The POMEPS Steering Committee

Steering Committee Members: 

Andre Bank is Senior Research Fellow at the GIGA German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Hamburg. His main areas of research are authoritarianism, violent conflict and regional order in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Jordan and Syria. Dr. Bank is one of the PIs of the “Merian Center for Advanced Studies in the Maghreb” (MECAM), based at the Université de Tunis and funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research. From 2014 to 2019, he served as the speaker of the Leibniz foundation research network on “International Diffusion and Cooperation of Authoritarian Regimes” (IDCAR). In 2021, he co-edited the Special Issue on “MENA Political Science a Decade after the Arab Uprisings: Facing the Facts on Tremulous Grounds” for Mediterranean Politics. His research has been published in journals such as Democratization, Digest of Middle East Studies, Global Policy, Journal of Peace Research and Review of International Studies.

Chantal Berman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Georgetown University and an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. Her research investigates the causes and consequences of protest mobilization, with a focus on unpacking interactions between states and social movements. Her ongoing book project, “The Logics of Concession: Protest Economies and Public Authority in the Maghreb,” examines the conditions under which protest movements can provoke social policy interventions, with a focus on how revolutions and regime transitions can shift the logics of state response to mobilization. Chantal also writes about mineral industry governance, political violence and policing, the influence of protests over processes of political transition, and the long-term effects of conflict on mobilization. Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation, and the American Institute for Maghreb Studies, and has received honors from the International Studies Association and the American Political Science Association. Chantal received a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University and a B.A. from Brown University.

Dina Bishara is an Assistant Professor of International and Comparative Labor at Cornell University. Her research interests include authoritarianism, state-labor relations, social and protest movements, and transitions from authoritarian rule. Her book, Contesting Authoritarianism: Labor Challenges to the State in Egypt, has been published with Cambridge University Press (2018). Her articles have been published or are forthcoming in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics and Middle East Law and Governance. She has been awarded research fellowships from Harvard University, the University of Oxford, and the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Steven Brooke is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Faculty Fellow at the Association for Analytic Learning about Islam and Muslim Societies (AALIMS) at University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a non-resident fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. Steven’s research and teaching focuses on comparative politics, religion and politics, and the politics of the Middle East.  His first book, Winning Hearts and Votes: Social Services and the Islamist Political Advantage, looks at how and why non-state groups provide social services, with an empirical focus on the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Political Research Quarterly, and the British Journal of Middle East Studies.

Sarah Bush is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a think tank. Her research examines how international actors try to aid democracy, promote women’s representation, and support elections globally. She is the author of The Taming of Democracy Assistance: Why Democracy Promotion Does Not Confront Dictators (Cambridge University Press, 2015). Her articles have appeared in International Organization, American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Perspectives on Politics, and other journals, as well as outlets such as ForeignPolicy.com and WashingtonPost.com. Prior to coming to Yale, Dr. Bush taught at Temple University and held a fellowship at the Harvard Kennedy School. Her work has also been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. She received a Ph.D. in Politics from Princeton University and a B.A. from Northwestern University.

Francesco Cavatorta is Full Professor in the Department of Political Science at Université Laval in Quebec, Canada. His current research project focuses on party politics, coalition-making and elections. His co-authored textbook (with Vincent Durac) Politics and Governance in the Middle East will be published in late 2022 by Bloomsbury. He also co-edited (with Valeria Resta) for Routledge the forthcoming Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa.

Laryssa Chomiak is a political scientist, Director of the Centre d’Etudes Maghrebines a Tunis, Associate Fellow at Chatham House in London, and co-founder with Jillian Schwedler of the Sidi Bou Said School of Critical Protest Studies.  She is completing a book manuscript titled Archipelagos of Dissent: Protest and Politics in Tunisia.  Most recently, she was a visiting researcher at the German Development Institute’s (DIE) Middle East Program in Bonn, has lectured at the University of Tunis, and worked comparative African research programs on political violence, transitional justice and societal peace. Her work has appeared as book chapters and journal articles in Middle East Law and Governance, The Journal of North African Studies, Portal 9 and Middle East Report.   Dr. Chomiak has received research fellowships from the Fulbright Commission (Morocco), the International Research and Exchange Board (IREX/Ukraine) and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS/Tunisia). She is a member of the advisory board of Middle East Law and Governance.  Her opinion analyses and essays have appeared in the Monkey Cage/Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor and for Middle East Institute.

May Darwich is a Lecturer in International Relations of the Middle East at University of Birmingham. She was Assistant Professor at Durham University (2016-2019) and a Research Fellow at GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, within the IDCAR-Network ‘The International Diffusion and Cooperation of Authoritarian Regimes’(2014-2015). Her research attempts to bring Middle East cases to debates within IR theory while surmounting the challenge to the study of state behaviour in the Middle East through theoretical lenses. She is author of Threats and Alliances in the Middle East: Saudi and Syrian Policies in a Turbulent Region (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Sarah El-Kazaz is an Associate Professor of Comparative Politics of the Middle East at SOAS, University of London. Her research interests include: political economy, urbanism, infrastructure, digital politics, ethnography and Middle East politics. Her upcoming book (with Duke University Press), Building Politics: Urban Transformation and (Un)Making Markets in Cairo and Istanbul examines the political economy of urban transformation in neoliberalizing Istanbul and Cairo. Her next book project investigates the politics of digital infrastructures in the Global South, with a focus on the Middle East and Africa. Her work appears in peer-reviewed journals including: Comparative Studies in Society and History, and City and Society, and she is a book review editor at the Arab Studies Journal. She previously taught at Oberlin College, and completed a PhD at Princeton University, MA at NYU and BA at the American University in Cairo.

Rabab El Mahdi is an associate professor of political science at The American University in Cairo. Her field of specialization is comparative political economy and development, with a focus on Latin America and the Middle East. El Mahdi’s research interests cover the areas of state-civil society relations, social movements and resistance, as well as the political economy of social policy. She is also the recipient of a number of research grants from Carnegie Corporation of New York and The Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. Currently, she leads AUC’s research project, Alternative Policy Solutions (APS). She serves on the boards of a number of civil society and professional organizations, including the Arab Political Science Network (APSN).

Kevan Harris is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles. He is the author of A Social Revolution: Politics and the Welfare State in Iran (University of California Press, 2017) and co-edited The Social Question in the 21st Century: A Global View (University of California Press, 2019). He directs the Iran Social Survey, a multi-wave polling project on social and political change in Iran.

Waleed Hazbun is the Richard L. Chambers Professor of Middle Eastern Studies in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alabama. He previous taught international relations at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He is author of Beaches, Ruins, Resorts: The Politics of Tourism in the Arab World (Minnesota, 2008), co-editor of New Conflict Dynamics: Between Regional Autonomy and Intervention in the Middle East and North Africa (Copenhagen, 2017), and founding member of the Critical Security Studies in the Arab World working project supported by the Beirut-based Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS).

Lisel Hintz is an Assistant Professor of International Relations and European Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She works at the intersection of identity politics and foreign policy. She is particularly interested in how domestic identity struggles spill over to shape, and be shaped by international affairs. Her regional focus is on Turkey and its relations with Europe and the Middle East. She received her PhD in Political Science from George Washington University, was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University’s Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, and was Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. Professor Hintz’s forthcoming book with Oxford University Press draws on 18 months of fieldwork across Turkey.

Stéphane Lacroix is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Sciences Po, a researcher at Sciences Po’s Centre de Recherches Internationales (CERI) and the co-director of Sciences Po’s Chair on religion. His work deals with religion and politics, with a focus on the Gulf and Egypt. He is the author of “Awakening Islam: The Politics of Religious Dissent in Contemporary Saudi Arabia” (Harvard University Press, 2011), “Saudi Arabia in Transition: Insights on Social, Political, Economic and Religious Change” (Cambridge University Press, 2015, with Bernard Haykel and Thomas Hegghammer), “Egypt’s Revolutions: Politics, Religion, Social Movements” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, with Bernard Rougier) and “Revisiting the Arab Uprisings: The Politics of a Revolutionary Moment” (Oxford University Press, 2018, with Jean-Pierre Filiu).

Noora Lori is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. Her book, Offshore Citizens: Permanent “Temporary” Status in the Gulf (Cambridge University Press 2019) received the best book prize from the Migration and Citizenship section of the American Political Science Association (2020), the Distinguished Book Award from the Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Migration Studies section of the International Studies Association (2021), and the Best Book in MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Politics from the APSA-MENA politics section of the American Political Science Association. She has published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Global Security Studies, Oxford Handbook on Citizenship, The Shifting Border, the Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, the Journal of Politics & Society among other journals and edited volumes.  Her work has been funded by the ACLS/Mellon foundation, Ziet-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius, the Hariri Institute for Computing and Computer Engineering (BU), the Initiative on Cities (BU) (2016; 2019), as well as other grants. She is the co-director of the Pardee School Initiative on Forced Migration and Human Trafficking. At BU, she received the Gitner Family Prize for Faculty Excellence (2014) and the CAS Templeton Award for Excellence in Student Advising (2015). She was previously an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, a fellow at the International Security Program of the Harvard Kennedy School, and a visiting scholar at the Dubai School of Government. She received her PhD in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University’s (2013) and her dissertation received the Best Dissertation Award from the Migration and Citizenship Section of the American Political Science Association in 2014.

Elizabeth R. Nugent is an assistant professor of political science at Yale University. She is the author of After Repression: How Polarization Derails Democratic Transition, published by Princeton University Press (2020). Her research explores the political psychology of religion and repression in the Middle East, and has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and World Politics. Dr. Nugent holds a doctorate in politics from Princeton University as well as a B.A. in Arabic and an M.A. in Arab Studies, both from Georgetown University. She was previously a postdoctoral research fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Advisory Board Members:

Lisa Anderson is the former president of the American University of Cairo. She is the author of Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-first Century (Columbia University Press, 2003) and The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980 (Princeton University Press, 1986). She is editor of Transitions to Democracy (Columbia University Press, 1999) and co-editor of The Origins of Arab Nationalism (Columbia 1991). She is a member emerita of the board of Human Rights Watch.

Michael Barnett is University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at the George Washington University. He is the author of The Star and the Stripes: A History of the Foreign Policies of American Jews (Princeton University Press, 2016), Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Cornell University Press, 2011), The International Humanitarian Order (Routledge, 2010), Eyewitness to Genocide: the United Nations and Rwanda (Cornell University Press, 2002), and more. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Eva Bellin is the Myra and Robert Kraft Professor of Arab Politics in the Department of Politics and the Crown Center for Middle East at Brandeis University. She is the author of Stalled Democracy: Capital, Labor, and the Paradox of State Sponsored Development (Cornell University Press, 2002).

Lindsay J. Benstead is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government and Director of the Middle East Studies Center (MESC) at Portland State University. From 2018-2019 she served as a fellow in the Middle East Program and the Global Women’s Leadership Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC. She is an Affiliated Scholar in the Program on Governance and Local Development (GLD) at the University of Gothenburg and Yale University and served as Kuwait Visiting Professor at SciencesPo in Paris (fall 2016). Benstead has conducted surveys in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Jordan and contributes to the Transitional Governance Project. Her research has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Governance, and Foreign Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Political Science from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and served as a doctoral fellow at Yale University and a post-doctoral fellow at Princeton University.

Laurie A. Brand is the Robert Grandford Wright Professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California, where she directed its School of International Relations, its Center for International Studies and currently directs its Middle East Studies Program. She is the author of Palestinians in the Arab World(Columbia, 1988),  Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations (Columbia, 1994), Women the State and Political Transitions (Columbia, 1998), Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge, 2006) and Official Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria (Stanford, 2014).  A former president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) (2004), Brand has chaired its Committee on Academic Freedom since 2006.

Nathan J. Brown is a professor of political science and international affairs and director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University. He is the author of When Victory is Not an Option: Islamist Movements in Arab Politics (Cornell University Press, 2012), Palestinian Politics after the Oslo Accords: Resuming Arab Palestine (University of California Press, 2003) and more. He is a nonresident senior associate in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace‘s Middle East Program.

Jason Brownlee is a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of Democracy Prevention: The Politics of the U.S.-Egyptian Alliance(Cambridge University Press, 2012) and Authoritarianism in an Age of Democratization (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He is co-author, with Tarek Masoud and Andrew Reynolds, of The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression andReform (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Melani Cammett is a Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. Cammett’s recent books include Compassionate Communalism: Welfare and Sectarianism in Lebanon (Cornell University Press 2014), which won the American Political Science Association (APSA) Giovanni Sartori Book Award and the Honorable Mention for the APSA Gregory Luebbert Book Award; A Political Economy of the Middle East (co-authored with Ishac Diwan, Westview Press 2015); and The Politics of Non-State Social Welfare in the Global South (co-edited with Lauren Morris MacLean, Cornell University Press 2014), which received the Honorable Mention for the ARNOVA book award. Her current research projects explore governance and the politics of social welfare, identity politics and the long-term historical roots of distinct development trajectories in the Middle East.

F. Gregory Gause III is the John H. Lindsey ’44 Chair, professor of international affairs and head of the International Affairs Department at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. He is the author of The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Oil Monarchies: Domestic and Security Challenges in the Arab Gulf States (Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1994), and Saudi-Yemini Relations: Domestic Structures and Foreign Influence (Columbia University Press, 1990).

Steven Heydemann is the Janet Wright Ketcham ’53 Chair in Middle East Studies at Smith College and a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. From 2007 to 2015 he held several senior leadership positions at the U.S. Institute of Peace, including Vice President for Applied Research on Conflict and senior advisor on Middle East initiatives. He is the author of Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946-1970 (Cornell University Press, 1999) and the editor of Networks of Privilege in the Middle East: The Politics of Economic Reform Revisited, (Palgrave Press, 2004) and War, Institutions and Social Change in the Middle East (University of California Press, 2000). He is co-editor of Globalization, Philanthropy, and Civil Society: Projecting Institutional Logics Abroad (Indiana University Press, 2009) and The Legitimacy of Philanthropic Foundations: United States And European Perspectives (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2006).

Amaney Jamal is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and director of the Mamdouha S. Bobst Center for Peace and Justice at Princeton University and co-directs the Arab Barometer project. She authored Of Empires and Citizens: Pro American Democracy or No Democracy at All? (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Barriers to Democracy: The Other Side of Social Capital in Palestine and the Arab World (Princeton University Press, 2007). She is co-author of Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit after 9-11 (Russell Sage, 2009) and co-editor of Race and Arab Americans after 9-11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects (Syracuse University Press, 2008).

Vickie Langohr is an associate professor of political science at the College of the Holy Cross. She is a member of the Middle East Studies Association’s Committee on Academic Freedom. Langohr is the author of the chapter “Labor Movements and Organizations” in The Arab Uprisings Explained: New Contentious Politics in the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2014).

Ellen Lust is the Founding Director of the Programs on Governance and Local Development at Yale University and at the University of Gothenburg, and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. She also serves as a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy. She is the author of Structuring Conflict in the Arab World: Incumbents, Opponents and Institutions (Cambridge University Press, 2005). She is co-editor of Taking to the Streets: Activism and the Arab Uprisings (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), Governing Transforming Societies: The Challenge of Development in Africa (Lynne Rienner Press, 2012), and Political Participation in the Middle East and North Africa (Lynne Rienner Press, 2008). She is the president of the board of Middle East Law and Governance and a non-resident senior fellow at the Project on Middle East Democracy.

Tarek Masoud is the Sultan of Oman Associate Professor of International Relations at Harvard University‘s John F. Kennedy School of Government. He is the author of Counting Islam: Religion, Class, and Elections in Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and co-author of  The Arab Spring: Pathways of Repression and Reform (Oxford University Press, 2015) with Jason Brownlee and Andrew Reynolds. He is co-editor of Problems and Methods in the Study of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Order, Conflict, and Violence (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Sarah E. Parkinson is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 2013 and joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University in 2016. Her research examines organizational behavior and social change during and following war. Focusing predominantly on the Middle East and North Africa, she uses social network analysis and ethnographic methods to study the ways that actors such as militant organizations, political parties, and humanitarian groups cope with crisis, disruption, and fragmentation. She has conducted extensive fieldwork among Palestinian and Syrian refugees in Lebanon and with humanitarian organizations in Iraqi Kurdistan. Parkinson’s work has been published in the American Political Science Review, Perspectives on Politics, Social Science and Medicine, The Middle East Report, and the Monkey Cage.

Wendy Pearlman is an associate professor of political science at Northwestern University. She is the author of Violence, Nonviolence, and the Palestinian National Movement (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Occupied Voices: Stories of Everyday Life from the Second Intifada (Nation Books, 2003). She is a member of the journal advisory board of Middle East Law and Governance.

Curtis Ryan is a professor of political science at Appalachian State University. He is the author of Inter-Arab Alliances: Regime Security and Jordanian Foreign Policy (University Press of Florida, 2009) and Jordan in Transition: From Hussein to Abdullah (Lynne Reinner, 2002). He is a member of the Middle East Research and Information Project’s editorial committee.

Bassel F. Salloukh is an Associate Professor of political science in the Department of Social Sciences at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. His main fields of specialization include Comparative Politics (Global South especially Middle East), Political Theory (Public Philosophy, and the Philosophy of Reconciliation and Interculturalism), and International Relations (Middle East IR). His current research interests include an intersectional critique of power-sharing arrangements in postwar states, the philosophy of reconciliation in divided places, and Middle East International Relations after the popular uprisings.

Jillian Schwedler is a professor of political science at Hunter College of The City University of New York. She is author of Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (2006), editor of Understanding the Contemporary Middle East (2013), and co-editor of Policing and Prisons in the Middle East: Formations of Coercion (2010). She is a member of the Middle East Research and Information Project’s editorial committee.

Shibley Telhami is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, College Parkand a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of The World Through Arab Eyes: Arab Public Opinion and the Reshaping of the Middle East (Basic Books, 2013), The Stakes: America and the Middle East (Westview Press, 2003), and Power and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords (Columbia University Press, 1990). He co-authored The Peace Puzzle: America’s Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace, 1989-2011 (Cornell University Press, 2013) and is editor of The Sadat Lectures: Words and Images on Peace, 1997-2008 (USIP Press, 2010) and co-editor of Identity and Foreign Policy in the Middle East, (Cornell University Press, 2002) and International Organizations and Ethnic Conflict (Cornell University Press, 1995). He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a founding board member of the Education for Employment Foundation and has served on the board of the United States Institute of Peace and Human Rights Watch.

Mark Tessler is the Samuel J. Eldersveld Collegiate Professor of Political Science and a former vice-provost for international affairs at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Islam and Politics in the Middle East: Explaining the Views of Ordinary Citizens (Indiana University Press, 2015), Public Opinion in the Middle East: Survey Research and the Political Orientations of Ordinary Citizens (Indiana University Press, 2011) and A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Indiana University Press, 1994, 2009). He is co-editor of Islam, Democracy and the State in Algeria: Lessons for the Western Mediterranean and Beyond (Taylor and Francis, 2005), Democracy and its Limits: Lessons from Latin American, Asia, and the Middle East (Notre Dame University Press, 1999), and more. He co-directs the Arab Barometer project.

Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College and the co-director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power, and Performance in Yemen (University of Chicago Press, 2008) and Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Stacey Philbrick Yadav is Associate Professor of Political Science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. She joined the faculty in 2007. She specializes in comparative politics of the Middle East and teach classes in Middle East politics, Comparative politics and Islamic Political Thought. Her research focuses on the role of Islamist organizations in the transformation of public spheres and over the past ten years she has lived and conducted research in Lebanon, Yemen, Egypt and Israel. In 2013, she published Islamists and the State: Legitimacy and Institutions in Yemen and Lebanon, a book on the institutional and discursive strategies adopted by the Islamist members of two major political alliances, the Joint Meeting Parties in Yemen and the March 8 bloc in Lebanon. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. from University of Pennsylvania and her B.A. from Smith College.

Sean Yom is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Temple University. His research focuses on authoritarianism, democracy, and development in the Middle East and North Africa. He has published widely on post-colonial state formation, the dynamics of regime durability, and strategic implications for US foreign policy. He is the author of From Resilience to Revolution: How Foreign Interventions Destabilize the Middle East (Columbia University Press, 2015).