Contributors

Adam Baron is a writer and political analyst focusing on the Middle East with an emphasis on Yemen and the Gulf.

Afeeya Akhand is based in Sydney, Australia where she is studying a Master of International Security at the University of Sydney. She has experience in foreign policy and government through prior roles in the Australian Department of Defence as well as the consultancy sector.

Dr Akram Al Deek is a writer, public intellectual, poet and lecturer in world literature and post-colonial studies. He held various teaching positions in The Middle East and Europe, and published three books and many research papers and articles on displacement, exile, home and identity, and nationalism in both Arabic and English.

Alexander Langlois is a foreign policy analyst focused on the Middle East and North Africa. His research is focused on human rights, conflict, diplomacy, and the geopolitics of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen, and the Gulf. Alex holds an M.A. in International Affairs from American University in Washington, DC.

Ali Ahmadi is a Research Fellow at Vocal Europe, a foreign policy think tank in Brussels, and an Analyst at Gulf State Analytics, a geopolitical risk consulting firm in Washington D.C. He specialises in geoeconomics and US foreign policy towards the Middle East.

Dr. Alia El-Mahdi is a Professor of Economics in Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences, Cairo University, and CEO of Egypols. El Mahdi was the ex-Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Sciences (2008-2011), previously the Director of the Center of Economic and Financial Research and Studies (2005- 2008) and the Vice president of MSA University (2004-2005).

Alice Gower is Director of Geopolitics & Security at Azure Strategy, London and an alumnus of the Australian National University (2006). She is a former diplomat with the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Dr Anas Iqtait is a lecturer at Australian National University and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute (Washington DC). He is the author of Funding and the Quest for Sovereignty in Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Anas is the co-founder and chief editor of the ANU based Near East Policy Forum.

Dr Bamo Nouri is a Lecturer in International Relations at the University of West London, and an Honorary Research Fellow at City, University of London. He is also an independent investigative journalist and writer with interests in American foreign policy and the international and domestic politics of the Middle East.

Bassam Barabandi is a former Syrian diplomat and the co-founder and director of external relations of People Demand Change. Born in Damascus City with familial ties to Deir Ez-Zor Province, Syria, Bassam worked in the diplomatic civil service of the Syrian government for 14 years before leaving the Syrian Embassy in Washington DC in the summer of 2013 and co-founding People Demand Change Inc.

Bruce Pannier is currently a Central Asia Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, member of the advisory board at the Caspian Policy Center, and member of the External Advisory Board, European Neighbourhood Council. He also hosts the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s weekly Majlis podcast and authors the RFE/RL’s weekly newsletter Central Asia in Focus. Bruce writes for The Economist, Janes Intelligence, Oxford Analytica, Freedom House, The Cairo Review, the FSU Oil & Gas Monitor, and Energo Weekly.

Christopher M. Davidson is a former reader in Middle East politics at Durham University (UK), a former assistant professor at Zayed University (UAE), and a former visiting associate professor at Kyoto University (Japan). His publications include Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success; Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East; and, most recently, From Sheikhs to Sultanism: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Conor McLaughlin is the Research Coordinator of the Defence Research and Engagement portfolio at Edith Cowan University (ECU).

Courtney Freer is an assistant professorial research fellow at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and a non-resident fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. She specialises in domestic politics and foreign policies of the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), as well as connections between the two, in addition to examining the role of Islamists in that region and in the Middle East more broadly. Freer is the author of “Rentier Islamism: The Role of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf Monarchies” (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Emilbek Dzhuraev, PhD (University of Maryland), is a political scientist and analyst based in Kyrgyzstan. He taught in the undergraduate and graduate political science programs at the American University of Central Asia and the OSCE Academy in Bishkek. His research and teaching areas included geopolitics, international relations and security pertaining to Central Asia as well as issues of democracy, state-building and constitutionalism in Central Asia. He is a co-founder and a fellow of Crossroads – Central Asia, a Bishkek-based think-tank. Currently, Emil is with the Soros Foundation – Kyrgyzstan where he directs the Democratic Governance Program.

Evan Freidin is an international politics analyst based in Melbourne. His writings focus on China's politics and foreign affairs.

Dr. Georges Naufal is an associate research scientist at the Public Policy Research Institute (PPRI) at Texas A&M University, and a research fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and Economic Research Forum (ERF). He was also an Associate Professor of Economics at The American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. His research on the Middle East has been cited by regional and international media outlets such as the New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, the Washington Post, and NPR.

Dr Guy Burton is Adjunct Professor at the Brussels School of Governance and Fellow on the Sectarianism, Proxies and De-sectarianisation Project at Lancaster University. He is the author of China and Middle East Conflicts (2020) and Rising Powers and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2018).

Hossein Hashemi is associate professor at the Department of Water Resources Engineering and Center for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University. He received his Ph.D. in Water Resources Engineering, focusing on groundwater management and water harvesting techniques as an efficient approach to increasing water supply availability in Middle Eastern countries.

Jacob Mundy is an associate professor in the Peace and Conflict Studies program and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies program at Colgate University. His research focuses on issues of political-economy and critical security studies in Northern Africa. He is the author of Libya (Polity Press, 2018) and coauthor of an updated edition of Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresolution (Syracuse University Press 2010/2021).

Jim Krane is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He is the author of the book Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf.

Dr. John Calabrese teaches international relations at American University and is director of the Middle East-Asia Project (MAP) at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.

Dr Kirill Nourzhanov is Associate Professor and Convenor of PhD Studies at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (The Middle East and Central Asia) at the Australian National University. His main research specialisation is on Central Asian politics and international relations, but his interests also cover Islamic radicalism, Eurasian geopolitics, and history of the former USSR.

A/Prof Nourzhanov has worked as an academic consultant on the World Bank-funded projects in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. He has served as Associate Editor of the Asian Politics and Policy journal and has been a member of the executive of the Australian Society for Inner Asian Studies. He was the President of the Australasian Association for Communist and Post-communist Studies twice.

A/Prof Nourzhanov’s books include Tajikistan: A Political and Social History (with Christian Bleuer, ANU Press, 2013) and The Afghanistan Security Threat: Security Dilemmas for Central Asia and Beyond (with Amin Saikal, Bloomsbury, 2021).

Kristin V. Monroe is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky, USA. She is the author of The Insecure City: Space, Power, and Mobility in Beirut (Rutgers University Press, 2016) and her current research, supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, explores labor and mobilities across the Syrian warscape.

Laura Sayah is the Head of the book translation unit-Turjuman, at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies (Beirut) and a university lecturer. She holds a PhD in economics of education and development from Paris Dauphine University. Her works focus on the economics of education in the Middle East and sectarian economics in Lebanon.

Leena Adel is a PhD researcher and academic based in Perth, Western Australia. She teaches units in international relations and history at Curtin University.

Liam Campbell is an Australian National University student majoring in International Relations and Languages with minors in Mongolian and Mandarin Chinese. He is particularly interested in the areas of foreign policy, counterterrorism, development and language policy.

Lina Eklund is assistant professor at the Department of Physical Geography and Ecosystem Science and the Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University. Her research interests are focused around land systems in armed conflict settings, with a specific focus on agricultural land use in relation to drought, migration and armed conflict in Iraq and Syria.

Mulatu Wubneh is a professor (Emeritus) of planning at East Carolina University, North Carolina, USA.  He is the author of several books and articles on Ethiopia. He has served as a department head at ECU, an adjunct faculty at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies (Washington, D.C.), and as a program officer and consultant at the World Bank and the UDP on African capacity building programs. In 2013 he was a Fulbright Scholar at the Addis Ababa University, and in 2018–20 an Ambassador Distinguished Scholar at Gondar University.

Nasser bin Nasser is the CEO & Founder of Ambit Advisory

Nasser Khdour is a political analyst based in Basel, Switzerland, focusing on Palestinian-Israeli dynamics and the Gulf region. Nasser works as a researcher with The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED).

Dr Neil Quilliam is Managing Director of Azure Strategy and an Associate Fellow with the Middle East & North Africa Programme, Chatham House, London.

Nelly Bekus is Lecturer at Humanities College, University of Exeter, UK. Her research focuses on nation and state-building, techno-politics and urban development in the post-Soviet space.

Noura Mansour is a Palestinian educator, political analyst, and community organiser,from Akka/Acre City. She studied Political Science and Education and received a masters in International Relations from Haifa University. Noura has worked in community development with NGOs in Palestine. She has been heavily involved with international NGOs and solidarity movements including South Korea and Australia where she is now based.

Dr Paul Widdop is a Senior Lecturer of Sport Development at Manchester Metropolitan University. He is the co-author of The Geopolitical Economy of Sport: Power, Politics, Money, and the State.

Peter Greste is a journalist, author, media freedom activist and professor at Macquarie University. Before joining academia in 2018, he spent 25 years as a correspondent in the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. In 2013, he and two colleagues were arrested in Cairo on terrorism charges in a case regarded as an attack on press freedom.

Professor Richard Pomfret is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the University of Adelaide and Adjunct Professor of International Economics at the Johns Hopkins University SAIS Europe in Bologna, Italy. His book The Central Asian Economies in the Twenty-first Century was published by Princeton University Press in 2019.

Dr. Roger Kangas is the Academic Dean of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (NESA) of the U.S. Department of Defense, located in Washington, DC. His areas of research and teaching include the security, geopolitics, and politics of Eurasia, specifically Central Asia and the Caspian region, as well as Afghanistan.

Saran Chantakitwattana holds a Master or International Relations from the Australian National University. His research interests include the Middle East, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and securitisation frameworks.

Simon Chadwick is a professor at SKEMA Business School. He is a researcher, writer, academic, consultant and speaker with more than 25 years’ experience working across global sport. Professor Chadwick has particular expertise working at the intersection of sport, business, politics, and technology, specifically in a Eurasian context. He is the co-author of The Geopolitical Economy of Sport: Power, Politics, Money, and the State.

Slavomír Horák is an Associate Professor at the Department of Russian and East European Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague. His research and teaching focus cover contemporary politics and history of Central Asia.

Stuart Mann is a student at the Australian National University, completing his honour’s thesis in Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies, focusing on Lebanese sectarianism and social movements. He is also an editor for the Levant Division at the Near East Policy Forum

Suhail al-Ghazi is a Syrian researcher and OSINT expert. He is currently a Syria researcher with ORSAM Centre for Middle East Studies and former non-resident fellow at Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. His work focuses on security, economy and governance in regime-held areas.

Tony Kesserwany is a student at the University of Paris, completing a master’s degree in international law, having previously worked at the UNDP in Lebanon.

Tutku Ayhan is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention at Binghamton University. Her research focuses on post-conflict gender dynamics, sexual and gender-based violence, and ethnic conflict. Her book project is based on field research among Yezidi communities in Iraqi Kurdistan, Germany, and the United States, and analyzes Yezidi women's post-genocide resilience and empowerment from an intersectional framework.

Zhomart Medeuov is the head of the public policy analysis sector of the Institute of Applied Research of the Academy of Public Administration under the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan. He is interested in public policy, political science, and social philosophy.

Zoe Davies is currently a PhD student with the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. She is one of two annual recipients of the ANU RASS Director's PhD Supplementary Stipend. She completed her Bachelor of Arts at The University of Melbourne and her Masters (Advanced) in Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies at ANU, for which she received a Chancellor's Letter of Commendation. She has previously worked for the Australian Government, currently lectures at ANU on the history of Islam and Gender in the Middle East, and works for the Near East Policy Forum.