Can Acıksöz is an assistant professor of Anthropology at UCLA. He is working on two books on violence and conflict in Turkey's Kurdish region.
Aslı Bâli is Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law, Faculty Director of the Law School’s Promise Institute for Human Rights, and Director of the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies.
Henri J. Barkey is the Bernard L. and Bertha F. Cohen Professor of International Relations at Lehigh University. His most recent work includes Turkey's Syria Predicament (2014) and Iraq, Its Neighbors and the United States, co-edited with Phebe Marr and Scott Lasensky (2011).
Ali Behdad is John Charles Hillis Professor of Literature in the Departments of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA. His most recent book is Camera Orientalis: reflections on photography of the Middle East (2016).
Joel Beinin is Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History and professor of Middle East history at Stanford University. He is the author of Workers and Thieves: Labor Movements and Popular Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, among other works.
Aomar Boum is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Vice Chair of Undergraduate Studies at UCLA. His most recent book is Memories of Absence: How Muslims Remember Jews in Morocco.
Laurie A. Brand is the Robert Grandford Wright Professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California. She is author of Citizens Abroad: States and Migration in the Middle East and North Africa (2006) and Official Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria (2014).
Nathan J. Brown is professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University and nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Elliott Colla is associate professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. He is author of the novel Baghdad Central, along with essays on modern Arab literature, culture and politics, and translations of contemporary Arabic literature.
Ishac Diwan is Chair of Excellence, Socio-Economy of the Arab World, Paris Science and Letters and Senior Fellow of the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University. He has worked in the World Bank’s Research Complex and the departments of Middle East and Africa. While at the World Bank Institute he led the Economic Policy Group.
Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. His most recent book is Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari‘ah in the Modern Age (2014).
Khaled Abou El Fadl is the Omar and Azmeralda Alfi Distinguished Professor of Law at the UCLA School of Law. His most recent book is Reasoning with God: Reclaiming Shari‘ah in the Modern Age (2014).
F. Gregory Gause III is professor of international affairs and John H. Lindsay '44 Chair in the Department of International Affairs in the Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, where he also serves as the head of the department. His most recent book is The International Relations of the Persian Gulf (2010).
James L. Gelvin is a professor of History at UCLA. His most recent book is The New Middle East: What Everyone Needs to Know (2017).
Lindsay Gifford is an assistant professor in International Studies at the University of San Francisco, where she also is currently serving as the Interim Director of Middle Eastern Studies. She has conducted ethnographic field research in Damascus, and was a National Science Foundation Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow working with refugees in Jordan.
Bassam Haddad is Director of the Middle East Studies Program and teaches in the Department of Public and International Affairs at George Mason University. He is the author of Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (2012).
Sherine Hamdy is associate professor of Anthropology at the University of California Irvine. She is co-author of the anthropological graphic novel Lissa: A Story of Friendship, Medical Promise, and Revolution (2017).
Marc Lynch is a professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University, where he is also director of both the Institute for Middle East Studies and the Middle East Studies Program. He is author of The New Arab Wars: Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East (2016).
Toby Matthiesen is senior research fellow in the International Relations of the Middle East at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Sectarian Gulf: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the Arab Spring That Wasn't (2013), and The Other Saudis: Shiʻism, Dissent and Sectarianism (2015).
Moncef Marzouki was the first democratically elected president of post-uprising Tunisia. Dr. Marzouki steered the country through its turbulent new beginning, lifting the state of emergency, appointing a prime minister from the moderate Islamist Ennahda movement, and establishing a Truth and Dignity Commission to guide national reconciliation. A medical doctor, and human rights pioneer and activist, Dr. Marzouki founded the Tunisian National Committee for Liberties and was president of the Arab Commission on Human Rights.
Marina Ottaway is a Middle East Scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. She is working on a book analyzing the significant and often unintended changes that have followed the Arab uprisings.
Harith Hasan al-Qarawee is a Senior Fellow at the Central European University and senior non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, where he leads the Iraq Initiative. His research focuses on religion-state relations, sectarianism and identity politics, and informal actors in Iraq and the Middle East.
Laila Sakr/VJ Um Amel is a media designer known for creating the R-Shief software system. She is assistant professor of Film and Media Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara.
Jillian Schwedler is a professor of political science at CUNY Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of the award-winning Faith in Moderation: Islamist Parties in Jordan and Yemen (2006) and co-editor of Policing and Prisons in the Middle East (2010).
Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and co-director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. Her publications include Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (1999) and, most recently, "Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria" in Critical Inquiry 39.4 (2013).
Jessica Winegar is Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Chair and associate professor of Anthropology and Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University, as well as chair of the editorial committee of Middle East Report. She is the author of Creative Reckonings: The Politics of Art and Culture in Contemporary Egypt and co-author of Anthropology's Politics: Disciplining the Middle East.