Dalia Ghanem
The Middle East Council on Global Affairs

Dalia Ghanem is a senior fellow and director of the Conflict and Transitions program at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. Her research focuses on Middle Eastern and North African politics, including issues of political violence, radicalization, civil-military relations, and gender studies.

Previously, Ghanem served as director of the MENA program and senior analyst at the European Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), an EU agency, where her research focused on the intricate interplay between the Middle East, North Africa, and the European Union. Prior to her tenure at EUISS, Ghanem was a senior resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where she worked extensively on Algeria’s complex political, economic, and security landscape.

Ghanem is the author of the cornerstone book of her research Understanding the Persistence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Algeria (2022). She has contributed to numerous scholarly publications, including “How Border Peripheries are Changing the Nature of Arab States” (2023) and “Russia Rising: Putin’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa” (2021). Ghanem’s recent analysis has been featured in publications such as Chaillot Paper, where she explored Türkiye’s global role, EU-North Africa relations, EU-Iraq relations, and China and India’s growing presence in the Maghreb. Ghanem is a member of the Africa board of GI-TOC Global Initiative.

Ghanem’s analysis is regularly featured in leading Arab and international media outlets including Al Jazeera, the Middle East Eye, France24, Le Monde, and the Financial Times, among others.

Blanca Garcés Mascareñas
CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs)

Blanca Garcés is a Senior Research Fellow in the area of Migrations at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs). PhD cum laude in Social Sciences from the University of Amsterdam and BA in History and Anthropology from the University of Barcelona. Her PhD thesis was awarded the Dutch Sociological Association (NSV) prize for the best sociological dissertation defended in the Netherlands in 2009 and 2010. For more than 20 years, she has studied immigration and asylum policies from a comparative perspective. In the last five years, she has focused on policies and political discourses on asylum in Europe, with a special attention to border policies and state reception systems. From 2021 to 2024, she coordinated a H2020 project to understand the causes and consequences of migration narratives in a context of increasing politicisation and polarisation in Europe. She is member of the European network IMISCOE and of the editorial college of Migration Politics Journal.

Fawaz A Gerges
The London School of Economics and Political Science

Fawaz A. Gerges is a Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science where he also holds the Chair in Contemporary Middle Eastern Studies at LSE. He was the LSE’s inaugural Director of the Middle East Centre from 2010 until 2013. He earned a doctorate from Oxford University and M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has taught at Oxford, Harvard, and Columbia, and was a research scholar at Princeton and chairholder at Sarah Lawrence College, New York. His most recent book is called, What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East (Yale University Press, May 2024). His forthcoming book is titled: The Great Betrayal: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East (Princeton University Press, Spring 2025).

He is author of several acclaimed recent books: Making the Arab World (Princeton University Press, April 2018); ISIS: A History (Princeton University Press, February 2021); The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (Cambridge University Press, 2009); The Rise and Fall of Al Qaeda (Oxford University Press, 2011); The Hundred Years’ War for Control of the Middle East: From Sykes-Picot to the Deal of the Century (Princeton University Press, April 2023); The New Middle East: Social Protest and Revolution in the Arab World (Cambridge University Press, 2013); Contentious Politics in the Middle East: Popular Resistance and Marginalised Activism beyond the Arab Uprisings (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Obama and the Middle East (Palgrave and MacMillan, 2012); America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge University Press, 1999); The Superpowers and the Middle East: Regional and International Politics (Oxford and Westview Press, 1993). 

His articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, International Herald Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The Guardian, The Independent, Middle East Journal, Survival, and many others. He has been the recipient of a MacArthur, Fullbright and Carnegie Fellowships and his books have been translated into a number of foreign languages.

His special interests include the study of international relations, political economy, risk analysis, grand strategy, the Great Powers and the Middle East, mainstream Islamist movements and jihadist groups; Arab politics and Muslim politics in the 20th century, state and society, the Arab-Israeli conflict, American foreign policy, the modern history of the Middle East, history of conflict, diplomacy and foreign policy, and geopolitics. Gerges has given hundreds of TV and radio interviews for top talk and news shows and programs on various media outlets throughout the world, including BBC, Sky, CNN, ABC, PBS, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NPR, CBC, and Al Jazeera.

Raffaele Mancini
Senior Environment and Sustainability Expert

Raffaele Mancini is a seasoned sustainability expert with over 20 years of international experience in environmental policy and the blue economy in the Mediterranean region. Holding advanced degrees in Political Science and International Water Law, he has led high-impact projects and initiatives with institutions such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, UNESCO, and UNEP-MAP, providing strategic guidance to policymakers. Specializing in the enhancement of sustainability policies and the promotion of innovative natural resource management practices, Raffaele’s expertise spans across Europe, the MENA region, and the Western Balkans. Mr. Mancini has lectured at Sciences Po. Paris on Mediterranean marine biodiversity and ocean-based industries and has worked with regional and sub-regional organisations, including the Union for the Mediterranean and the WestMED EU Initiative.

Monica Marks
Assistant Professor of Arab Crossroads Studies, NYU Abu Dhabi

Monica Marks is a scholar of Islamist movements, gender, and politics in the Middle East and North Africa. Her research focuses on broad topics across the region and beyond, but especially in regards to the tensions between pluralism and state power in the two countries where she's lived longest: Tunisia and Turkey. Prior to joining NYUAD, Dr. Marks was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. She completed her PhD, an ethnographic study of post-2011 Tunisian politics based on over 1,200 in-country interviews, in 2018 at St Antony's College, Oxford.

A first-generation college student from rural Kentucky, Dr. Marks studied in Tanzania, Tunisia, and Jordan, and in Turkey as a Fulbright Scholar, before completing her Masters and PhD at Oxford University where she was a Rhodes Scholar. During her graduate studies, Dr. Marks was based primarily in Tunisia (2011-2016) and Turkey (2016-2018), where she published academic work and more public-facing analysis for leading North American and European think tanks, along with publications like Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, for which she also freelanced briefly as a journalist. Dr. Marks is passionate about mentoring students, facilitating creative fieldwork in and beyond the MENA region, and bringing academic research into greater conversation with journalism, policy-related analysis, and public-facing conversation.

Yezid Sayigh
Senior fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut

Yezid Sayigh works on the comparative political and economic roles of Arab armed forces, the impact of war on states and societies, and the politics of authoritarian resurgence. Previously, Sayigh held teaching and research positions at King’s College London, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Oxford, and headed the Middle East program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. Sayigh was also an adviser, negotiator, and policy planner in the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks with Israel 1991-2002 and advised on Palestinian public institutional reform until 2006.

Sayigh is the author of numerous publications, including most recently “Civilians in Arab Defense Affairs: Implications for Providers of Security Assistance” (2023); “Throwing Down the Gauntlet: What the IMF Can Do About Egypt’s Military Companies” (2022); “Retain, Restructure, or Divest? Policy Options for Egypt’s Military Economy” (2022); “Praetorian spearhead: The role of the military in the evolution of Egypt’s state capitalism 3.0” (2021); “Owners of the Republic: An Anatomy of Egypt’s Military Economy” (2019); “Dilemmas of Reform: Policing in Arab Transitions (March 2016); Crumbling States: Security Sector Reform in Libya and Yemen” (2015); “Missed Opportunity: The Politics of Police Reform in Egypt and Tunisia” (March 2015); “The Syrian Opposition’s Leadership Problem” (April 2013); Above the State: The Officers’ Republic in Egypt (August 2012); “‘We serve the people’: Hamas policing in Gaza” (2011); and “Policing the People, Building the State: Authoritarian transformation in the West Bank and Gaza” (2011). He is the author of the award-winning Armed Struggle and the Search for State: The Palestinian National Movement, 1949-1993 (Oxford, 1997).

Eduard Soler
Lecturer of International Relations at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Associate Senior Researcher at CIDOB (Barcelona Centre for International Affairs), and Affiliated Faculty member at IBEI

Eduard Soler holds a PhD in International Relations and Graduate in Political Science. His main areas of expertise are geopolitics, foresight, foreign policy, Turkey and the Middle East and North Africa region. He has a long experience participating and leading collaborative research and training projects such as MENARA, a CIDOB-led H2020 project on geopolitics of the Middle East and North Africa that involved 14 partners and around 50 researchers; and El Hiwar (2013-2022), a Euro-Arab diplomacy training project implemented by the College of Europe (Bruges). In 2010 he was seconded as an advisor in the Mediterranean Unit of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was actively involved in the preparation and implementation of Mediterranean initiatives under the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU. He is also an adjunct professor at IBEI and the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), teaching on Mediterranean and Middle East International Relations, among other issues. He is a member of the Observatory of European Foreign Policy and is part the international advisory boards of Mediterranean Politics, IEMed's Mediterranean Yearbook and the Berlin-based Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP).

Harry Tzimitras
Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo - PRIO Cyprus Centre

Dr. Harry Tzimitras is the Director of the Peace Research Institute Oslo - PRIO Cyprus Centre. In this capacity, he coordinates research and dialogue activities on the search for a political settlement to the island’s division. He is also Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C. (Global Energy Center). He is Professor of International Law and International Relations, specializing in conflict resolution, energy security & geopolitics, the law of the sea, foreign policy, and the Eastern Mediterranean and has published extensively on these subjects. Previously, he held full-time teaching & research positions at Istanbul Bilgi University, Koç University (Istanbul), the University of Cambridge and the Institute of International Relations, Athens, and visiting professorships at a number of universities internationally. He is a member of various Advisory Boards, including the London Energy Club and the Charles University of Prague Centre for Violence, Trauma and Justice. He holds a BSc (Econ.) with Honours in International Relations from the London School of Economics, a PhD summa cum laude in International Law from the Panteion University of Athens and two post-docs from the University of Cambridge and the Institute of International Relations, Athens.