POMEPS Studies 57: Syria After Assad

Many developments during the past year have given rise to a host of crucial questions about the future of Syria and the Syrian people. To explore them, the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) exchanged with the Arab Political Science Network (APSN), launched a call for papers, and selected more than a dozen emerging scholars to participate in an intensive online workshop in mid-September 2025. Based in eight different countries, many of these researchers are Syrian, and most have years of research experience on Syria or Syrian diasporic communities. The papers resulting from the workshop provide fresh insight into a range of critical issues: decentralization and state consolidation, sectarian violence, refugee return, security sector reform, transitional justice, economic reconstruction, and more.

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Syria One Year After Assad

André Bank, Marc Lynch, and Wendy Pearlman

The Center Beckons: Performance, Autonomy, and the “Postwar” State in Syria

Ali Hamdan, University of Amsterdam

Between Stability and Violence: Tribal Authority in Syria’s Transitional Order

Haian Dukhan, Teesside University

Center and Periphery in a post-Assad Syria

Sean Lee, The American University in Cairo

Decentralization in post-Assad Syria: a façade or bottom-up local governance?

Tiina Hyyppä, University of Helsinki

Security Sector Reform in Post-Assad Syria: Decentralization as a Foundation

Yassmine Tlass, University of Kent

Justice in the Interregnum: Navigating the Complexity of Transitional Justice in Post-Assad Syria

 Sarah Bassisseh, Ronja Herrschner, Chonlawit Sirikupt, and Marcia Ponzlet – Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

Disability and the Political Afterlife of Violence: Reimagining Justice and Statehood in Post-Assad Syria

Salma Daoudi, University of Oxford

Everyday experiences of the law, in Syria and beyond

Rifaie Tammas & Marika Sosnowski, University of Melbourne

The Question of Return

Rana B. Khoury, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Rethinking Refugehood and Time at the Empire-State Seam

Sarah Al Saeid, University of Oxford

Financing Transition: Aid and the Challenge of Inclusive Economic Recovery in Syria

Erin A. Snider, George Washington University

The Pound in the Post-Assad Era: Currency Stabilization in Syria

Hashem Krayem, Georgetown University

Hydropolitics and Peacebuilding in Syria’s Reconstruction: Towards a New Economic–Environmental Model of Regional Water Sharing

Ahmed Haj Asaad, Geo Expertise