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.
Sevgi Adak is Associate Professor of Gender and Middle East Studies and Head of Research at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations in London. She specializes in women’s history, gender politics, politics of secularism and Turkish politics. She is on the editorial board of the Contemporary Turkey book series jointly published by I.B. Tauris and the British Institute at Ankara, and co-editor of the In Translation: Contemporary Thought in Muslim Contexts book series of the Edinburg University Press. She is the author of Anti-Veiling Campaigns in Turkey: State, Society and Gender in the Early Republic (I.B Tauris & Bloomsbury, 2022).
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.
Joseph Daher teaches at the University of Lausanne and co-directs the research project “Syrian Trajectories: Challenges and Opportunities for Peacebuilding” at the European University Institute in Florence. He is the author of "Hezbollah: the Political Economy of Lebanon's Party of God" (2016) and "Syria after the Uprisings, The Political Economy of State's Resilience" (2019).
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.
Adam Hanieh is Professor of Political Economy and Global Development at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of International and Area Studies (IIAS) at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His current research focuses on issues of political economy, oil, and capitalism in the Middle East. His most recent book is Money, Markets, and Monarchies: The Gulf Cooperation Council and the Political Economy of the Contemporary Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2018), which won the 2019 British International Studies Association, International Political Economy Group Book Prize.
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.
Idriss Jebari is a Lecturer in Middle East Studies at Trinity College Dublin. He is a historian of Arab thought and his research focuses on North African cultural and social history after its independences from France, on the radical sixties and seventies, on collective memory in the Arab world, and its role for reconciliation processes and transitional justice. He is currently working on the histories and memories of leftist groups in North Africa between nostalgia, amnesia and the archive. This project will bring focus on youth, student groups, radical film makers, and novelists that make up an alternative history postcolonial North Africa. After completing his doctorate on the history of the production of critical thought in Morocco and Tunisia at the University of Oxford, he held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the American University of Beirut (Lebanon), and a teaching fellowship in Middle East and North African history at Bowdoin College in Maine (USA).
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.
Stella Morgana is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Liverpool, where she carries out a project on labour politics and gig workers in Iran.
Before joining the University of Liverpool, she was lecturer in Political Science and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Previously, she held teaching and research positions at Leiden University, and was a visiting scholar at SOAS University of London and Tarbiat Modarres University in Tehran.
Her work has been published in “The International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies”, “Iranian Studies”, “International Journal of Labour and Working-Class History”, “Middle East Institute”, “Iran. Journal of the British Institute for Persian Studies”, and “The Conversation-Huffington post US”.
She is currently writing her first academic book on the politics of labour, precarity and discourse in Iran.
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).
Sara Salem is an Associate Professor in Sociology at the London School of Economics. Her research interests include postcolonial studies, Marxist theory, and global histories of anticolonialism. Her recently published book with Cambridge University Press is entitled Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony (2020). A selection of published journal articles include: on Angela Davis in Egypt in the journal Signs; on Frantz Fanon and Egypt’s postcolonial state in Interventions: A Journal of Postcolonial Studies; on Gramsci and anticolonialism in the postcolony in Theory, Culture and Society; and on Nasserism in Egypt through the lens of haunting in Middle East Critique. She is currently thinking and writing about ghosts and anticolonial archives.
Maria Nicola Stragapede is PhD candidate in Political Science and Sociologyat the Scuola Normale Superiore and member of COSMOS. Her research interests include the study of subjective political formation and transformations in authoritarian contexts and during revolts and revolutions, the emotional legacies among generations of militants and the history of the transnational Left, with a focus on the North-African space and its spaces of exile. During her PhD she has been affiliated to numerous projects, among which the ERC“The Subsequent Lives of Arab Revolutionaries”, and she co-organised the conference “SWANA from Below: Living, Enduring, and Remembering its Revolutions”,from which she is collaborating to the publication of a special issue. She holds an MPhil in Sociology from the University of Cambridge, financed by an ESRC grant.
Tamara Taher is the Project Officer of the TOMidEast Summer School 10th Edition - 2023. She has attained a Ph.D in "Social and Political Change" at the Universities of Turin and Florence, Italy.
Hèla Yousfi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Management and Organization at the University Paris Dauphine, DRM (UMR CNRS 7088) (France). She received her Ph.D. from the University Paris West University Nanterre in 2006. She is specialized in the field of sociology of organizations. She has conducted research and published on the topic of political culture and management practices transfer in Arab countries including Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Her other areas of interest include institutional change and economic development, postcolonial studies of management and social movements.
She is the author of She is the author of: Trade unions and Arab revolutions: The Tunisian case of UGTT (March, 2017), Routledge Research in Employment relations.
