Author Directory

James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and scholar, Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and the author of the syndicated column and blog The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Fatiha Dazi-Héni is a researcher in Political Science on Arab monarchies at the Institute for Strategic Research at the Military School in Paris and Associated Professor on Contemporary History in the Arabian Peninsula at the Political Institute of lille. Her publications include Monarchie et Sociétés d’Arabie. Le temps des confrontations (Presses de Sciences PO, 2006) and L’Arabie Saoudite en 100 questions, edited 3 times (Editions Tallendier: 2017, and Texto: 2018 and 2020). She has also published many articles on GCC states and societies as well as on sub-regional dynamics.

Christopher M. Davidson is an associate fellow of the Henry Jackson Society, a former reader in Middle East politics at Durham University, a former visiting associate professor at Kyoto University in Japan and a former assistant professor at Zayed University in the UAE. His books include From Sheikhs to Sultanism: Statecraft and Authority in Saudi Arabia and The UAE and Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East.

Hamdy A. Hassan is Professor of Political Science at Zayed University, Dubai, UAE. He is also a Co-Chair of RC44 – Security, Conflict and Democratization, IPSA, receiving his Ph.D. in Comparative Politics from Cairo University and Maryland University (1990). In 1999 he was granted an Egyptian State Award in Political Science. His research focuses on African Politics, Conflict & Security Studies, Radicalisation and Islamic Discourse.

Natalie Koch is Professor of Geography at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She is a political geographer working on authoritarianism, geopolitics and the territorial state system. Her empirical research in the Arabian Peninsula focuses on alternative sites of geopolitical analysis, including sports, science, environmental policy and urban development. She is the editor of the new book Spatializing Authoritarianism (Syracuse University Press, 2022) as well as Critical geographies of sport: Space, power, and sport in global perspective (Routledge, 2017). In August 2022, she will begin as the new Professor of Human Geography at Heidelberg University.

Nadia Naccache is currently working as Program Development Advisor for Resilience and Community Empowerment project in Tunisia with FHI 360, holding two master degrees: an Msc in International Development from the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom and a Master of Research in Management and strategy from the Institute of Higher Commercial studies (IHEC Carthage). she has extensive cross-cultural experience in international development with international NGOs in different multicultural contexts, where she has undertaken research on topics such as the youth’s economic inclusion, education and employment in Tunisia, social entrepreneurship in Poland and female activism in Tunisia before and after the revolution. Passionate about the international development sector, she has been working on projects addressing issues related to youth, culture, education, youth’s economic inclusion, gender and development.

Administrator

Anna Reuß is a doctoral researcher at the Chair of International Politics and Conflict Studies at the University of the Bundeswehr, Munich. Her research focuses on conceptual and regional aspects of security in International Relations.

Omar Shaban is a Palestinian living in Gaza. He is an analyst on political economy of the Middle East, the founder of the Pal Think for strategic studies and was a candidate for the first Palestinian parliamentary elections in 1996. Regularly writing for various international magazines, he has been interviewed by many well-known international newspapers and occasionally participates in conferences on political and economic issues as well as Palestinian affairs, such as the reconstruction of Gaza, the reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Euro-Med cooperation. He holds a BA in Economy from Egypt (1984), and a Msc. degree in Entrepreneurial studies from stirling University, scotland (1995).