and assistant professor at various universities, including Alfred University (New York), Monterey Institute for International Studies (California), Aalborg University (Denmark), Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (Berlin), Babeș-Bolyai University (Romania), University of North Carolina at (Chapel Hill), and Mohammed V University of Rabat (Morocco). His first book titled International Negotiation for Economic Diplomacy: The EU-Morocco DCFTA was published in 2014. Badre is a member of: the Fulbright Association, American Political Science Association, Canadian Political Science Association, Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, Moroccan Association of Education, Africa Science Leadership Program, and the Next Einstein Forum. Badre has taken part in over 300 international conferences in more than 80 countries. Currently, he is a part-time assistant professor at Mohammed V University in Rabat.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut

Project Title: The Genesis of ‘Economic Peace’: Development and Settler-Colonialism in Israel/Palestine

Nationality: Egyptian

Hebatalla Hassan Mohammed Taha has recently completed a DPhil in Oriental Studies at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford. Her dissertation explored the political economy of Israeli development policy towards the Palestinians of 1948. Having lived most of her life in Cairo, she decided to pursue her long-standing research interest in Palestine after 2011, inspired by the political changes that were unfolding in Egypt, which offered a newfound critical atmosphere. Hebatalla’s research is interdisciplinary, spanning political economy, development, anthropology, indigenous politics, citizenship, and conflict. Alongside her academic work, she has been working with the International Institute for Strategic Studies since 2013 in London and Manama. She has co-edited a book titled Egypt after the Spring: Revolt and Reaction, in which she authored a chapter on militarization in the aftermath of the 2013 coup d’état. She has also authored several short commentary pieces and translations.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut

Project Title: Climate change and Syrian refugees: new discourses, new transboundary water governance in Lebanon and Jordan.

Nationality: Jordanian

Hussam Hussein received his PhD in Social Sciences at the School of International Development – Water Security Research Centre, University of East Anglia in Norwich, England. After studying international relations and diplomacy at the University of Trieste (Gorizia, Italy), the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London, England), and the College of Europe, where he focused on water policies in the Middle East, he worked for the European Parliament, the Italian Embassy in Amman, the NGO, Friends of the Earth Middle East – EcoPeace, the London Middle East Institute, and the World Bank, covering the Middle East and the environment. He is currently Associate Tutor for eight undergraduates and master courses at the University of East Anglia. His current research focuses on transboundary water governance and climate change discourses in the Levantine region. He is also currently involved in a UEA-led project titled “Hydropolitical Baseline Study of the Yarmouk Basin” and is leading on the Council for British Research in the Levant grant on “New Discourses and Water Politics in Jordan.” Hussam’s latest article titled “Whose ‘reality’? Discourses and hydropolitics along the Yarmouk River” was published in Contemporary Levant.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institut des Beaux Arts, Department of Urbanism at the Lebanese University

Project Title: Extra-Ordinary Urbanisms: Between Research, Teaching and Practice

Nationality: Lebanese

Ismael Sheikh Hassan is an urbanist, researcher, and activist who has been involved in a variety of reconstruction projects in Southern Lebanon, as well as the reconstruction of the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared. He received his architecture degree from Mississippi State University in 2015. He later defended his PhD Dissertation titled: “On Urbanism and Activism in Palestinian Refugee Camps” at  the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Strategic Planning at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL), where he has also taught a variety of urban design studios. Currently, he works with Lil-Madina Initiative in Saida, which focuses on urban research and community mobilization in relation to a variety of campaigns countering problematic infrastructure and urban development projects in the city. He is also a consultant with UNRWA’s Camp Improvement Program, providing assistance on urban improvement plans for camps in Jordan, such as Husn and Jerash camps. He has authored a variety of publications on topics pertaining to reconstruction, activism, and urbanism at Palestinian camps. He has two upcoming publications, which he has coauthored. The first is “Towards Improving Landpooling Practices in Lebanon” and the second is “The Amleh River in the Greater Saida Region: Narratives of its Disappearance and Strategies for its Reclamation”.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut

Project Title: The Labour Movement in Lebanon: Institutional Shackles and Solutions

Nationality: Lebanese

Lea Bou Khater earned her PhD in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies of University of London in 2016. In her doctoral thesis titled “Labour Relations in Lebanon: Trials and Tribulations of the Labour Movement,” she charts the structure and performance of the labour movement in Lebanon, and its relations with the state, while exploring the repercussions of the collusion of dominant sectarian forces. She is currently a teaching instructor of Sustainable Community Development at the Lebanese American University in Beirut. As a development practitioner for more than ten years, she undertook several studies and projects commissioned by the government of Lebanon and international organizations. She also authored various reports on needs assessments, national surveys, and program evaluations mainly pertaining to labour, education, and poverty. Bou Khater had previously acquired a Master’s degree in Political Science from Saint Joseph University in Beirut and another in Development Studies from SOAS in the United Kingdom. Her research interests are economic development, public policy, social movements, and labour relations.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the Faculty of Literature and Human Sciences at Saint Joseph University

Project Title: Women’s Sexuality in Todya’s Beirut (Lebanon): Life Trajectories, Practices, and Sexual Identifications (Original French Title: Sexualité entre femmes aujourd’hui à Beyrouth (Liban) : parcours de vie, pratiques et identifications sexuelles)

Nationality: Tunisian

Maroua Marmouch received her PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology in 2015 from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in France (EHESS). She also holds a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Turin in Italy (2011) and a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the University of Tunis (2003). Based on two ethnographic field trips to New Caledonia (2012-2014), which included data collection, biographical interviews, and participant observation, her doctoral research allowed her to reconstruct the biographies of transgender individuals (men to women) and reveal their personal trajectories, while taking into account their social practices. This year, she will be presenting her research project on female non-heteronormativity in Beirut, Lebanon. Based on an ethnographic study, the project aims to describe and analyze the ways in which women who self-identify as “homosexual” live and negotiate their presence in a city of the Arab Middle East. The study will contribute to a number of reflections on the issue of non-normative sexualities of women, as well as “intersectional” and discriminatory constraints in Lebanon.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Contemporary Image Collective, Cairo

Project Title: Authoritarian Egyptian Nationalism and its Counter-Narrative

Nationality: Egyptian

 Rim Naguib is a sociologist based in Egypt. She holds an MA in Comparative Politics (2006) from Sciences Po Aix-en-Provence, and a PhD in Sociology from Northwestern University (2016). Her dissertation compares intelligentsia class formation and ideologies in Egypt and Iran, in the period between 1922 and 1952, and explores the roots of their divergence in the two countries’ specific processes of integration into the world economy. Her research interests include political economy, class formation, nationalism, and early twentieth century communist movements in Egypt and Iran. She has co-translated two graphic novels to Arabic (Zahra’s Paradise and Best of Enemies), and is working on her own collection of graphic shorts, based on real stories of individuals who were deported, or had their nationalities revoked in interwar Egypt.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut

Project Title: Why Don’t People Care about Heritage? Heritage from Below and the Resonance of Intellectual and Activist Discourses of Preservation in Beirut

Nationality: Lebanese

Samar Kanafani is a social anthropologist residing and working in Beirut. Her recent research interests are urban dwelling and urban decay, but her work has previously dealt with nationalism, migration, gender, and the body. In 2015-16, she was a doctoral fellow at the Orient Institute Beirut. In May 2017, she completed her PhD from the University of Manchester. Her recent article, “On Deference and Benevolence,” came out in the Arab Studies Journal (2017). Her article, “Leaving Mother-Land: The Anti-Feminine in Fida’i Narratives,” based on her MA research, was published in Identities (2008). She co-edited a special issue of Contemporary Levant on ethnography and knowledge in the Arab region, in which she co-authored the introduction (2017). She also co-edited the book Anywhere But Now (2013). She has taught anthropology and social theory at the American University of Beirut and at Manchester. She is a resident at Mansion, a Beirut-based cultural collective.

Ghassan Dibeh is a professor of economics and the chair of the Department of Economics at the Lebanese American University. He holds a BA in Physics as well as an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Texas. He is the editor of the journal Review of Middle East Economics and Finance published by De Gruyter Press. His research appeared in journals such as Physica A, Review of Political Economy, Energy Economics, Computational Economics, Journal of International Development and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as in edited books. He served as senior economic advisor at the Ministry of Labor in Lebanon, and held consultancy positions in projects related to economic development in Lebanon.

Amany Massoud El-Hedeny is Professor of Political Science at Cairo University. She received her joint PhD degree from Cairo University and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), the Hague, Holland in 1999. She worked as a lecturer in Nebraska Wesleyan University in USA in academic year 2003/2004 and as a Fulbright scholar in Winona University in Minnesota, USA in 2005 where she aimed at breaking the stereotypes about Islam and Muslims through a series of public lectures and teaching  four courses on Muslim women in politics, Islamic paradigm and civilization, poverty and violence, and political Islam in the Arab World. Between 2011 and 2013, she was a director of the Center for the Study Developing Countries (CSDC) of Cairo University, where she gave training courses on women’s political  participation, gender and poverty and effective mass media in the transitional period. She is co-author of The Middle East between Digital Democracy & Digital Society: Egypt as a Case-Study, Sept 2011, RMIT University, Melbourne, The Dramatic Change in the Political Culture in the Arab World: From Subject to Participant Culture: Is it Possible?, University of Bihac, Bosnia, 2013 and Social Justice between Slogans and Implementation: Egypt as a Case Study, Bath University, England, 2014.

Driss Maghraoui is an associate professor of history and international relations with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. His publications are found in international academic journals and edited books. Driss Maghraoui is the co-editor of Reforms in the Arab World: the Experience of Morocco, Mediterranean Politics and the editor of Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco by Routledge. His most recent publications include “Searching for Normalization: The Party of Justice and Development in Morocco”, in Julie Chernov and Mecham Quinn Mecham (Ed.) Strategies and Behavior of Islamist Political Parties: Comparative Lessons from Asia and the Middle East, University of Pensylvenia Press, 2014 and “The Moroccan ‘Effort de Guerre’ in the Second World War” in Judie Byfield (Ed.) Africa and The Second World War, Cambridge University Press, April 2015.

Tariq Tell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the American University of Beirut. He has degrees from St. Antony’s College (Oxford University), the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has previously taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), American University in Cairo, and the University of Manchester (UK). He has also held research posts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and in Amman at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur le Moyen Orient Contemporain (CERMOC) and the Royal Scientific Society. Tell has edited Village, Steppe and State: The Social Origins of Modern Jordan (I.B. Tauris, 1994) and The Resilience of Hashemite Rule: Politics and the State in Jordan before 1967 (Cahiers du CERMOC, 2001).  His book, The Social Origins of Middle Eastern Monarchy: The Moral Economy of Hashemite Rule in Jordan was published by Palgrave in 2012. His current research interests include focus on the comparative political economy of development and the historical sociology of the Middle East. They also include the comparative politics of Arab monarchies and the relationship between food sovereignty, empire and popular protest in the Middle East.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institute for Palestine Studies

Nationality: Palestinian

Project Title: Rearticulating the Aesthetic and the Nationalist in Contemporary Palestinian Cultural Practices

Adila Laïdi-Hanieh received her PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University, and her MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. Her doctoral dissertation was titled “Rearticulating the Aesthetic and the Nationalist: The Un-decidable Politics of Contemporary Palestinian Artistic Practices.” Laïdi-Hanieh received scholarships and fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies, the Open Society Institute and Georgetown University. From 2006 to 2008, she taught modern Arab intellectual history and the first course on Palestinian arts at Birzeit University. She served as the founding director of the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah from 1996 until 2005. Her research focuses on theories of ideology, and postcolonial studies. Laïdi-Hanieh is the author of Fahrelnissa Zeid: Painter of Inner Worlds (Art/Books, 2017), and the editor of the collection Palestine : Rien ne nous manque ici (Éditions Cercle d’Art & Université Libre de Belgique, 2008). Her articles and essays have been published in the Arab Studies Journal, l’Art-Même, Contemporary Practices, Jerusalem Quarterly, the Journal of Palestine Studies, and in Weghat Nazar.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Makassed University

Nationality: Algerian

Project Title: On the Ethics of the Margin: Production of ‘the Masses’ in Islamic Heritage and its Impact on the Arab Present

Chafika Ouail is an Algerian researcher with a doctorate in Arabic language and literature from the American University of Beirut. Her research interests focus on heritage, literature, and religious, particularly Qur’anic studies, Sufism, and epistemic studies, in addition to research on contemporary Arabic poetry. Her dissertation titled “Language, Experience, and Text” presents an onto-semantic reading of al-Nifarri: She inquired about heritage reading instruments in general and the Sufi experience in particular regarding building an appropriate reading system for al-Nifarri. Her approach explored possible ontological dimensions emitted by connotations in the cultural context of the experience. Her latest publications are an article titled “Darwishian Poetry”: A reading of the Wadi Al-Naml Diwan by poet Jamal Al-Salayi in light of the intersection of the two visions of Sufi conduct and Deleuzian travel in Al-Mashriq (2014) and another titled “Problems in Ibn Faris’s Craft Vision” in the Journal of Arabic Linguistics (2015).  She is currently preparing a second doctoral dissertation in Qur’anic studies.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University of Beirut

Nationality: Lebanese

Project Title: The Psychological Reconstruction of Lebanon: a Social History of Humanitarian Intervention, Psychiatry and Violence

Lamia Moghnieh is an anthropologist and social worker. She has a PhD in Social Work and Anthropology from the University of Michigan. She also holds an MA in Social Science from the University of Chicago and an MA in psychology from the American University of Beirut.

Her dissertation “Humanitarian Psychology in War and Postwar Lebanon” examines the processes of psychologizing suffering in Lebanon, from Israel’s invasion in 1982 to the Syrian Refugee crisis in 2012. It is an ethnographic study of the psychological interventions introduced by humanitarian organizations as a response to war and violence in Lebanon. By tracing the aid ecologies that make specific kinds of subjects possible, this dissertation offers a rethinking of suffering as a subject position contingent on aid and violence in Lebanon.

Her current research focuses on the early and entangled history of psychiatry and humanitarianism in Lebanon.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University of Beirut

Nationality: Lebanese

Project Title: Football, Contestation & Elite Formation in Beirut

Muzna Al-Masri holds a PhD in Anthropology from Goldsmiths, University of London. Based on fieldwork in Beirut with members and fans of Nejmeh, Lebanon’s most popular sports club, her dissertation examined the relationship between political elites and their constituencies, and the formation of an emerging form of entrepreneurial elite in post war Lebanon. She is currently working as a researcher and consultant to several UN and international organizations, implementing conflict analysis and examining linkages between social cohesion and humanitarian intervention. Her recently published research reports include analysis of the conflict contexts in various Lebanese regions, and examination of the impact of social policy on Syrian-Lebanese relationships locally and has a forthcoming book chapter on “Electoral Theatre and Democratic Fantasies” in Lebanon. Her research interests include political anthropology, elite politics and formation, everyday political practice, conflict and violence, anthropology of sports, and sensory research methods.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Alexandria University Law School, Alexandria University

Nationality: Egyptian

Project Title: Islam and Public Law: Liability and Remedies in Islamic Law

Samy Ayoub earned his PhD in Islamic law from the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies and the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. He earned a B.A. in Islamic jurisprudence from Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt, in 2006, where he received systematic instruction in Ḥanafī jurisprudence. He also received an MSc. in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, UK, in 2008. Dr. Ayoub’s research interests cover the history of the early modern Ottoman Empire, contemporary Arab legal regimes. His dissertation and current book project, “We’re Not in Kūfa Anymore: The Construction of Late Ḥanafism in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire, 16th – 19^th Centuries CE,” won the 2015 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award. It is currently under review with Oxford University Press.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institute of Community and Public Health, Birzeit University

Nationality: Palestinian

Project Title: Palestinian Health Sector

Palestinian scholar Weeam Hammoudeh obtained her PhD in Sociology from Brown University, in May 2016, with concentrations in Social Demography and Development and Political Economy. She holds an MA in Sociology from Brown University (2012), an MPH from Birzeit University (2008), as well as a BA in Anthropology/Sociology from Florida International University. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she worked in the NGO sector in the occupied Palestinian territory, and at the Institute of Community and Public Health as a research assistant/employee for over three years. She has broad research interests in the social and political determinants of health, population health and wellbeing, gender, and interdisciplinary approaches to understanding population and health dynamics in context. She has published in various peer-reviewed journals, and is currently in the process of working on publications from her dissertation titled: “(Re)Producing The Citizenry: Reproduction And The Palestinian (Quasi) State-Building Project.” She has received various awards and fellowships, including accolades from the Hewlett Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Palestinian American Research Center, and the Margaret McNamara Foundation. She is a member of the Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance, the Reproductive Health Working Group, the Public Health in the Arab World network, the American Sociological Association, the Population Association of America, the Asian Population Association, and the International Union of the Scientific Study of Population.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University in Cairo

Nationality: Egyptian

Project Title: Encountering the Egyptian Nation-State in Revolutionary Times: A rural Perspective

Yasmine Moataz Ahmed is a social anthropologist based in Egypt. She holds an MA from the Department of Sociology-Anthropology at the American University in Cairo (2007), and has recently completed her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2016). Her doctoral research, which is based on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork among rural dwellers in and outside the village of Al-Ab`adiyya Wālī Mizār in Fayyūm governorate, Egypt, traces the ways in which ordinary citizens imagine and experience it during periods of rapid political transformation. Her research interests are centered upon the study of the state, law, bureaucracy, elections, political change and government. She has extensive fieldwork experience in rural Egypt. Prior to her PhD, she worked as a researcher at the Social Research Center of the American University in Cairo, investigating issues related to access to resources in rural Egypt and Tunisia, and has done consultancy work for various organizations, including the International Organization for Migration. Her recent publications include “Reform from Gift to Right” (2015); “Rural Egypt and Electoral Counting” (2013); and “Recording Technologies in Revolutionary Times” (2013).

Ghassan Dibeh is a professor of economics and the chair of the Department of Economics at the Lebanese American University. He holds a BA in Physics as well as an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Texas. He is the editor of the journal Review of Middle East Economics and Finance published by De Gruyter Press. His research appeared in journals such as Physica A, Review of Political Economy, Energy Economics, Computational Economics, Journal of International Development and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as in edited books. He served as senior economic advisor at the Ministry of Labor in Lebanon, and held consultancy positions in projects related to economic development in Lebanon.

Amany Massoud El-Hedeny is Professor of Political Science at Cairo University. She received her joint PhD degree from Cairo University and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), the Hague, Holland in 1999. She worked as a lecturer in Nebraska Wesleyan University in USA in academic year 2003/2004 and as a Fulbright scholar in Winona University in Minnesota, USA in 2005 where she aimed at breaking the stereotypes about Islam and Muslims through a series of public lectures and teaching  four courses on Muslim women in politics, Islamic paradigm and civilization, poverty and violence, and political Islam in the Arab World. Between 2011 and 2013, she was a director of the Center for the Study Developing Countries (CSDC) of Cairo University, where she gave training courses on women’s political  participation, gender and poverty and effective mass media in the transitional period. She is co-author of The Middle East between Digital Democracy & Digital Society: Egypt as a Case-Study, Sept 2011, RMIT University, Melbourne, The Dramatic Change in the Political Culture in the Arab World: From Subject to Participant Culture: Is it Possible?, University of Bihac, Bosnia, 2013 and Social Justice between Slogans and Implementation: Egypt as a Case Study, Bath University, England, 2014.

Driss Maghraoui is an associate professor of history and international relations with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. His publications are found in international academic journals and edited books. Driss Maghraoui is the co-editor of Reforms in the Arab World: the Experience of Morocco, Mediterranean Politics and the editor of Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco by Routledge. His most recent publications include “Searching for Normalization: The Party of Justice and Development in Morocco”, in Julie Chernov and Mecham Quinn Mecham (Ed.) Strategies and Behavior of Islamist Political Parties: Comparative Lessons from Asia and the Middle East, University of Pensylvenia Press, 2014 and “The Moroccan ‘Effort de Guerre’ in the Second World War” in Judie Byfield (Ed.) Africa and The Second World War, Cambridge University Press, April 2015.

Tariq Tell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the American University of Beirut. He has degrees from St. Antony’s College (Oxford University), the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has previously taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), American University in Cairo, and the University of Manchester (UK). He has also held research posts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and in Amman at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur le Moyen Orient Contemporain (CERMOC) and the Royal Scientific Society. Tell has edited Village, Steppe and State: The Social Origins of Modern Jordan (I.B. Tauris, 1994) and The Resilience of Hashemite Rule: Politics and the State in Jordan before 1967 (Cahiers du CERMOC, 2001).  His book, The Social Origins of Middle Eastern Monarchy: The Moral Economy of Hashemite Rule in Jordan was published by Palgrave in 2012. His current research interests include focus on the comparative political economy of development and the historical sociology of the Middle East. They also include the comparative politics of Arab monarchies and the relationship between food sovereignty, empire and popular protest in the Middle East.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Birzeit University

Nationality: Palestinian

Project Title: The Vitality of Death and the Dying in Palestinian Society: Twenty years in the Palestinian Institute of Forensic Medicine

Suhad Daher Nashif holds a doctorate in social sciences received in 2012, specializing in social-medical anthropology.  She wrote her dissertation on “The Vitality of Death and the Dying in Palestinian Society: Twenty years in the Palestinian Institute of Forensic Medicine” She is an independent researcher and lecturer at The Al-Qasemi Academic College of Education.  During the past three years, she has been the program coordinator for women’s studies at the Mada al-Carmel Center (Arab Center for Applied Social Research-Haifa). Her research interests focus on a number of issues, notably practices surrounding the dead in Palestinian society and the structure of living of female Palestinians in 1948-occupied territories. She has a number of other studies, most recently on sexual and physical violence imposed by the Israeli colonial-settler on Palestinian women, youth attitudes towards the killing of women in Palestinian society, the practice of killing women in Palestinian society, and the accessibility of justice for the Palestinian woman.  She has a number of publications in Arabic and English, most recently “The sexual desires of the Israeli colonial-settler apparatus” in Issue 106 of the Journal of Palestine Studies, Fall 2015.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Al Azhar University

Nationality: Palestinian

Project Title: The Political Economy of Siege and Resilience: The Gaza Strip

Toufic Haddad (PhD) is a Palestinian-American scholar and author of the forthcoming book Palestine Ltd.: Neoliberalism and National Liberation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Center for Palestine Studies, SOAS & I.B. Taurus, 2016). He completed his PhD in Development Studies at the School for Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London in 2015, where his doctoral research focused on the political economy of neoliberal approaches to conflict resolution and state-building in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) from 1993-2013.  Before his doctorate, Haddad worked in various capacities across the OPT, including as a journalist, researcher, editor, and publisher. He is the co-author of two additional books, while his other writings have been featured in an assortment of books, print, and online media both academic and popular. His research interests include political economy, development, social movements, and cultural production in Palestine and the broader Middle East region.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University Beirut

Nationality: Moroccan

Project Title: Maghribi thought and Mashriqi Reception: The Unexplored Center-Periphery Dynamic

Idriss Jebari completed his doctorate on the history of the production of critical thought in Morocco and Tunisia at the University of Oxford in 2015. He is now studying the dynamics of intellectual and cultural exchanges between the Maghrib and the Mashriq in contemporary Arab thought. He has published on the intellectual projects of several North African intellectual figures and on the engagements of intellectuals in public affairs from a theoretical and practical point of view.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: American University in Cairo

Nationality: Egyptian

Project Title: Mixing Islamic Law with Human Rights: Egyptian Women’s Rights NGOs’ Advocating for Muslim Family Law Reform

Marwa Sharafeldin is a scholar-activist working on women’s rights in Egypt. She has a PhD from Oxford University’s Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. The title of her doctoral dissertation was “Personal Status Law Reform in Egypt: Women’s Rights NGOs Navigating between Islamic Law and Human Rights.” Her research lies at the intersection between Islamic law, international human rights law and feminist civil society activism in the Muslim world. Sharafeldin has published three separate chapters in academic books, the most recent of which was “Islamic Law Meets Human Rights: Reformulating Qiwama and Wilaya for Personal Status Law Reform Advocacy in Egypt” in Men in Charge? Rethinking Authority in Muslim Legal Tradition. Sharafeldin is also the co-founder of several women’s rights NGOs and networks in Egypt and the Arab world. She is currently a Board Member in the Musawah global movement for equality and justice in the Muslim family.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: The American University in Egypt, the Research Institute for a Sustainable Environment (RISE)

Nationality: Egyptian

Project Title: “Coal for Them, the Bill on Us”: Non-Governmental Organizations, Alternative Media and Egypt’s Anti-Coal Movement

Aziza Moneer holds a PhD in Environmental Politics (with honors) from the Chair of Forest Policy/ Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources/ Freiburg University in Germany. The PhD’s main objective was to examine the intractability of environmental conflicts in protected areas in Egypt and explore how different actors perceive and try to influence the use of natural resources in these protected areas (i.e. Wadi el Gemal Protected Area).  Her research interests mainly focus on environmental politics, environmental communication and discourse and framing studies. She has had numerous years teaching experience, serving as teaching assistant at Suez Canal University’s Faculty of Tourism from 2005 to 2011. In the winter of 2013, she was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Social Ecology at Alpen Adaria University in Vienna.

Ghassan Dibeh is a professor of economics and the chair of the Department of Economics at the Lebanese American University. He holds a BA in Physics as well as an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Texas. He is the editor of the journal Review of Middle East Economics and Finance published by De Gruyter Press. His research appeared in journals such as Physica A, Review of Political Economy, Energy Economics, Computational Economics, Journal of International Development and Middle Eastern Studies, as well as in edited books. He served as senior economic advisor at the Ministry of Labor in Lebanon, and held consultancy positions in projects related to economic development in Lebanon.

Amany Massoud El-Hedeny is Professor of Political Science at Cairo University. She received her joint PhD degree from Cairo University and the Institute of Social Studies (ISS), the Hague, Holland in 1999. She worked as a lecturer in Nebraska Wesleyan University in USA in academic year 2003/2004 and as a Fulbright scholar in Winona University in Minnesota, USA in 2005 where she aimed at breaking the stereotypes about Islam and Muslims through a series of public lectures and teaching  four courses on Muslim women in politics, Islamic paradigm and civilization, poverty and violence, and political Islam in the Arab World. Between 2011 and 2013, she was a director of the Center for the Study Developing Countries (CSDC) of Cairo University, where she gave training courses on women’s political  participation, gender and poverty and effective mass media in the transitional period. She is co-author of The Middle East between Digital Democracy & Digital Society: Egypt as a Case-Study, Sept 2011, RMIT University, Melbourne, The Dramatic Change in the Political Culture in the Arab World: From Subject to Participant Culture: Is it Possible?, University of Bihac, Bosnia, 2013 and Social Justice between Slogans and Implementation: Egypt as a Case Study, Bath University, England, 2014.

Driss Maghraoui is an associate professor of history and international relations with the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. His publications are found in international academic journals and edited books. Driss Maghraoui is the co-editor of Reforms in the Arab World: the Experience of Morocco, Mediterranean Politics and the editor of Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco by Routledge. His most recent publications include “Searching for Normalization: The Party of Justice and Development in Morocco”, in Julie Chernov and Mecham Quinn Mecham (Ed.) Strategies and Behavior of Islamist Political Parties: Comparative Lessons from Asia and the Middle East, University of Pensylvenia Press, 2014 and “The Moroccan ‘Effort de Guerre’ in the Second World War” in Judie Byfield (Ed.) Africa and The Second World War, Cambridge University Press, April 2015.

Tariq Tell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the American University of Beirut. He has degrees from St. Antony’s College (Oxford University), the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has previously taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London), American University in Cairo, and the University of Manchester (UK). He has also held research posts at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, and in Amman at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur le Moyen Orient Contemporain (CERMOC) and the Royal Scientific Society. Tell has edited Village, Steppe and State: The Social Origins of Modern Jordan (I.B. Tauris, 1994) and The Resilience of Hashemite Rule: Politics and the State in Jordan before 1967 (Cahiers du CERMOC, 2001).  His book, The Social Origins of Middle Eastern Monarchy: The Moral Economy of Hashemite Rule in Jordan was published by Palgrave in 2012. His current research interests include focus on the comparative political economy of development and the historical sociology of the Middle East. They also include the comparative politics of Arab monarchies and the relationship between food sovereignty, empire and popular protest in the Middle East.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Sidi Belabas University

Nationality: Algerian

Project Title: The Role of the City in Tribal Societies: Patterns of Exclusion and Inclusion

El Hadi Bououchma is a professor at Sidi Belabas University (Algeria), and an associate researcher at the National Center for Research in Social and Cultural Anthropology (CRASC) in Oran. He is also a member of the review committee at the Journal of the Association of Arab Colleges, Institutions, and Divisions for Social Work in Beirut, Lebanon. Bououchma holds a PhD in Cultural Sociology from the University of Oran (2015). He collaborated on a number of books both locally and in the larger Arab world and published several papers in Algerian journals. His research projects have covered a range of topics, including traditional Mediterranean bathhouses and Waada practices, tribal rites, identiy, religiosity, and violence from a sociological and anthropological point of view.

Postdoctoral Affiliation: Institut Français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) – Beirut

Nationality: Lebanese

Project Title: The Negotiated State: State-Society Relations in Lebanon

Jamil Mouawad holds a PhD in politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). His doctoral thesis entitled, “Lebanon: The Negotiated State”, examines the production of the state in Lebanon and the role of the ruling elite in developing networks of negotiations that ultimately guarantee state resilience despite its ostensible weakness. He also worked as a researcher at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies (LCPS) (2005-2009). In 2011, he was the recipient of the New Paradigm Factory Fellowship Award from the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS). His publications include a book chapter on the 2009 parliamentary elections in Lebanon, which examines the transformation of political leadership in Jbeil. He is the guest co-editor of a special issue for the Arab Studies Journal that seeks to further understand the state in Lebanon (Fall 2015). He is also a regular commentator on Middle Eastern and Lebanese politics, and his articles appear in Jadaliyya, OpenDemocracy, and Al-Hayat, among others.