Nazanin Shahrokni is Assistant Professor of Gender and Globalisation and Director of MSc Programme in Gender and Gender Research at the London School of Economics. Prior to joining the Gender Studies Department at LSE, she held positions in various international settings such as Syracuse University, Lund University, Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, and the American University of Beirut. Nazanin is the author of the award-winning book, Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran (University of California Press 2020) which offers a gripping inquiry into gender segregation policies and women’s rights in contemporary Iran. Her research interests fall at the intersection of feminist geography, critical policy analysis, and ethnographies of the state. She brings a critical lens and an ethnographic approach to the study of gendered public spaces and spheres, the reconstruction of gender difference in city spaces, and the complex gendered underpinnings of urban governance and political institutions. Her publications have appeared in Globalizations, Contemporary Ethnography, Current Sociology, and the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. Nazanin serves on the Executive Committee of the International Sociological Association and is on the advisory board of Middle East Law and Governance, as well, the Global Dialogue.
Lucia Sorbera is Senior Lecturer and Chair of the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures at the University of Sydney, which is built on land stolen from the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. She studies the colonial and post-colonial history of the Arab World and Africa, with a focus on women and gender. At the university of Sydney, she teaches in the programs of Arabic, European Studies, History, International and Global Studies and Comparative Literatures. Since she was awarded the PhD in Arabic, Islamic and Middle East Studies by Ca’ Foscari University in Venice in 2006, her work was conferred several grants and prizes, among them the Franca Pieroni Bortolotti Award for the best thesis on women and gender history by the Italian Society of Women Historians (2007) and, more recently, the Fernand Braudel Senior Fellowship by the European University Institute in Florence (2022) and the Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the CUNY Graduate Center (2022).
Dr. Tamirace Fakhoury is an associate Professor of Political Science and Global Refugee and Migration Studies at the Global Refugee Studies Research Group (GRS) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. She is also the Scientific advisor to the Kuwait Chair at Sciences Po in Paris (2020-2022). Dr. Fakhoury has taught at the summer sessions at the University of California in Berkeley between 2012 and 2016. In fall 2018 and summer 2019, she will be a visiting fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/ Centre for Global Cooperation Research where she will carry out a project on the European Union’s role in the polycentric governance of displacement.
Saba A. Le Renard is a permanent research fellow at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in Paris, interested in gender studies, postcolonial feminism, intersectionality and queer theory, in the Middle East and in France. Her last book, entitled Western privilege. Work, Intimacy and Postcolonial Hierarchies in Dubai (Stanford University Press, 2021), analyzes how race, gender and class backgrounds shape experiences of privilege. Her PhD dissertation was published in English under the title A Society of Young Women. Opportunities of Place, Power and Reform in Saudi Arabia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014). In 2020, she has also published two books co-written with colleagues: a short essay in French that presents the field of research on gender and feminism in the Middle East and North Africa, in order to fight widespread stereotypes on the region (Genre et féminismes au Moyen-Orient et au Maghreb, Editions Amsterdam, with Abir Kréfa) and a book in English that calls for reflexive and postcolonial analysis of the Arabian Peninsula (Beyond Exception. New Interpretations of the Arabian Peninsula, Cornell UP, with Ahmed Kanna and Neha Vora). Since 2020, she has launched a new research project about sexual violence in contemporary France.
Sabiha Allouche is a lecturer in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter. Sabiha's previous publications have explored the limits of international organizations in the context of Syrian LGBT refugees (Kohl, 2017), the affective economy of desire (International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2019) and kinship (Journal of Middle East Women's studies, 2019) in Lebanon. She is interested in global south queer epistemologies and pedagogical paradigms related to the teaching of gender and sexuality with reference to the Middle East. She has an upcoming chapter in the edited volume on Arab Masculinities (Indiana University Press). She sits on the advisory board of the journal Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research.
Yasmine Berriane is a Permanent Researcher at the CNRS in France (Centre Maurice Halbwachs, Paris), trained in Political Sociology and Middle Eastern Studies. Her research examines political and social transformations in North Africa and the Middle East, with an empirical focus on Morocco. Her publications deal with women’s political participation, the making of spaces of participation, and the sociopolitical impacts of newly emerging land right claims. She is the author of Femmes, associations et politique à Casablanca (Ed. Centre Jacques Berque, 2013) and co-edited recently Allying Beyond Social Divides. Coalitions and Contentious Politics in the Middle East and North Africa (Mediterranean Politics 24, 2019), Archive and Gender in North African Societies (Hespéris-Tamuda 56, 2021), and Methodological Approaches to Societies in Transformation. How to Make Sense of Change (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021).
Selin Çağatay is a postdoctoral researcher in the ERC-funded project ZARAH: Women’s labour activism in Eastern Europe and transnationally, from the age of empires to the late 20th century at the Department of Gender Studies and the Department of History, Central European University, Austria. Her research concerns past and present gender politics and equality struggles in Turkey and transnationally. Before joining CEU, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the international research project Spaces of resistance. A study of gender and sexualities in times of transformation at the Department of Cultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Selin has a recently
published monograph, authored collaboratively with Mia Liinason and Olga Sasunkevich, titled Feminist and LGBTI+ activism in Russia, Scandinavia, and Turkey: Transnationalizing Spaces of Resistance(by Palgrave Macmillan, Thinking Gender in Transnational Times Series).
Sélima Kebaili is a sociologist whose research mainly focuses on gender, racism/racialization, transitional justice, and victimhood in the MENA region and Europe. She received her Ph.D. from Paris's Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. Using a qualitative approach and a critical methodology, she explores the shaping and subjectivization of female victims' status and human rights violations in post-conflict contexts. She recently joined the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lausanne as a Senior Researcher for a project supervised by Prof. Eléonore Lépinard called Shaping the Legal Consciousness of Intersectional Subjects: Accommodating, Negotiating and Contesting Regulations on Islamic Veiling in France, Switzerland, and the U.K. She has published articles on gender and authoritarianism, transitional justice in Tunisia and women mobilizations. Her current book project deals with the making of the category of "female victim" in postrevolutionary Tunisia.
Francesco Cavatorta is professor of political science at Laval University in Quebec City Canada. His research focuses on dynamics of democratization and authoritarian resilience in the Arab world. He is currently working on a project examining the relationship between neoliberal economics and Salafi political parties.
Gilbert Achcar grew up in Lebanon, researched and taught in Beirut, Paris and Berlin, and has been since 2007 Professor of Development Studies and International Relations at SOAS, University of London. His many books include: The Clash of Barbarisms: The Making of the New World Disorder, published in 15 languages; Perilous Power: The Middle East and U.S. Foreign Policy, co-authored with Noam Chomsky; The Arabs and the Holocaust: The Arab-Israeli War of Narratives; The People Want: A Radical Exploration of the Arab Uprising; and Morbid Symptoms: Relapse in the Arab Uprising.
Francesco Cavatorta is professor of political science at Laval University in Quebec City Canada. His research focuses on dynamics of democratization and authoritarian resilience in the Arab world. He is currently working on a project examining the relationship between neoliberal economics and Salafi political parties.
Rosita Di Peri is associate professor at the Department of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of Turin, Italy where she teaches ‘Politics, Institutions and Cultures of Middle East’ and 'Mashrek Politics and Institutions'. Her research interests are on democracy and authoritarianism in Middle East with a focus on Lebanon. She is the scientific coordinator of the Summer School ‘Understanding the Middle East’ and member of the board of SeSaMO (Italian Association for Middle Eastern Studies). She published several articles in Italian and international Journals, such as ‘Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche’, ‘Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica’, ‘British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies’, ‘Politics Religion and Ideology’, 'Mediterranean Politics', ‘Oriente Moderno’ and ‘Meridiana’. She authored a book on the politics of contemporary Lebanon (Il Libano contemporaneo, Carocci, Roma 2017, in Italian) and co-edited several books and Special Issues.
Dr. Tamirace Fakhoury is an associate Professor of Political Science and Global Refugee and Migration Studies at the Global Refugee Studies Research Group (GRS) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen. She is also the Scientific advisor to the Kuwait Chair at Sciences Po in Paris (2020-2022). Dr. Fakhoury has taught at the summer sessions at the University of California in Berkeley between 2012 and 2016. In fall 2018 and summer 2019, she will be a visiting fellow at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/ Centre for Global Cooperation Research where she will carry out a project on the European Union’s role in the polycentric governance of displacement.
Raymond Hinnebusch is professor of International relations and Middle East politics at the University of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland. He is founder and director of the Centre for Syrian Studies. His major works include Egyptian Politics Under Sadat (Cambridge University Press 1985); The International Politics of the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2003, 2nd ed. 2015) and Syria: Revolution from above (Routledge: 2001);. He co- edited The Foreign Policies of Middle East States, with A. Ehteshami, Lynne Rienner Publishers,2nd edition, 2014; Turkey-Syria Relation: between Enmity and Amity, with Ozlem Tur, Ashgate Publishers, 2013; Sovereignty after Empire: Comparing the Middle East and Central Asia, with Sally Cummings, Edinburgh University Press, 2011; The Iraq War: Causes and Consequences, with Rick Fawn; and Syria: From Reform to Revolt: Politics and International relations, with Tina Zintl, Syracuse University Press, 2014.
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute of Political Science at Saint Joseph University – Beirut; holder of a PhD in Political Science from the University of Paris I – Sorbonne, and a CAPES in Philosophy and Psychology from the Faculty of Pedagogy at the Lebanese University; author of many publications and research articles. Representative of the President of the Republic at the Permanent Council of the Francophonie.
Professor Kiwan was advisor to the Minister of National Education and Fine Arts 1991-1992 and to the Minister of Culture and Higher Education 1992-1996. She was appointed as expert in many programs of the World Bank and UNESCO. In 2007, she was nominated member of the United Nations University Council until 2013.
Professor Kiwan is nominated by UNESCO member of the senior experts group in charge of revisiting the Report of Jacques Delors on "Education in the 21 century”. She is also member of the Senior advisory experts Committee of the program MOST at UNESCO.
Sensitive to human rights and women rights, she has a lot of articles on these issues and is representative of Lebanon in the Executive Board of the Arab Women Organization. Her priorities in action and research are the following topics: civil society, political parties, pressure groups, political culture and gender issues.
Paola Rivetti is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations in the School of Law and Government, Dublin City University. She is an Associate Editor at the journals Iranian Studies and Partecipazione e conflitto. She is author of Political Participation in Iran from Khatami to the Green Movement (2020) and the co-editor of Islamists and the Politics of the Arab Uprisings: Governance, Pluralisation and Contention (2018) and Continuity and change before and after the Arab uprisings: Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt (2015).
