The ACSS Board of Trustees (BoT) is composed of 12 elected members who represent different disciplinary, geographical, gender and generational backgrounds. The Board meets at least once a year and is responsible for, among other tasks, appointing the Chair of the Board and the ACSS Director General and overseeing his/her performance. Furthermore, the BoT oversees and approves the general financial and administrative policies of the ACSS and engages as well in strategic planning and fundraising to enable the ACSS to fulfil its aims and meet its goals. The BoT has four sub-committees composed of a select number of members who study matters in their different domains that are brought to their attention by the ACSS and Director General, and make recommendations that are then shared with the full BoT for final approval. These the subcommittees for: Membership, Administration and Finance, Publications, and Academic Freedom, Rights & Societal Responsibility.
Institution: Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar
About: Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is Associate Professor of philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. She is the author of Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (Columbia University Press, 2010) and Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution. The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia University Press, 2019). Both have been translated into Arabic.
Institution: Department of Social and Behavioral Science at Birzeit University, Palestine
About: Abaher El Sakka is Associate Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Birzeit University, holder of a PhD in Sociology from the University of Nantes – France. Graduate of the Higher School of Social Organization Management – Saint Etienne – France. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Nantes from 1998-2006, and a visiting professor at several French and Belgian universities from 2009-2023. He has authored many scientific studies and articles in the fields of social sciences and their history, socio-artistic expressions, social movements, identity, memory, nationalities, urban studies. Editor-In-Chief of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology, Vice-chair, Board of Trustees, The Arab Council for the Social Sciences, President of Palestinian Sociological Association.
Institution: Hassan 2 University, Morocco
About: Fadma Ait Mous is currently Professor of sociology at Aïn Chock Faculty of Letters and the Humanities (University Hassan II of Casablanca), Head of the Sociology Department at the same faculty, Researcher and joint Director of the Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Différenciations Socio Anthropologiques et les Identités Sociales (LADSIS). Associate researcher at Economia HEM Research Center (Rabat), and General Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (Beyrouth). Member of the Executive Council of the Merian Center for Advanced Study in the Maghreb (MECAM, Tunis) ; Member of the Pan-African Scientific Research Center; Fellow of TALIM, TANGIER AMERICAN LEGATION INSTITUTE FOR MOROCCAN STUDIES; Member of the Scientific Commission n°4 (CSS4) of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and Founding Member of Fatima Mernissi Chair. Her research is mainly focused on issues related to nationalism and social movements, gender and socio-political transformations, history and memory, youth cultures, social media and migration. Her recent publications include: -“Pluralizing the oasis extensions: Heterogeneous farming profiles and practices in Toudgha (Morocco)”, (with H. Er Rayhany, Z. Kadiri, L. Bossenbroek), in New Medit, A Mediterranean Journal of Economics, Agriculture and Environment, vol. 21, no. 05, 20 Dec. 2022 ; – “Sub-Saharan and Syrian women’s embodying migration experiences in Casablanca” (with S. Benbelli & S. Ettallab), in The Elgar Companion to Gender and Global Migration: Beyond Western Research. Dir. Natalia Ribas-Mateos, Saskia Sassen. Edward Elgare Publishing, 2022.; – Les jeunes du Maroc. Comprendre les dynamiques pour un nouveau contrat social. (dir. F. Ait Mous & Z. Kadiri), Economia Book, Economia-HEM Research Center, Rabat, 2021.
Institution: American University of Beirut
About: Rima Majed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Her work focuses on the fields of social inequality, social movements, sectarianism, conflict, and violence. Dr. Majed has completed her PhD at the University of Oxford where she conducted her research on the relationship between structural changes, social mobilization, and sectarianism in Lebanon. She was a visiting fellow at the at Princeton University in 2018/19, and is currently a research fellow at Harvard University (2022/23). Her work has appeared in several journals, books and media platforms such as Social Forces, American Political Science Review, Mobilization, Routledge Handbook on the Politics of the Middle East, Middle East Law and Governance Journal, Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East, Global Dialogue, Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology, Al Jumhuriya, OpenDemocracy, Jacobin, Middle East Eye, CNN and Al Jazeera English. She is also the co-editor of The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution (I.B. Tauris, 2022), and the Principal Investigator on the “Critical Approaches to Development Studies” project at the American University of Beirut.
Institution: American University of Beirut, Lebanon
About: Mona Fawaz is Professor in Urban Studies and Planning at the American University of Beirut where she has co-founded the Beirut Urban Lab, a regional research center invested in working towards more inclusive, just, and viable cities. Mona’s research spans across urban history and historiography, social and spatial justice, informality and the law, land, housing, property and space. She is the author of over 50 scholarly articles, book sections, and reports in Arabic, French and English. She has also worked as a consultant, advising on urban and regional development as well as housing, land, and property issues. In addition, Mona has been tightly involved in Beirut’s ongoing transformations by publishing in the local press and speaking in numerous local venues where she has advocated for upgrading informal settlements, protecting the urban commons, improving urban livability, adopting more inclusive planning standards, and more generally, defending the right to the city for the urban majorities. Mona holds a BArch (1995) from the American University of Beirut, a MCP (1998) and Ph.D. (1994) in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University during the 2014/15 academic year and in Summer 2017. She has served on numerous juries, including the Aga Khan awards in 2019. She is also member of the editorial board of the journals Planning Theory, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and City and Society. Mona is a board member for the Arab Council for Social Science, The Century Foundation International, and The Policy Initiative.
Institution: National Council for Science and Technology, CONACYT, Mexico
About: She is currently part of Conacyt Chair, at the Dr. Hideyo Noguchi Regional Research Center, Social Sciences Unit, Autonomous University of Yucatan with the project: “Towards new social policies for the sustainable development of the energy sector in Yucatan.”Member of the national system of researchers with a SNI level 1.Technical. Manager of the Pronaces project entitled: “Sustainable Mayan communities: towards the design of new trans-regional and comprehensive rural energy models for the sustainable development of the state of Yucatan”, approved within the framework of the call FOP04-2021-03 “PROJECTS OF RESEARCH AND ADVOCACY TO MOVE TO A SOCIALLY AND ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SYSTEM. She has a degree in Sociology from the Mohammed V University, Rabat. Morocco. Master’s in social Anthropology from the Iztapalapa Metropolitan Autonomous University. Master in Family Sociology. Mohammed V University, Rabat. Morocco and PhD in Social Anthropology from the Iztapalapa Metropolitan Autonomous University. She has extensive experience in social impact projects in rural and indigenous communities. Her topics of interest are Migration, Gender, sustainable development. Energy governance and poverty. She has several recent publications in prestigious magazines as a member of the steering committee of the Arab council for social sciences.
Institution: Anthropology Department at the University of California, Davis, USA
About: Suad Joseph is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Davis. She is the founder and founding president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association), founder and founding president of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) and founder/director of the Arab Families Working Group. She founded and directed the University of California Davis Arab Region Consortium. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. She is co-founder and founding president of the Arab American Studies Association and co-founder of the Association for Middle East Anthropology and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. She is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. She has edited or co-edited 12 books, and published over 100 articles in journals and books, most recently Arab Family Studies: Critical Reviews (2018); the award-winning Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal (2021): The Politics of Engaged Gender Research (2022); Handbook of Middle East Women (2022); and Reporting Islam: Muslim Women in the New York Times, 1979-2011 (2023). She is the founder and founding director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program at UC Davis, co-founder of the Feminist Research Institute. She was awarded the UC Davis Teaching & Research Prize; the Middle East Studies Association Jere L. Bacharach Life Time Service Award in 2019; the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies and the Arab American Studies Association life time service awards.
Institution: Center for Economic and Social Studies and Research in Tunisia
About: Mounir Saidani is Professor of Sociology (2000-2022) and since October 2022 a full-time researcher in Sociology at the Centre for Economic and Social Studies and Researches (CERES, 1962). He is the Editor in Chief of the Tunisian Social Sciences Review (edited by CERES since 1964). 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 in the field of his interest 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 whom he is the general supervisor and the editor in chief (2018). His forthcoming book is about Tunisian sociology. From 2014 to 2022, he led a multidisciplinary research unit working on “Knowledges, Cultures and Social Change” evolving at the High Institute for Human Sciences, Tunis El Manar University. He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association (ISA 2018-2023). 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. He coordinated the XVII ISA PhD Students Lab (September 2022).
Institution: George Washington University
About: Dina Khoury is professor emeritus of History at George Washington University. She obtained her doctorate at Georgetown University under the direction of Hisham Sharabi and Hanna Batatu in 1987. She is author of two books, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul 1540-1834 (Cambridge University Press, 1997,2002) and Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom and Remembrance (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Both books have been translated into Arabic by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. She is the recipient of several awards, including awards from the Turkish Studies Association and the British Society for Middle East Studies for her first book. She is also the recipient of several research fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Guggenheim. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association (2020 and 2021) and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Doha Institute and the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences.
Institution: University for Foreigners of Siena
Institution: Baghdad University
Institution: Reseau TANMO
Institution: Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar
About: Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is Associate Professor of philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. She is the author of Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (Columbia University Press, 2010) and Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution. The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia University Press, 2019). Both have been translated into Arabic.
Institution: Department of Social and Behavioral Science at Birzeit University, Palestine
About: Abaher El Sakka is Associate Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Birzeit University, holder of a PhD in Sociology from the University of Nantes – France. Graduate of the Higher School of Social Organization Management – Saint Etienne – France. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Nantes from 1998-2006, and a visiting professor at several French and Belgian universities from 2009-2023. He has authored many scientific studies and articles in the fields of social sciences and their history, socio-artistic expressions, social movements, identity, memory, nationalities, urban studies. Editor-In-Chief of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology, Vice-chair, Board of Trustees, The Arab Council for the Social Sciences, President of Palestinian Sociological Association.
Institution: Hassan 2 University, Morocco
About: Fadma Ait Mous is currently Professor of sociology at Aïn Chock Faculty of Letters and the Humanities (University Hassan II of Casablanca), Head of the Sociology Department at the same faculty, Researcher and joint Director of the Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Différenciations Socio Anthropologiques et les Identités Sociales (LADSIS). Associate researcher at Economia HEM Research Center (Rabat), and General Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (Beyrouth). Member of the Executive Council of the Merian Center for Advanced Study in the Maghreb (MECAM, Tunis) ; Member of the Pan-African Scientific Research Center; Fellow of TALIM, TANGIER AMERICAN LEGATION INSTITUTE FOR MOROCCAN STUDIES; Member of the Scientific Commission n°4 (CSS4) of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and Founding Member of Fatima Mernissi Chair. Her research is mainly focused on issues related to nationalism and social movements, gender and socio-political transformations, history and memory, youth cultures, social media and migration. Her recent publications include: -“Pluralizing the oasis extensions: Heterogeneous farming profiles and practices in Toudgha (Morocco)”, (with H. Er Rayhany, Z. Kadiri, L. Bossenbroek), in New Medit, A Mediterranean Journal of Economics, Agriculture and Environment, vol. 21, no. 05, 20 Dec. 2022 ; – “Sub-Saharan and Syrian women’s embodying migration experiences in Casablanca” (with S. Benbelli & S. Ettallab), in The Elgar Companion to Gender and Global Migration: Beyond Western Research. Dir. Natalia Ribas-Mateos, Saskia Sassen. Edward Elgare Publishing, 2022.; – Les jeunes du Maroc. Comprendre les dynamiques pour un nouveau contrat social. (dir. F. Ait Mous & Z. Kadiri), Economia Book, Economia-HEM Research Center, Rabat, 2021.
Institution: American University of Beirut, Lebanon
About: Mona Fawaz is Professor in Urban Studies and Planning at the American University of Beirut where she has co-founded the Beirut Urban Lab, a regional research center invested in working towards more inclusive, just, and viable cities. Mona’s research spans across urban history and historiography, social and spatial justice, informality and the law, land, housing, property and space. She is the author of over 50 scholarly articles, book sections, and reports in Arabic, French and English. She has also worked as a consultant, advising on urban and regional development as well as housing, land, and property issues. In addition, Mona has been tightly involved in Beirut’s ongoing transformations by publishing in the local press and speaking in numerous local venues where she has advocated for upgrading informal settlements, protecting the urban commons, improving urban livability, adopting more inclusive planning standards, and more generally, defending the right to the city for the urban majorities. Mona holds a BArch (1995) from the American University of Beirut, a MCP (1998) and Ph.D. (1994) in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University during the 2014/15 academic year and in Summer 2017. She has served on numerous juries, including the Aga Khan awards in 2019. She is also member of the editorial board of the journals Planning Theory, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and City and Society. Mona is a board member for the Arab Council for Social Science, The Century Foundation International, and The Policy Initiative.
Institution: National Council for Science and Technology, CONACYT, Mexico
About: She is currently part of Conacyt Chair, at the Dr. Hideyo Noguchi Regional Research Center, Social Sciences Unit, Autonomous University of Yucatan with the project: “Towards new social policies for the sustainable development of the energy sector in Yucatan.”Member of the national system of researchers with a SNI level 1.Technical. Manager of the Pronaces project entitled: “Sustainable Mayan communities: towards the design of new trans-regional and comprehensive rural energy models for the sustainable development of the state of Yucatan”, approved within the framework of the call FOP04-2021-03 “PROJECTS OF RESEARCH AND ADVOCACY TO MOVE TO A SOCIALLY AND ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SYSTEM. She has a degree in Sociology from the Mohammed V University, Rabat. Morocco. Master’s in social Anthropology from the Iztapalapa Metropolitan Autonomous University. Master in Family Sociology. Mohammed V University, Rabat. Morocco and PhD in Social Anthropology from the Iztapalapa Metropolitan Autonomous University. She has extensive experience in social impact projects in rural and indigenous communities. Her topics of interest are Migration, Gender, sustainable development. Energy governance and poverty. She has several recent publications in prestigious magazines as a member of the steering committee of the Arab council for social sciences.
Institution: George Washington University
About: Dina Khoury is professor emeritus of History at George Washington University. She obtained her doctorate at Georgetown University under the direction of Hisham Sharabi and Hanna Batatu in 1987. She is author of two books, State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire: Mosul 1540-1834 (Cambridge University Press, 1997,2002) and Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom and Remembrance (Cambridge University Press, 2013). Both books have been translated into Arabic by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies. She is the recipient of several awards, including awards from the Turkish Studies Association and the British Society for Middle East Studies for her first book. She is also the recipient of several research fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Guggenheim. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association (2020 and 2021) and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Doha Institute and the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences.
Institution: University of Oxford, United Kingdom; European External Action Service, European Union
About: Dr Hussam Hussein is a member of ACSS Board of Trustees since 2021, and is a member of the sub-committee on Publications. Dr. Hussam Hussein is an academic, policy, and international development expert specialising in water diplomacy, environmental governance, and sustainable development. As a research associate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, he explores the role of power dynamics in water governance. His interdisciplinary approach integrates insights from political science, environmental studies, and international relations, addressing critical issues such as water scarcity, climate change impacts, and the equitable distribution of water resources.
He has also been promoting the voices of Early Career Researchers and academics from the MENA region, as well as fostering trust in science. These initiatives are central to his roles as an Executive Committee member of the Global Young Academy, a Fellow of the International Science Council, a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, and a Fellow of the Young Academy of Sustainability at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS).
His academic journey includes a BA and MA in International Relations and Diplomacy from the University of Trieste – Gorizia (Italy), studies in Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, University of London, and an MA in Interdisciplinary European Studies from the College of Europe. He earned his PhD at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia, with a dissertation on the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan and its implications for transboundary water governance.
Institution: University of Batna 1, Algeria
About: Anthropologist from Algeria, and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Batna 1 in Algeria. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Journal of Contemporary Anthropological Studies, General Supervisor of the “Fa’iloun” Center for Research in Anthropology, Humanities and Social Sciences, Founder and Director of the “Anthropos” website, which is the first Arab site dedicated to anthropology, and active member in several international associations including: ACSS BOT member in Beirut, Head of the Anthropology Unit at the International Network for Arab Societies Study (INASS), member of the Council of National Societies at the International Sociological Association (ISA) (Madrid), member of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) (Tokyo), member of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) (Amsterdam), and Referee Member of several refereed journals. He has written several books and articles; he serves as a Certified Instructor at Carpentries and Odum Institute/ACSS in Research Data Management. He is also the Developer and Instructor of Google Apps For Researchers and Digital Identity For Researchers. ACSS Postdoctoral Early Career Fellow in Beirut for 2018-2019, with a project entitled “Atlas of Horses and Fantasia in Algeria”. His research interests focus on heritage and digital anthropology; he is fond of programming and design and passionate with modern technologies; he loves books and reading, especially novels. He dreams of popularizing anthropology for everyone to understand, and seeks to disseminate it among people and implement it to solve the problems of Arab societies and develop them.
Former Jordanian Minister for Institution: Planning and International Cooperation and former Regional Director of International Labor Organization, Jordan
About: Mary Kawar is a social and economic policy expert and former Jordanian Minister for Planning and International Cooperation. She served at the the International Labour Organisation for 20 years where she held senior positions in the ILO headquarters in Geneva, the Regional Office for Arab States in Beirut, and the subregional office for East Africa in Dar El Salaam. Her areas of expertise range from labour policy and employment, social protection, gender, youth and refugee livelihoods . She is currently the director of Tiraz: Widad Kawar Home for Arab Dress and is serving on the Board of directors at the Jordan Central Bank. She is also an advisor to several national and regional think tanks and NGOs. During her career she had bridged academic research with development policy and programming. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.
Institution: Center for Economic and Social Studies and Research in Tunisia
About: Mounir Saidani is Professor of Sociology (2000-2022) and since October 2022 a full-time researcher in Sociology at the Centre for Economic and Social Studies and Researches (CERES, 1962). He is the Editor in Chief of the Tunisian Social Sciences Review (edited by CERES since 1964). 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 in the field of his interest 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 whom he is the general supervisor and the editor in chief (2018). His forthcoming book is about Tunisian sociology. From 2014 to 2022, he led a multidisciplinary research unit working on “Knowledges, Cultures and Social Change” evolving at the High Institute for Human Sciences, Tunis El Manar University. He is an elected member of the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association (ISA 2018-2023). 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. He coordinated the XVII ISA PhD Students Lab (September 2022).
Institution: American University of Beirut
About: Rima Majed is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies Department at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Her work focuses on the fields of social inequality, social movements, sectarianism, conflict, and violence. Dr. Majed has completed her PhD at the University of Oxford where she conducted her research on the relationship between structural changes, social mobilization, and sectarianism in Lebanon. She was a visiting fellow at the at Princeton University in 2018/19, and is currently a research fellow at Harvard University (2022/23). Her work has appeared in several journals, books and media platforms such as Social Forces, American Political Science Review, Mobilization, Routledge Handbook on the Politics of the Middle East, Middle East Law and Governance Journal, Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of the Middle East, Global Dialogue, Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology, Al Jumhuriya, OpenDemocracy, Jacobin, Middle East Eye, CNN and Al Jazeera English. She is also the co-editor of The Lebanon Uprising of 2019: Voices from the Revolution (I.B. Tauris, 2022), and the Principal Investigator on the “Critical Approaches to Development Studies” project at the American University of Beirut.
Institution: Anthropology Department at the University of California, Davis, USA
About: Suad Joseph is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Davis. She is the founder and founding president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association), founder and founding president of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) and founder/director of the Arab Families Working Group. She founded and directed the University of California Davis Arab Region Consortium. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. She is co-founder and founding president of the Arab American Studies Association and co-founder of the Association for Middle East Anthropology and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. She is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. She has edited or co-edited 12 books, and published over 100 articles in journals and books, most recently Arab Family Studies: Critical Reviews (2018); the award-winning Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal (2021): The Politics of Engaged Gender Research (2022); Handbook of Middle East Women (2022); and Reporting Islam: Muslim Women in the New York Times, 1979-2011 (2023). She is the founder and founding director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program at UC Davis, co-founder of the Feminist Research Institute. She was awarded the UC Davis Teaching & Research Prize; the Middle East Studies Association Jere L. Bacharach Life Time Service Award in 2019; the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies and the Arab American Studies Association life time service awards.
Institution: Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA
About: Mohammed Bamyeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and the incoming editor of the International Sociology Review of Books (ISRB). He has held the Hubert Humphrey chair in International Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the SSRC-MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. He has previously taught at Georgetown University, New York University, and the University of Massachusetts.
He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990. His subsequent areas of interest have included Islamic studies, sociology of religion, political and cultural globalization, civil society and social movements, and comparative social and political theory. His books include Anarchy as Order: The History and future of Civic Humanity (2009); Of Death and Dominion: The Existential Foundations of Governance (2007); The Ends of Globalization (2000); and The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse (1999, winner of the Albert Hourani Honorable Mention from the Middle East Studies Association). He has also edited Palestine America(published as a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, 2003), the forthcoming Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East (2011); and co-edited Drugs in Motion: Mind and Body Altering Substances in the World’s Cultural Economy (published as a special issue of Cultural Critique, 2009).
Institution: Department of Social And Behavioral Science at Birzeit University, Palestine
About: Abaher El Sakka is Associate Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Birzeit University, holder of a PhD in Sociology from the University of Nantes – France. Graduate of the Higher School of Social Organization Management – Saint Etienne – France. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Nantes from 1998-2006, and a visiting professor at several French and Belgian universities from 2009-2023. He has authored many scientific studies and articles in the fields of social sciences and their history, socio-artistic expressions, social movements, identity, memory, nationalities, urban studies. Editor-In-Chief of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology, Vice-chair, Board of Trustees, The Arab Council for the Social Sciences, President of Palestinian Sociological Association.
Institution: Hassan 2 University, Morocco
About: Fadma Ait Mous is currently Professor of sociology at Aïn Chock Faculty of Letters and the Humanities (University Hassan II of Casablanca), Head of the Sociology Department at the same faculty, Researcher and joint Director of the Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Différenciations Socio Anthropologiques et les Identités Sociales (LADSIS). Associate researcher at Economia HEM Research Center (Rabat), and General Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (Beyrouth). Member of the Executive Council of the Merian Center for Advanced Study in the Maghreb (MECAM, Tunis) ; Member of the Pan-African Scientific Research Center; Fellow of TALIM, TANGIER AMERICAN LEGATION INSTITUTE FOR MOROCCAN STUDIES; Member of the Scientific Commission n°4 (CSS4) of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and Founding Member of Fatima Mernissi Chair. Her research is mainly focused on issues related to nationalism and social movements, gender and socio-political transformations, history and memory, youth cultures, social media and migration. Her recent publications include: -“Pluralizing the oasis extensions: Heterogeneous farming profiles and practices in Toudgha (Morocco)”, (with H. Er Rayhany, Z. Kadiri, L. Bossenbroek), in New Medit, A Mediterranean Journal of Economics, Agriculture and Environment, vol. 21, no. 05, 20 Dec. 2022 ; – “Sub-Saharan and Syrian women’s embodying migration experiences in Casablanca” (with S. Benbelli & S. Ettallab), in The Elgar Companion to Gender and Global Migration: Beyond Western Research. Dir. Natalia Ribas-Mateos, Saskia Sassen. Edward Elgare Publishing, 2022.; – Les jeunes du Maroc. Comprendre les dynamiques pour un nouveau contrat social. (dir. F. Ait Mous & Z. Kadiri), Economia Book, Economia-HEM Research Center, Rabat, 2021.
Institution: American University of Beirut, Lebanon
About: Mona Fawaz is Professor in Urban Studies and Planning at the American University of Beirut where she has co-founded the Beirut Urban Lab, a regional research center invested in working towards more inclusive, just, and viable cities. Mona’s research spans across urban history and historiography, social and spatial justice, informality and the law, land, housing, property and space. She is the author of over 50 scholarly articles, book sections, and reports in Arabic, French and English. She has also worked as a consultant, advising on urban and regional development as well as housing, land, and property issues. In addition, Mona has been tightly involved in Beirut’s ongoing transformations by publishing in the local press and speaking in numerous local venues where she has advocated for upgrading informal settlements, protecting the urban commons, improving urban livability, adopting more inclusive planning standards, and more generally, defending the right to the city for the urban majorities. Mona holds a BArch (1995) from the American University of Beirut, a MCP (1998) and Ph.D. (1994) in Urban Studies and Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University during the 2014/15 academic year and in Summer 2017. She has served on numerous juries, including the Aga Khan awards in 2019. She is also member of the editorial board of the journals Planning Theory, the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, and City and Society. Mona is a board member for the Arab Council for Social Science, The Century Foundation International, and The Policy Initiative.
Institution: National Council for Science and Technology, CONACYT, Mexico.
About: She is currently part of Conacyt Chair, at the Dr. Hideyo Noguchi Regional Research Center, Social Sciences Unit, Autonomous University of Yucatan with the project: “Towards new social policies for the sustainable development of the energy sector in Yucatan.”Member of the national system of researchers with a SNI level 1.Technical. Manager of the Pronaces project entitled: “Sustainable Mayan communities: towards the design of new trans-regional and comprehensive rural energy models for the sustainable development of the state of Yucatan”, approved within the framework of the call FOP04-2021-03 “PROJECTS OF RESEARCH AND ADVOCACY TO MOVE TO A SOCIALLY AND ENVIRONMENTALLY SUSTAINABLE ENERGY SYSTEM. She has a degree in Sociology from the Mohammed V University, Rabat. Morocco. Master’s in social Anthropology from the Iztapalapa Metropolitan Autonomous University. Master in Family Sociology. Mohammed V University, Rabat. Morocco and PhD in Social Anthropology from the Iztapalapa Metropolitan Autonomous University. She has extensive experience in social impact projects in rural and indigenous communities. Her topics of interest are Migration, Gender, sustainable development. Energy governance and poverty. She has several recent publications in prestigious magazines as a member of the steering committee of the Arab council for social sciences.
Institution:Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco
About: Driss Maghraoui received his BA. in history and French studies at Rider University, New Jersey and his MA. and PhD. in History and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz ,USA. His academic interests revolve around North African and Middle Eastern history as well social theory, cultural studies, historical memory and contemporary Moroccan politics. He is currently an Associate Professor of history and international relations at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. Maghraoui is a founding member of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and has had the opportunity to be involved with ACSS since the first year of its establishment. He has served in different committees including the ACSS Post-Doctoral Mobility Fellowship and the Organizing Committee for the “Power, Borders and Ecologies” 2019 conference. He has contributed to different activities involving ACSS in Morocco. He is also a founding member of the Rabat Social Studies Institute which is an independent research think thank focusing on social, economic and political issues in Morocco.
Driss Maghraoui is the co-editor of Reforms in the Arab World: the Experience of Morocco , Mediterranean Politics, 2009 and the editor of Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco , 2013 by Routledge and more recently co-editor with Noureddine Harrami and Khalid Mouna L’immigration au Maroc : les défis de l’intégration, Fondation Heinrich Bölland Rabat Social Studies Institute, 2017.
Institution: Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Qatar
About: Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab is Associate Professor of philosophy at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. She is the author of Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective (Columbia University Press, 2010) and Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution. The Egyptian and Syrian Debates (Columbia University Press, 2019). Both have been translated into Arabic.
Institution: University of Oxford, United Kingdom; European External Action Service, European Union
About: Dr Hussam Hussein is a member of ACSS Board of Trustees since 2021, and is a member of the sub-committee on Publications. Dr. Hussam Hussein is an academic, policy, and international development expert specialising in water diplomacy, environmental governance, and sustainable development. As a research associate in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, he explores the role of power dynamics in water governance. His interdisciplinary approach integrates insights from political science, environmental studies, and international relations, addressing critical issues such as water scarcity, climate change impacts, and the equitable distribution of water resources.
He has also been promoting the voices of Early Career Researchers and academics from the MENA region, as well as fostering trust in science. These initiatives are central to his roles as an Executive Committee member of the Global Young Academy, a Fellow of the International Science Council, a member of the board of trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, and a Fellow of the Young Academy of Sustainability at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS).
His academic journey includes a BA and MA in International Relations and Diplomacy from the University of Trieste – Gorizia (Italy), studies in Middle Eastern Studies at SOAS, University of London, and an MA in Interdisciplinary European Studies from the College of Europe. He earned his PhD at the School of International Development, University of East Anglia, with a dissertation on the discourse of water scarcity in Jordan and its implications for transboundary water governance.
Institution: Social Anthropology Department at the University of Khartoum, Sudan
About: Munzoul Assal is professor of social anthropology and Dean of Scientific Research at University of Khartoum. He is also professor II, department of social anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. Assal is a member of the Board of Trustees, the Arab Council for Social Sciences.
Institution: University of Batna 1, Algeria
About: Anthropologist from Algeria, and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Batna 1 in Algeria. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Arab Journal of Contemporary Anthropological Studies, General Supervisor of the “Fa’iloun” Center for Research in Anthropology, Humanities and Social Sciences, Founder and Director of the “Anthropos” website, which is the first Arab site dedicated to anthropology, and active member in several international associations including: ACSS BOT member in Beirut, Head of the Anthropology Unit at the International Network for Arab Societies Study (INASS), member of the Council of National Societies at the International Sociological Association (ISA) (Madrid), member of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences (IUAES) (Tokyo), member of the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) (Amsterdam), and Referee Member of several refereed journals. He has written several books and articles; he serves as a Certified Instructor at Carpentries and Odum Institute/ACSS in Research Data Management. He is also the Developer and Instructor of Google Apps For Researchers and Digital Identity For Researchers. ACSS Postdoctoral Early Career Fellow in Beirut for 2018-2019, with a project entitled “Atlas of Horses and Fantasia in Algeria”. His research interests focus on heritage and digital anthropology; he is fond of programming and design and passionate with modern technologies; he loves books and reading, especially novels. He dreams of popularizing anthropology for everyone to understand, and seeks to disseminate it among people and implement it to solve the problems of Arab societies and develop them.
Institution: Former Jordanian Minister for Planning and International Cooperation and former Regional Director of International Labor Organization, Jordan
About: Mary Kawar is a social and economic policy expert and former Jordanian Minister for Planning and International Cooperation. She served at the International Labour Organisation for 20 years where she held senior positions in the ILO headquarters in Geneva, the Regional Office for Arab States in Beirut, and the subregional office for East Africa in Dar El Salaam. Her areas of expertise range from labour policy and employment, social protection, gender, youth and refugee livelihoods. She is currently the director of Tiraz: Widad Kawar Home for Arab Dress and is serving on the Board of directors at the Jordan Central Bank. She is also an advisor to several national and regional think tanks and NGOs. During her career she had bridged academic research with development policy and programming. She holds a PhD from the London School of Economics.
Institution: Anthropology Department at the University of California, Davis, USA
About: Suad Joseph is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Davis. She is the founder and founding president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association), founder and founding president of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) and founder/director of the Arab Families Working Group. She founded and directed the University of California Davis Arab Region Consortium. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. She is co-founder and founding president of the Arab American Studies Association and co-founder of the Association for Middle East Anthropology and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. She is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. She has edited or co-edited 12 books, and published over 100 articles in journals and books, most recently Arab Family Studies: Critical Reviews (2018); the award-winning Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal (2021): The Politics of Engaged Gender Research (2022); Handbook of Middle East Women (2022); and Reporting Islam: Muslim Women in the New York Times, 1979-2011 (2023). She is the founder and founding director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program at UC Davis, co-founder of the Feminist Research Institute. She was awarded the UC Davis Teaching & Research Prize; the Middle East Studies Association Jere L. Bacharach Life Time Service Award in 2019; the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies and the Arab American Studies Association life time service awards.
Institution: Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.
About: Mohammed Bamyeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and the incoming editor of the International Sociology Review of Books (ISRB). He has held the Hubert Humphrey chair in International Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the SSRC-MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. He has previously taught at Georgetown University, New York University, and the University of Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990. His subsequent areas of interest have included Islamic studies, sociology of religion, political and cultural globalization, civil society and social movements, and comparative social and political theory. His books include Anarchy as Order: The History and future of Civic Humanity (2009); Of Death and Dominion: The Existential Foundations of Governance (2007); The Ends of Globalization (2000); and The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse (1999, winner of the Albert Hourani Honorable Mention from the Middle East Studies Association). He has also edited Palestine America(published as a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, 2003), the forthcoming Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East (2011); and co-edited Drugs in Motion: Mind and Body Altering Substances in the World’s Cultural Economy (published as a special issue of Cultural Critique, 2009).
Institution: Applied Social Science Forum, Tunisia.
About: Dr Abdelkader Latreche is a sociologist and demographer. He received his PhD in 1990 in Paris 1 University. His focus was on the International Migration of El Maghreb students. His international experience covers teaching with Paris 8 University, Research with different French institutions and European University Institute. He contributes to different international agencies such as UNESCO, ESCWA, UNDP, Arab League states on international migration in Arab States, youth in Arab region and the labor market. Since 2006, he is a member of the advisory board of Applied Social Sciences Forum in Tunisia. Since 2017 he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences. He is currently based in Qatar. His publication covers international migration in Arab countries. Other publications are under preparation.
Institution: Hassan 2 University, Morocco
About: Fadma Ait Mous is currently Professor of sociology at Aïn Chock Faculty of Letters and the Humanities (University Hassan II of Casablanca), Head of the Sociology Department at the same faculty, Researcher and joint Director of the Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Différenciations Socio Anthropologiques et les Identités Sociales (LADSIS). Associate researcher at Economia HEM Research Center (Rabat), and General Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for Social Sciences (Beyrouth). Member of the Executive Council of the Merian Center for Advanced Study in the Maghreb (MECAM, Tunis); Member of the Pan-African Scientific Research Center; Fellow of TALIM, TANGIER AMERICAN LEGATION INSTITUTE FOR MOROCCAN STUDIES; Member of the Scientific Commission n°4 (CSS4) of the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and Founding Member of Fatima Mernissi Chair. Her research is mainly focused on issues related to nationalism and social movements, gender and socio-political transformations, history and memory, youth cultures, social media and migration. Her recent publications include: -“Pluralizing the oasis extensions: Heterogeneous farming profiles and practices in Toudgha (Morocco)”, (with H. Er Rayhany, Z. Kadiri, L. Bossenbroek), in New Medit, A Mediterranean Journal of Economics, Agriculture and Environment, vol. 21, no. 05, 20 Dec. 2022 ; – “Sub-Saharan and Syrian women’s embodying migration experiences in Casablanca” (with S. Benbelli & S. Ettallab), in The Elgar Companion to Gender and Global Migration: Beyond Western Research. Dir. Natalia Ribas-Mateos, Saskia Sassen. Edward Elgare Publishing, 2022.; – Les jeunes du Maroc. Comprendre les dynamiques pour un nouveau contrat social. (dir. F. Ait Mous & Z. Kadiri), Economia Book, Economia-HEM Research Center, Rabat, 2021.
Institution: Department of Economics at the Lebanese American University, Lebanon
About: Dr. Ghassan Dibeh is a professor of economics and the Associate Dean for the Adnan Kassar School of Business. He holds a BA in Physics and an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Texas. His research appeared in journals such as Physica A, Computational Economics, Review of Political Economy, Energy Economics, Journal of International Development, Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Industrial Relations, International Migration, and Tourism Economics as well as in edited books.
Institution: Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, USA
About: Ragui Assaad, professor, researches education, labor policy, and labor market analysis in developing countries with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His current work focuses on inequality of opportunity in education, labor markets, transitions from school-to-work, employment and unemployment dynamics, family formation, informality, labor market responses to economic shocks, international migration, including the effects of forced migration.
Assaad is a Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum in Cairo, Egypt and serves on its board of trustees. He is also Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He served as Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa for the Population Council, based in Cairo, Egypt, from 2005 to 2008. Assaad has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the Ford Foundation, UNICEF and UNDP.
Institution: Social Anthropology Department at the University of Khartoum, Sudan
About: Munzoul Assal is professor of social anthropology and Dean of Scientific Research at University of Khartoum. He is also professor II, department of social anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. Assal is a member of the Board of Trustees, the Arab Council for Social Sciences.
Institution: Faculty of Arts and Humanities at Mohammed V University, Morocco
About: Mokhtar El Harras, a professor of Sociology at Mohamed V University in Rabat, is the president of the Master and Doctorate programs at the faculty of Humanities in Rabat, and a member of the National Evaluation Agency of the research Quality at the Ministry of Higher Education, as well as a member of the Hesperis Tamuda Review’s board. He is also a board’s member of the Arab Council Social Sciences Monitor and a co-coordinator of the Fatema Mernissi’s Chair. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on rural development, rural women, youth, family, international and transnational migration, qualitative methods in social sciences, media Sociology, public space, and the image of the “other”. Among the books published, “Tribe and Power in Northern Morocco”, “Fertility and Culture” (in collaboration with D. Bensaid), “Women and decision taking”, “Applying the Family Code” (in collaboration with F. Sarehane), “Youth and Media in Morocco”.
Institution: Department of Social and Behavioral Science at Birzeit University, Palestine
About: Abaher El Sakka is Associate Professor, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Birzeit University, holder of a PhD in Sociology from the University of Nantes – France. Graduate of the Higher School of Social Organization Management – Saint Etienne – France. He worked as a lecturer at the University of Nantes from 1998-2006, and a visiting professor at several French and Belgian universities from 2009-2023. He has authored many scientific studies and articles in the fields of social sciences and their history, socio-artistic expressions, social movements, identity, memory, nationalities, urban studies. Editor-In-Chief of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology, Vice-chair, Board of Trustees, The Arab Council for the Social Sciences, President of Palestinian Sociological Association.
Institution: Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, USA
About: Bassam Haddad is the Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of the forthcoming book, A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine. Bassam is Co-Project Manager for the Salon Syria Project and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA’s Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book tittled Understanding The Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
Institution: Graduate Program in Urban Planning at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
About: Mona Harb is a professor of urban studies and politics at the American University of Beirut where she is also co-founder and research lead at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research investigates urban governance and city-making in contexts of disasters and polycrises, and the role of urban activists in collective action and oppositional politics. She is the author of Le Hezbollah à Beirut: de la banlieue à la ville, co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’i South Beirut (with Lara Deeb), co-editor of Local Governments and Public Goods: Assessing Decentralization in the Arab World (with Sami Atallah), and co-editor of Refugees as City-Makers (with Mona Fawaz et al.), and of more than eighty journal articles, book chapters, and other publications. Harb is the recipient of grants from the IDRC, Fondation de France, Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, LSE-Emirates Fund, EU-FP7, Wenner-Gren, ACLS, and the Middle-East Awards. She contributes to the editorial boards of IJMES, Environment and Planning C, CSSAME and IJURR. She is currently the Coordinator of the graduate programs in Urban Planning, Policy and Design, and was previously Chairperson of the department of Architecture and Design, and Associate Dean of her faculty. She provides professional advice on urban development issues for several international organizations (UNDP, WB, ESCWA).
Institution: Anthropology Department at the University of California, Davis, USA
About: Suad Joseph is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Davis. She is the founder and founding president of the Middle East Section of the American Anthropological Association), founder and founding president of the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) and founder/director of the Arab Families Working Group. She founded and directed the University of California Davis Arab Region Consortium. She was president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. She is co-founder and founding president of the Arab American Studies Association and co-founder of the Association for Middle East Anthropology and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. She is General Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures. She has edited or co-edited 12 books, and published over 100 articles in journals and books, most recently Arab Family Studies: Critical Reviews (2018); the award-winning Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal (2021): The Politics of Engaged Gender Research (2022); Handbook of Middle East Women (2022); and Reporting Islam: Muslim Women in the New York Times, 1979-2011 (2023). She is the founder and founding director of the Middle East/South Asia Studies Program at UC Davis, co-founder of the Feminist Research Institute. She was awarded the UC Davis Teaching & Research Prize; the Middle East Studies Association Jere L. Bacharach Life Time Service Award in 2019; the Association for Middle East Women’s Studies and the Arab American Studies Association life time service awards.
Institution: Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco.
About: Driss Maghraoui received his BA. in history and French studies at Rider University, New Jersey and his MA. and PhD. in History and Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz ,USA. His academic interests revolve around North African and Middle Eastern history as well social theory, cultural studies, historical memory and contemporary Moroccan politics. He is currently an Associate Professor of history and international relations at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco. Maghraoui is a founding member of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and has had the opportunity to be involved with ACSS since the first year of its establishment. He has served in different committees including the ACSS Post-Doctoral Mobility Fellowship and the Organizing Committee for the “Power, Borders and Ecologies” 2019 conference. He has contributed to different activities involving ACSS in Morocco. He is also a founding member of the Rabat Social Studies Institute which is an independent research think thank focusing on social, economic and political issues in Morocco.
Driss Maghraoui is the co-editor of Reforms in the Arab World: the Experience of Morocco , Mediterranean Politics, 2009 and the editor of Revisiting the Colonial Past in Morocco , 2013 by Routledge and more recently co-editor with Noureddine Harrami and Khalid Mouna L’immigration au Maroc : les défis de l’intégration, Fondation Heinrich Bölland Rabat Social Studies Institute, 2017.
Institution: School of Architecture and Built Environment at the German Jordanian University, Amman.
About: Rami Farouk Daher, Ph. D., M. Arch., B.Sc. Rami Daher Rami Daher is Associate Professor at the School of Architect and Built Environment at the German Jordanian University (GJU) and a practicing architect and general director at TURATH: Architecture & Urban Design Consultants. He taught at the American University of Beirut’s Department of Architecture & Design; at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, and at Jordan University of Science & Tech (holding position of Department Head between 2003 and 2006). Daher had earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Jordan (1988), a Master of Architecture from the University of Minnesota (1991), a PhD in Architecture from Texas A&M U (1995), and was a recipient of a FULBRIGHT Scholarship through which he did his post-doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley (2001). Daher is a co-founder and a principal of TURATH: Architecture & Urban Design Consultants (1999-present), and Metropolis: Cities Research Council (2008- Present), the research arm of TURATH. At TURATH, Daher had led several key projects on urban regeneration and public space design, heritage conservation & management, adaptive reuse of heirtage sites, urban planning, and other in Amman and in the region. Furthermore, Daher had also led projects on the preparation of conservation mangement plans, and nomination files of various sites to the World Heriage.
Institution: Graduate Program in Urban Planning at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
About: Mona Harb is a professor of urban studies and politics at the American University of Beirut where she is also co-founder and research lead at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research investigates urban governance and city-making in contexts of disasters and polycrises, and the role of urban activists in collective action and oppositional politics. She is the author of Le Hezbollah à Beirut: de la banlieue à la ville, co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’i South Beirut (with Lara Deeb), co-editor of Local Governments and Public Goods: Assessing Decentralization in the Arab World (with Sami Atallah), and co-editor of Refugees as City-Makers (with Mona Fawaz et al.), and of more than eighty journal articles, book chapters, and other publications. Harb is the recipient of grants from the IDRC, Fondation de France, Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, LSE-Emirates Fund, EU-FP7, Wenner-Gren, ACLS, and the Middle-East Awards. She contributes to the editorial boards of IJMES, Environment and Planning C, CSSAME and IJURR. She is currently the Coordinator of the graduate programs in Urban Planning, Policy and Design, and was previously Chairperson of the department of Architecture and Design, and Associate Dean of her faculty. She provides professional advice on urban development issues for several international organizations (UNDP, WB, ESCWA).
Institution: Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the Mohammed V University, Morocco.
About: Mokhtar El Harras, a professor of Sociology at Mohamed V University in Rabat, is the president of the Master and Doctorate programs at the faculty of Humanities in Rabat, and a member of the National Evaluation Agency of the research Quality at the Ministry of Higher Education, as well as a member of the Hesperis Tamuda Review’s board. He is also a board’s member of the Arab Council Social Sciences Monitor and a co-coordinator of the Fatema Mernissi’s Chair. He is the author of numerous articles and book chapters on rural development, rural women, youth, family, international and transnational migration, qualitative methods in social sciences, media Sociology, public space, and the image of the “other”. Among the books published, “Tribe and Power in Northern Morocco”, “Fertility and Culture” (in collaboration with D. Bensaid), “Women and decision taking”, “Applying the Family Code” (in collaboration with F. Sarehane), “Youth and Media in Morocco”.
Institution: Department of Economics at the Lebanese American University, Lebanon.
About: Dr. Ghassan Dibeh is a professor of economics and the Associate Dean for the Adnan Kassar School of Business. He holds a BA in Physics and an MA and PhD in Economics from the University of Texas. His research appeared in journals such as Physica A, Computational Economics, Review of Political Economy, Energy Economics, Journal of International Development, Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Industrial Relations, International Migration, and Tourism Economics as well as in edited books.
Institution: Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, USA
About: Ragui Assaad, professor, researches education, labor policy, and labor market analysis in developing countries with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His current work focuses on inequality of opportunity in education, labor markets, transitions from school-to-work, employment and unemployment dynamics, family formation, informality, labor market responses to economic shocks, international migration, including the effects of forced migration.
Assaad is a Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum in Cairo, Egypt and serves on its board of trustees. He is also Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He served as Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa for the Population Council, based in Cairo, Egypt, from 2005 to 2008.Assaad has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the Ford Foundation, UNICEF and UNDP.
Institution: Social Anthropology Department at the University of Khartoum, Sudan
About: Munzoul Assal is professor of social anthropology and Dean of Scientific Research at University of Khartoum. He is also professor II, department of social anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. Assal is a member of the Board of Trustees, the Arab Council for Social Sciences.
Institution: Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.
About: Mohammed Bamyeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and the incoming editor of the International Sociology Review of Books (ISRB). He has held the Hubert Humphrey chair in International Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the SSRC-MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. He has previously taught at Georgetown University, New York University, and the University of Massachusetts.
He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990. His subsequent areas of interest have included Islamic studies, sociology of religion, political and cultural globalization, civil society and social movements, and comparative social and political theory. His books include Anarchy as Order: The History and future of Civic Humanity (2009); Of Death and Dominion: The Existential Foundations of Governance (2007); The Ends of Globalization (2000); and The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse (1999, winner of the Albert Hourani Honorable Mention from the Middle East Studies Association). He has also edited Palestine America(published as a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, 2003), the forthcoming Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East (2011); and co-edited Drugs in Motion: Mind and Body Altering Substances in the World’s Cultural Economy (published as a special issue of Cultural Critique, 2009).
Institution: Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, USA
About: Bassam Haddad is the Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of the forthcoming book, A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine. Bassam is Co-Project Manager for the Salon Syria Project and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA’s Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book tittled Understanding The Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
Institution: Applied Social Science Forum, Tunisia.
About: Dr Abdelkader Latreche is a sociologist and demographer. He received his PhD in 1990 in Paris 1 University. His focus was on the International Migration of El Maghreb students. His international experience covers teaching with Paris 8 University, Research with different French institutions and European University Institute. He contributes to different international agencies such as UNESCO, ESCWA, UNDP, Arab League states on international migration in Arab States, youth in Arab region and the labor market. Since 2006, he is a member of the advisory board of Applied Social Sciences Forum in Tunisia. Since 2017 he is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences. He is currently based in Qatar. His publication covers international migration in Arab countries. Other publications are under preparation.
Institution: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
University of London, UK.
About: Ruba Salih is a Professor of Anthropology at the Department of the Arts. After graduating in Political Science at the University of Bologna in 1994, she was awarded a Marie Curie grant and obtained a PhD in Social Anthropology in 2000 from the University of Sussex.
From 2010-2022 she was based at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, first in the Department of Gender Studies and as Full Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Prior to joining SOAS she held a position as a Senior Lecturer in Gender and Middle East Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. (2007-2010). Prior to this she was a researcher at the University of Bologna. Her research interests and writing cover transnational migration and diasporas across, borders, colonisation and decolonisation, refugees and the Palestine question, gender memory and colonial traumas, the Middle East and Europe.
She has been an elected Member of the Board of the Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences from 2015 to 2019.
Institution: American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII) Amman, Jordan.
About: Lucine Taminian is a senior researcher in residence at The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, based in Amman, Jordan. She has written and edited numerous books on her research in Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen. She also is on the editorial board for the Jordanian magazine al-Mastoor that is dedicated to the issued of poverty.
Institution: PhD Program Director at Birzeit University, Palestine.
About: Lisa Taraki, born in 1948, is an Afghan-born Palestinian journalist, teacher and sociologist. She is an associate professor of sociology at Birzeit University in the West Bank and former Dean of its graduate students. She is the co-founder of the university’s Institute of Women’s Studies and founding Director of the doctoral program in social sciences. Taraki is also the co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a campaign that spearheaded the BDS movement and advocates for academic and cultural boycotts of Israel until it stops what they see as violations of the Palestinians’ human rights. She has also served as the director of the board of trustees for Al Haq. She has been a visiting scholar at Brown University, at the University of Cambridge and at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari.
Institution: Political Science Department United Arab Emirates University, UAE.
About: Abdulkhaleq Abdulla is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain. He holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Georgetown University and an MA degree in Political Science from the American University in Washington DC. His research interests include political change in the Gulf and the Arab World, Gulf security, contemporary issues pertaining to the Arab Gulf states and international relations. Dr. Abdulla was a Fulbright scholar during the Spring 1995 semester at the Center for Global South, the American University. He was also appointed as a visiting professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University. He has attended seminars and lectured in universities and research centers around the world, including Japan, the Arab World, Europe, Australia and the United States. Among Dr. Abdulla’s publications are: The Arab Gulf States at the Turn of the Century (editor, 1999); The Gulf Regional System (1998); Contemporary Gulf Issues (editor, 1998); Civil Society in the United Arab Emirates(co-author, 1996); The World Today (1989); Dependency and Political Dependency (1986). Some of his recent articles include: “The Gulf Cooperation Council: Nature, Origin and Process,” in Michael Hudson, The Middle East Dilemma (Columbia University Press, 1999); “The US-GCC Relationship: The Current Phase,” in Phebe Marr and Patrick Clawson, The US-GCC Relationship (1998); “The GCC-Yemen Relationship” (Journal of Social Sciences, 1998); “Globalization: Origin and Process” (Journal of Ideas, 1999); “The End of Political Science” (Journal of Social Sciences, 1999). His current topic of research is “The Shifting Paradigms of Gulf Security.”
Institution: Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut.
About: Sari Hanafi is Professor of Sociology, Director of Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies and Chair of the Islamic Studies program at the American University of Beirut. He is the President of the International Sociological Association. Among his recent books: co-authored Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise.
Institution: American Academic Research Institute in Iraq (TAARII). Amman, Jordan.
About: Lucine Taminian is a senior researcher in residence at The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, based in Amman, Jordan. She has written and edited numerous books on her research in Lebanon, Jordan and Yemen. She also is on the editorial board for the Jordanian magazine al-Mastoor that is dedicated to the issued of poverty.
Institution: Graduate Program in Urban Planning at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
About: Mona Harb is a professor of urban studies and politics at the American University of Beirut where she is also co-founder and research lead at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research investigates urban governance and city-making in contexts of disasters and polycrises, and the role of urban activists in collective action and oppositional politics. She is the author of Le Hezbollah à Beirut: de la banlieue à la ville, co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’i South Beirut (with Lara Deeb), co-editor of Local Governments and Public Goods: Assessing Decentralization in the Arab World (with Sami Atallah), and co-editor of Refugees as City-Makers (with Mona Fawaz et al.), and of more than eighty journal articles, book chapters, and other publications. Harb is the recipient of grants from the IDRC, Fondation de France, Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, LSE-Emirates Fund, EU-FP7, Wenner-Gren, ACLS, and the Middle-East Awards. She contributes to the editorial boards of IJMES, Environment and Planning C, CSSAME and IJURR. She is currently the Coordinator of the graduate programs in Urban Planning, Policy and Design, and was previously Chairperson of the department of Architecture and Design, and Associate Dean of her faculty. She provides professional advice on urban development issues for several international organizations (UNDP, WB, ESCWA).
Institution: Social Anthropology Department at the University of Khartoum, Sudan.
About: Munzoul Assal is professor of social anthropology and Dean of Scientific Research at University of Khartoum. He is also professor II, department of social anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. Assal is a member of the Board of Trustees, the Arab Council for Social Sciences.
Institution: Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh, USA.
About: Mohammed Bamyeh is a professor of sociology at the University of Pittsburgh and the incoming editor of the International Sociology Review of Books (ISRB). He has held the Hubert Humphrey chair in International Studies at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and the SSRC-MacArthur Fellowship in International Peace and Security. He has previously taught at Georgetown University, New York University, and the University of Massachusetts.
He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1990. His subsequent areas of interest have included Islamic studies, sociology of religion, political and cultural globalization, civil society and social movements, and comparative social and political theory. His books include Anarchy as Order: The History and future of Civic Humanity (2009); Of Death and Dominion: The Existential Foundations of Governance (2007); The Ends of Globalization (2000); and The Social Origins of Islam: Mind, Economy, Discourse (1999, winner of the Albert Hourani Honorable Mention from the Middle East Studies Association). He has also edited Palestine America (published as a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, 2003), the forthcoming Intellectuals and Civil Society in the Middle East (2011); and co-edited Drugs in Motion: Mind and Body Altering Substances in the World’s Cultural Economy (published as a special issue of Cultural Critique, 2009).
Institution: School of Architecture and Built Environment at the German Jordanian University, Amman.
About: Rami Farouk Daher, Ph. D., M. Arch., B.Sc. Rami Daher Rami Daher is Associate Professor at the School of Architect and Built Environment at the German Jordanian University (GJU) and a practicing architect and general director at TURATH: Architecture & Urban Design Consultants. He taught at the American University of Beirut’s Department of Architecture & Design; at Texas A&M’s College of Architecture, and at Jordan University of Science & Tech (holding position of Department Head between 2003 and 2006). Daher had earned a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Jordan (1988), a Master of Architecture from the University of Minnesota (1991), a PhD in Architecture from Texas A&M U (1995), and was a recipient of a FULBRIGHT Scholarship through which he did his post-doctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley (2001). Daher is a co-founder and a principal of TURATH: Architecture & Urban Design Consultants (1999-present), and Metropolis: Cities Research Council (2008- Present), the research arm of TURATH. At TURATH, Daher had led several key projects on urban regeneration and public space design, heritage conservation & management, adaptive reuse of heirtage sites, urban planning, and other in Amman and in the region. Furthermore, Daher had also led projects on the preparation of conservation mangement plans, and nomination files of various sites to the World Heriage.
Institution: Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, USA.
About: Bassam Haddad is the Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of the forthcoming book, A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine. Bassam is Co-Project Manager for the Salon Syria Project and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA’s Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book tittled Understanding The Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
Institution: School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
University of London, UK.
About: Ruba Salih is a Professor of Anthropology at the Department of the Arts. After graduating in Political Science at the University of Bologna in 1994, she was awarded a Marie Curie grant and obtained a PhD in Social Anthropology in 2000 from the University of Sussex.
From 2010-2022 she was based at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, first in the Department of Gender Studies and as Full Professor in the Department of Anthropology. Prior to joining SOAS she held a position as a Senior Lecturer in Gender and Middle East Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. (2007-2010). Prior to this she was a researcher at the University of Bologna. Her research interests and writing cover transnational migration and diasporas across, borders, colonisation and decolonisation, refugees and the Palestine question, gender memory and colonial traumas, the Middle East and Europe.
She has been an elected Member of the Board of the Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences from 2015 to 2019.
She has been a visiting scholar at Brown University, at the University of Cambridge and at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari.
Institution: Social Research Center at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.
About: Egyptian anthropologist and holder of a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science at the University of London. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the American University in Cairo. She is currently serving as an Associate Research Professor at the Center for Social Research at the American University in Cairo. She has spent a decade working on social protection issues; she designed and led cash transfer programs for the Egyptian government in her capacity as Special Adviser to the Ministry of Social Solidarity. She is an advocate of feminist social protection and has lobbied for the right of women to receive care and pensions on their own and not as a dependents. She was the Regional Coordinator of the Pathways to Women’s Empowerment Research Consortium in association with the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, UK. Prior to her current position, she was Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. She has also served as a Research Associate at the National Population Council, and was a Junior Research Fellow in the Loma Evans Pritchard’s Program at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. Her research interests and publications primarily relate to the areas of poverty, health – particularly reproductive health – gender, population, and qualitative approaches. She co-edited two volumes, one titled “Categories and Contexts: Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical demography” with S. Zerter and A. Dharmalingam and the other entitled “Health and Identity in Egypt” (American University Press) with F. Ghannam. 69.
Institution: PhD Program Director at Birzeit University, Palestine.
About: Lisa Taraki, born in 1948, is an Afghan-born Palestinian journalist, teacher and sociologist. She is an associate professor of sociology at Birzeit University in the West Bank and former Dean of its graduate students. She is the co-founder of the university’s Institute of Women’s Studies and founding Director of the doctoral program in social sciences. Taraki is also the co-founder of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), a campaign that spearheaded the BDS movement and advocates for academic and cultural boycotts of Israel until it stops what they see as violations of the Palestinians’ human rights. She has also served as the director of the board of trustees for Al Haq.
Institution: Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at
Mohammed V University
Ex-President, Hassan II University Mohammedia, Morocco.
About: Director of National Evaluation Authority in the Higher Council of education training and research in Morocco (Appointed in 2014), Former President of Hassan II University Mohammedia Casablanca, Former dean and Professor of Sociology in Mohamed V University Agdal Rabat. She is also member of the Moroccan Royal Academy. She has been an invited lecturer or presenter at research activities at universities in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. She was recognized with an honorary degree honoris causa from Indiana State university in USA in 2006, from Liege University Belgium and from Université Paris Ouest Nanterre in Paris France in 2010.
Institution: Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies
American University of Beirut, Lebanon
About: Fawwaz Traboulsi is a Lebanese historian and writer who holds degrees from the American University of Beirut and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He is currently Professor at the Lebanese American University. He is a leading intellectual in Lebanon and prominent figure on the Lebanese left. Founder of Bidayat, an intellectual review, he has also authored a number of books, including A History of Modern Lebanon (Pluto Press, 2007).
Institution: Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine.
About: Dr. Abdul Karim Barghouti is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University, where his research interests focus on the History of philosophy, Contemporary Arabic studies, Islamic philosophy and Sufism.
Institution: Graduate Program in Urban Planning at the American University of Beirut, Lebanon.
About: Mona Harb is a professor of urban studies and politics at the American University of Beirut where she is also co-founder and research lead at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research investigates urban governance and city-making in contexts of disasters and polycrises, and the role of urban activists in collective action and oppositional politics. She is the author of Le Hezbollah à Beirut: de la banlieue à la ville, co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’i South Beirut (with Lara Deeb), co-editor of Local Governments and Public Goods: Assessing Decentralization in the Arab World (with Sami Atallah), and co-editor of Refugees as City-Makers (with Mona Fawaz et al.), and of more than eighty journal articles, book chapters, and other publications. Harb is the recipient of grants from the IDRC, Fondation de France, Open Society Foundation, Ford Foundation, LSE-Emirates Fund, EU-FP7, Wenner-Gren, ACLS, and the Middle-East Awards. She contributes to the editorial boards of IJMES, Environment and Planning C, CSSAME and IJURR. She is currently the Coordinator of the graduate programs in Urban Planning, Policy and Design, and was previously Chairperson of the department of Architecture and Design, and Associate Dean of her faculty. She provides professional advice on urban development issues for several international organizations (UNDP, WB, ESCWA).
Institution: Political Science Department at the United Arab Emirates University, UAE.
About: Abdulkhaleq Abdulla is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the United Arab Emirates University in Al Ain. He holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Georgetown University and an MA degree in Political Science from the American University in Washington DC. His research interests include political change in the Gulf and the Arab World, Gulf security, contemporary issues pertaining to the Arab Gulf states and international relations. Dr. Abdulla was a Fulbright scholar during the Spring 1995 semester at the Center for Global South, the American University. He was also appointed as a visiting professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University. He has attended seminars and lectured in universities and research centers around the world, including Japan, the Arab World, Europe, Australia and the United States. Among Dr. Abdulla’s publications are: The Arab Gulf States at the Turn of the Century (editor, 1999); The Gulf Regional System (1998); Contemporary Gulf Issues (editor, 1998); Civil Society in the United Arab Emirates(co-author, 1996); The World Today (1989); Dependency and Political Dependency (1986). Some of his recent articles include: “The Gulf Cooperation Council: Nature, Origin and Process,” in Michael Hudson, The Middle East Dilemma (Columbia University Press, 1999); “The US-GCC Relationship: The Current Phase,” in Phebe Marr and Patrick Clawson, The US-GCC Relationship (1998); “The GCC-Yemen Relationship” (Journal of Social Sciences, 1998); “Globalization: Origin and Process” (Journal of Ideas, 1999); “The End of Political Science” (Journal of Social Sciences, 1999). His current topic of research is “The Shifting Paradigms of Gulf Security.”
Institution: Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, USA.
About: Ragui Assaad, professor, researches education, labor policy, and labor market analysis in developing countries with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His current work focuses on inequality of opportunity in education, labor markets, transitions from school-to-work, employment and unemployment dynamics, family formation, informality, labor market responses to economic shocks, international migration, including the effects of forced migration.
Assaad is a Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum in Cairo, Egypt and serves on its board of trustees. He is also Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He served as Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa for the Population Council, based in Cairo, Egypt, from 2005 to 2008. Assaad has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the Ford Foundation, UNICEF and UNDP.
Institution: Sociology Department at the University of Algiers, Algeria. Higher National School for Political Science, Algeria.
About: Nacer Djabi is the Director of the Algerian Institute for Social Research and Studies and the senior consultant of the Focal Point for the Arab Council for the Social Sciences in Algeria. He teaches political sociology at the University of Algiers. He wrote several books and conducted many studies about political elites, social movements, and trade unions. His most recent publications explored the Amazigh Movements in North Africa, the unions in Algeria, and the Algerian Spring.
Institution: Economics Department at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.
About: Abdelaziz Ezzelarab earned his BA from AUC in Economics and Political Science in 1975. He earned an MA in Economics from University of Toronto in 1977, and a Diploma in the Program on Investment Appraisal and Management from Harvard University in 1987. His Ph.D. in Islamic Studies came from Mc.Gill University in 2000. EzzelArab has worked at Egyptian American Bank, Barclays Bank in Bahrain, Egypt Investment Finance Corporation, and Arab Banking Corporation in Bahrain. His areas of specialty are Economic History of the Middle East, Economics of Egypt in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Political Economy of Development, and Project Evaluation.
Institution: Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University, USA.
About: Bassam Haddad is the Founding Director of the Middle East and Islamic Studies Program and Associate Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford University Press, 2011) and co-editor of the forthcoming book, A Critical Political Economy of the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2021). Bassam serves as Founding Editor of the Arab Studies Journal and the Knowledge Production Project. He is co-producer/director of the award-winning documentary film, About Baghdad, and director of the series Arabs and Terrorism. Bassam is Co-Founder/Editor of Jadaliyya Ezine and Executive Director of the Arab Studies Institute. He serves on the Board of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences and is Executive Producer of Status Audio Magazine. Bassam is Co-Project Manager for the Salon Syria Project and Director of the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative (MESPI). He received MESA’s Jere L. Bacharach Service Award in 2017 for his service to the profession. Currently, Bassam is working on his second Syria book tittled Understanding The Syrian Tragedy: Regime, Opposition, Outsiders (forthcoming, Stanford University Press).
Institution: Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut.
About: Sari Hanafi is Professor of Sociology, Director of Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies and Chair of the Islamic Studies program at the American University of Beirut. He is the President of the International Sociological Association. Among his recent books: co-authored Knowledge Production in the Arab World: The Impossible Promise.
Institution: Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine.
About: Associate Professor in Sociology and Women Studies Associate Professor in Sociology and Women Studies, Birzeit University, Palestine; studied Sociology at the AUB and Birzeit University, graduating with a BA in 1976; has an MA in sociology from Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, 1981; founding member and coordinator of ‘Our Production is Our Pride’ (a cooperative organization established in conjunction with Birzeit University) from 1985-94; co-founder of the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Ramallah, in 1990 (until 1995); served as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Al-Haq – Law in the Service of Man, Ramallah, from 1994-97; founding director of the Women Studies Institute at Birzeit University from 1996-7 and director of the Institute from 1998 to 2002. Has widely published on gender and development, Palestinian women’s movements and education as a vehicle for change.
Institution: Social Research Center at the American University in Cairo, Egypt.
About: Egyptian anthropologist and holder of a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science at the University of London. She received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the American University in Cairo. She is currently serving as an Associate Research Professor at the Center for Social Research at the American University in Cairo. She has spent a decade working on social protection issues; she designed and led cash transfer programs for the Egyptian government in her capacity as Special Adviser to the Ministry of Social Solidarity. She is an advocate of feminist social protection and has lobbied for the right of women to receive care and pensions on their own and not as a dependents. She was the Regional Coordinator of the Pathways to Women’s Empowerment Research Consortium in association with the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, UK. Prior to her current position, she was Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Egyptology at the American University in Cairo. She has also served as a Research Associate at the National Population Council, and was a Junior Research Fellow in the Loma Evans Pritchard’s Program at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford. Her research interests and publications primarily relate to the areas of poverty, health – particularly reproductive health – gender, population, and qualitative approaches. She co-edited two volumes, one titled “Categories and Contexts: Anthropological and Historical Studies in Critical demography” with S. Zerter and A. Dharmalingam and the other entitled “Health and Identity in Egypt” (American University Press) with F. Ghannam. 69
Institution: Women’s Studies Center at the University of Sana’a, Yemen.
About: Amatalrauf “Raufa Hassan” al-Sharki was an educator, feminist and human rights activist from Yemen. She was a professor of mass media and the director of a Women’s Studies Center at the University of Sana’a. Al-Sharki was the first female journalist in Yemen and wrote a regular newspaper column for many years.
Institution: Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, USA.
About: Ragui Assaad, professor, researches education, labor policy, and labor market analysis in developing countries with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa. His current work focuses on inequality of opportunity in education, labor markets, transitions from school-to-work, employment and unemployment dynamics, family formation, informality, labor market responses to economic shocks, international migration, including the effects of forced migration.
Assaad is a Research Fellow of the Economic Research Forum in Cairo, Egypt and serves on its board of trustees. He is also Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. He served as Regional Director for West Asia and North Africa for the Population Council, based in Cairo, Egypt, from 2005 to 2008. Assaad has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the International Labor Organization, the Ford Foundation, UNICEF and UNDP.
Institution: Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine.
About: Dr. Abdul Karim Barghouti is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University, where his research interests focus on the History of philosophy, Contemporary Arabic studies, Islamic philosophy and Sufism.
Institution: Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at
Mohammed V University
Ex-President, Hassan II University Mohammedia, Morocco.
About: Director of National Evaluation Authority in the Higher Council of education training and research in Morocco (Appointed in 2014), Former President of Hassan II University Mohammedia Casablanca, Former dean and Professor of Sociology in Mohamed V University Agdal Rabat. She is also member of the Moroccan Royal Academy. She has been an invited lecturer or presenter at research activities at universities in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. She was recognized with an honorary degree honoris causa from Indiana State university in USA in 2006, from Liege University Belgium and from Université Paris Ouest Nanterre in Paris France in 2010.
Institution: Sociology Department at the University of Algiers, Algeria. Higher National School for Political Science, Algeria.
About: Nacer Djabi is the Director of the Algerian Institute for Social Research and Studies and the senior consultant of the Focal Point for the Arab Council for the Social Sciences in Algeria. He teaches political sociology at the University of Algiers. He wrote several books and conducted many studies about political elites, social movements, and trade unions. His most recent publications explored the Amazigh Movements in North Africa, the unions in Algeria, and the Algerian Spring.
Institution: Director of the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan.
About: Dr. Mustafa B. Hamarneh is the Director of the Center for Strategic Studies of the University of Jordan. His previous positions include Adjunct Professor in history at Georgetown University and the University of Jordan and Director of the Jordan Media Group at The Royal Hashemite Court. Dr. Hamarneh is a founding member of EuroMeSCo, a network of independent foreign-policy institutes and centers; The Arab Institute for Studies and Communication, a regional initiative linking several of Arab research centers; and the Spanish-Jordanian Friendship Society, Al-Mashreq, a specialized monthly journal on media in the Arab world. He also is the Chairman of Georgetown Alumni Admission Committee- Jordan, a member of board of Al-Urdun Al-Jadeed Center, and the Arab Media Institute. His writings include Civil Society and Democracy: The Case of Jordan (Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies, 1995) and Jordanian Palestinian Relations: Where To? Four Scenarios for the Future (The Royal Institute for International Affairs, 1997). He received his Licenciatura from the Department of Economics at La Universidad Complutense de Madrid, his MA from the Department of History at Georgetown University where he also received his PhD in 1985 and graduated with distinction.
Institution: Cairo, Egypt.
About: Amr Hamzawy is a senior fellow and the director of the Carnegie Middle East Program. His research and writings focus on governance in the Middle East and North Africa, social vulnerability, and the different roles of governments and civil societies in the region. He was previously an associate professor of political science at Cairo University and a professor of public policy at the American University in Cairo.
His research and teaching interests as well as his academic publications focus on democratization processes in Egypt, tensions between freedom and repression in the Egyptian public space, political movements and civil society in Egypt, contemporary debates in Arab political thought, and human rights and governance in the Arab world. His new book On The Habits of Neoauthoritarianism – Politics in Egypt Between 2013 and 2019 appeared in Arabic in September 2019.
Hamzawy is a former member of the People’s Assembly after being elected in the first Parliamentary elections in Egypt after the January 25, 2011 revolution. He is also a former member of the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights. Hamzawy contributes a weekly op-ed to the Arab daily al-Quds al-Arabi.
Institution: Professor of Political Science at the United Arab Emirates University, UAE.
About: Dr. Ebtesam Al-Ketbi is the Founder and President of the Emirates Policy Center (EPC), one of the most influential think tanks in the Arab world. She is a Professor of Political Science at the United Arab Emirates University. In recognition of her position as the leader of one of the Arab world’s most influential think tanks, in 2015, Dr. Al-Ketbi was appointed Consultative Commission Member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). She is currently a Member of the Board of Directors of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, the Global Advisory Board of the Observer Research Foundation in India, the Advisory Council of the Middle East Institute in Washington, and the International Advisory Board of the Italian Med-Or Foundation.
Dr. Al-Ketbi has recently published three books: The UAE Power Building Model: Mohamed bin Zayed’s Vision (2022), The UAE Power-Building Model and Foreign Policy Shifts (2021), and Iran and the Biden Administration: A Potential Return to Negotiations (2021).
Institution: Institute of Women’s Studies at
Birzeit University, Palestine.
About: Associate Professor in Sociology and Women Studies Associate Professor in Sociology and Women Studies, Birzeit University, Palestine; studied Sociology at the AUB and Birzeit University, graduating with a BA in 1976; has an MA in sociology from Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, 1981; founding member and coordinator of ‘Our Production is Our Pride’ (a cooperative organization established in conjunction with Birzeit University) from 1985-94; co-founder of the Bisan Center for Research and Development, Ramallah, in 1990 (until 1995); served as Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of Al-Haq – Law in the Service of Man, Ramallah, from 1994-97; founding director of the Women Studies Institute at Birzeit University from 1996-7 and director of the Institute from 1998 to 2002. Has widely published on gender and development, Palestinian women’s movements and education as a vehicle for change.
Institution: Public Policy and International Affairs Department at the American University of Beirut.
About: 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 has also directed the Environmental Policy program within AUB’s Interfaculty Environmental Sciences Program (IGESP) since 2004. Makdisi was a founding member and served on the first Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS), where he is also currently an associated researcher in the Critical Studies Working Group; and also served as the Associate Director at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at AUB.
Institution: Director General of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, Beirut, Lebanon.
About: Dr. Seteney Shamiis an anthropologist from Jordan with degrees from the American University of Beirut and the UC Berkeley. She has been Visiting Professor at the latter institution, Georgetown University, University of Chicago and the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences. She has been a consultant for UNICEF, ESCWA and the Ford Foundation. She is the Diretor of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences.
