The Policy Initiative - Team

  • عربي
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    • Reinoud Leenders

      Senior Fellow

      Dr. Reinoud Leenders is a Reader (associate professor) in International Politics and Middle East Studies at King’s College London, Department of War Studies. Since the early 1990s he has lived in, travelled, and studied the Middle East. His research and teaching engages with Middle East (international) politics and society generally, and Syria and Lebanon in particular, and focuses on authoritarian governance, corruption, armed conflict and security, refugees and popular mobilization. He authored some thirty articles and chapters in academic journals and edited volumes in addition to Spoils of Truce: Corruption and State-Building in Postwar Lebanon (Cornell University Press 2012) and Middle East Authoritarianisms: Governance, Contestation, and Regime Resilience in Syria and Iran (With Steven Heydemann-eds. Stanford University Press). Reinoud regularly gives advice and carries out research assignments on conflict dynamics and the political economy of Syria and Lebanon to policymakers, international NGOs, private companies, law enforcement agencies and law firms.

    • Rim Saab

      Fellow

      Dr. Rim Saab is a social psychologist specialized in the area of intergroup relations, which looks at the social psychological factors that underlie phenomena like prejudice, discrimination and intergroup conflict. In her research, she explores the social psychological drivers that push individuals to participate in collective action (social protest), and she also examines how global power dynamics impact research production in the field of social psychology. Her research spans multiple settings, in Lebanon and beyond, including refugee-host relations, inter-sectarian relations and gender relations. Rim was a faculty member at the American University of Beirut for several years before joining the University of Sussex, UK, in 2021, where she currently lectures.

    • Melani Cammett

      Senior Fellow

      Dr. Melani Cammett is Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs in the Government Department and Director of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She also holds a secondary faculty appointment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Cammett's books include The Oxford Handbook on Politics in Muslim Societies (co-edited with Pauline Jones, Oxford University Press, 2021), 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, Alan Richards, and John Waterbury, 2015); 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; and Globalization and Business Politics in North Africa (Cambridge University Press 2007). Her current research explores post-conflict intergroup relations, development, and authoritarianism, primarily in the Middle East. 

    • Lara Deeb

      Senior Fellow

      Dr. Lara Deeb is Professor of Anthropology at Scripps College in Claremont, California. She is the author of An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon (Princeton University Press 2006), co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’ite South Beirut (with Mona Harb, Princeton University Press, 2013), and co-author of Anthropology’s Politics: Disciplining the Middle East (with Jessica Winegar, Stanford University Press, 2015). Deeb has also published widely on the politics of knowledge production, gender and Islam, piety and morality, Hezbollah’s cultural production, and transnational feminism. She is currently writing a book about Lebanese family and social responses to interreligious and intersectarian marriage in order to better understand social sectarianism and sect as a form of social difference.

    • Nancy Ezzeddine

      Fellow
      Nancy Ezzeddine is a Research Fellow at the Clingendael Institute. Her work primarily focuses on post-conflict recovery and development in Iraq. Nancy previously worked as a policy researcher at the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies, leading work on the industrial sector. She also gained professional experience at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA) where she coordinated the implementation of the Sustainable Development Agenda across the Arab region. Nancy holds an MSc in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and is currently pursuing a Master's degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Department of Economics.

    • Bassam Fattouh

      Senior Fellow
      Dr. Bassam Fattouh is the Director of the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies and Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He has published a variety of articles on energy policy, the international oil pricing system, OPEC behavior, the energy transition, and the economies of oil producing countries where his articles have appeared in academic and professional journals and books. Fattouh served as a member of an independent expert group established to provide recommendations to the 12th International Energy Forum (IEF) Ministerial Meeting in Cancun (29-31 March 2010) for strengthening the architecture of the producer-consumer dialogue through the IEF and reducing energy market volatility. He is the recipient of the 2018 OPEC Award for Research. He acts as an advisor to a number of governments and companies and is a regular speaker at international conferences.

    • Jamal Haidar

      Fellow
      Dr. Jamal Ibrahim Haidar is an assistant professor of economics at the Lebanese American University. He is also a faculty affiliate at the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University. He joined the Lebanese American University after being an assistant professor of economics at the American University in Cairo.  He completed a three-year postdoctoral research fellowship at Harvard University and his doctoral studies in economics at the Paris School of Economics, University of Paris-1 Pantheon Sorbonne in France.  He also holds a master’s degree in applied economics from Johns Hopkins University in the United States as well as a master’s degree in international finance from Cass Business School, City University London in the United Kingdom. Previously, he worked at the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, International Monetary Fund, and the Institute of International Finance in Washington DC. His fields of specialization are international economics and development economics. 
      His economics research work investigated how exporters behave after shocks; how business regulatory reforms affect economic growth; how job creation can be improved; how firms can learn from each other in international markets; how investor protections can affect investment and economic growth, among other topics with evidence-based policy implications. His research work has been featured in The Economist, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, La Tribune, Le Monde, Project Syndicate, and other media outlets. In addition, Dr. Jamal Ibrahim Haidar has been awarded the 2022 Abdul Hameed Shoman Arab Researchers Award in the Economics and Administration Sciences field. 

    • Mona Harb

      Senior Fellow
      Dr. Mona Harb is Professor of Urban Studies and Politics at the American University of Beirut where she is also co-founder and research lead at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research investigates governance and territoriality in contexts of contested sovereignty, urban activism and oppositional politics, and how people make collective life in fragmented cities. She is the author of Le Hezbollah à Beirut: de la banlieue à la ville, co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’i South Beirut (with Lara Deeb), co-editor of Local Governments and Public Goods: Assessing Decentralization in the Arab World (with Sami Atallah), and co-editor of Refugees as City-Makers (with Mona Fawaz et al.). She serves on the editorial boards of MELG, IJMES, EPC, and CSSAME. Harb is the recipient of grants from IDRC, Ford Foundation, LSE-Emirates Fund, EU-FP7, Wenner-Gren, ACLS, and the Middle-East Awards. She served as associate dean of her faculty, chairperson of her department, and is currently the coordinator of the graduate programs in urban planning, policy, and design.

    • Mona Khechen

      Senior Fellow
      Dr. Mona Khechen is an independent urban and regional development planner and researcher. She has provided consultancy services to various international organizations (AFD, AKTC, ESCWA, UNDP, UN-Habitat, and the World Bank) and worked with the private and the non-profit sectors in Lebanon and abroad (Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and the US). Her work portfolio includes a wide range of projects and policy-oriented studies that address the spatial, socio-economic, and institutional aspects of urban development and planning particularly in contexts of rapid urbanization, conflict, poverty, and massive migration and population movements. She has also guided territorial investments and local development strategies and participated in social impacts assessments and project evaluations. Khechen’s work advocates strategic, sustainable, inclusive, participatory, and socially-just interventions and policy responses. She is interested in land governance, spatial politics, heritage and identity, urban transformations, displacement, and gentrification. She has a BArch from the American University of Beirut, an MSc in Development and Planning from University College London, and a Doctor of Design (PhD equivalent) from Harvard University.

    • Adeel Malik

      Senior Fellow

      Dr. Adeel Malik is Globe Fellow in the Economies of Muslim Societies at the Oxford Center for Islamic Studies and an Associate Professor in Development Economics at the University of Oxford’s Department of International Development. He received his doctorate in economics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Malik’s research articles have been published in the Journal of European Economic Association, European Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Development Economics, Oxford Economic Papers, World Development, Review of International Political Economy, and Modern Asian Studies. His most recent contribution to the field is a co-edited volume, Crony Capitalism in the Middle East: Business and Politics from Liberalization to the Arab Spring, published by Oxford University Press in 2019. Malik’s research has been featured in CNN, the Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Post, Project Syndicate, Foreign Policy, and Foreign Affairs.

    • Nada Mora

      Senior Fellow
      Dr. Nada Mora is a Lecturer at the Lebanese University and a Senior Fellow at The Policy Initiative. She taught at the American University of Beirut from 2003 to 2007 where she was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics. She worked in central banking from 2007 to 2016 as an economist with the Bank of England, a senior economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, and later a principal financial economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. During her time in central banking, she contributed to supervisory models and quantitative bank exams for stress testing. Her primary research area is financial economics examining financial intermediation and financial crises mainly through the empirical commercial bank setting. Mora has contributed studies on funding costs of financial intermediaries, credit risk, and dollarization. Her work has been published in the Journal of Banking and Finance, the Journal of Money Credit and Banking, and the Journal of Finance. She completed her S.B. in Economics and PhD in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

    • Lama Mourad

      Fellow
      Dr. Lama Mourad is an Assistant Professor at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University. Her research focuses on the intersection of forced migration, local governance, and the politics of borders, with a regional focus on the Middle East. Her work has been published in both academic and public outlets, including the Journal of Refugee Studies, Middle East Law and Governance, Forced Migration Studies, the European Journal of International Relations, as well as The Atlantic, Lawfare, The Washington Post, The Toronto Star, and Le Devoir. She received her PhD from the department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. She previously held fellowships at Perry World House, University of Pennsylvania, and at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government's Middle East Initiative.

    • Joelle Abi-Rached

      Fellow
      Dr. Joelle Abi-Rached is currently a Lecturer in History of Science at Harvard University as well as an associate researcher at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. She previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at Columbia University’s Society of Fellows, and was an invited researcher at the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her work focuses on the social, political, ethical, and economic aspects of medical and psychiatric practices, public health, and global health. Her most recent book is ‘Asfuriyyeh: A History of Madness, Modernity, and War in the Middle East (MIT Press, 2020). She earned her Medical Doctorate from the American University of Beirut, an MSc in Philosophy and Public Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a PhD in History of Science from Harvard University.

    • Ziad Abu-Rish

      Fellow

      Ziad Abu-Rish is a Visiting Associate Professor of Human Rights and the Director of the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College. His research explores state formation, economic development, and social mobilizations in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Lebanon and Jordan.

      Abu-Rish's publications have appeared in the Middle East Report, Review of Middle East Studies and International Journal of Middle East Studies. He is currently completing a book manuscript entitled The State of Lebanon: Popular Politics and Institution Building in the Wake of Independence.

      Abu-Rish serves as Co-Editor of Arab Studies Journal and Jadaliyya, as well as Co-Director of the Lebanon Dissertation Summer Institute. He received his PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles and his MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University.

    • Christiana Parreira

      Fellow
      Dr. Christiana Parreira is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. Parreira’s research focuses on the role of local political institutions and actors in governance throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Her forthcoming book project examines how local governments and elections facilitated predatory state-building practices in Lebanon before, during, and after the civil war. In other research published or forthcoming in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, and Politics & Religion, she examines determinants of governance quality and distributive outcomes in Lebanon, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Global South. In September 2022, she will join the Department of International Relations and Political Science at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (IHEID) as an Assistant Professor. She received her PhD in political science from Stanford University in 2020.

    • Mounir Mahmalat

      Fellow
      Dr. Mounir Mahmalat is a Senior Researcher at The Policy Initiative. His research focuses on the political economy of reform, conflict, and development. He also consults for the World Bank in the Fragility, Conflict and Violence group. His previous experiences include positions at the United Nation’s Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN ESCWA) and the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies. He was a research fellow at the American University of Beirut and Harvard University and holds a PhD in Political Economy from Dublin City University.
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