Michael C Hudson | ميشال هدسون Professor and Director, MEI meidir@nus.edu.sg Michael Hudson is Director of the Middle East Institute and Professor of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. He is also Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University, where he served as Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies for many years. He has edited and contributed to numerous books, including Middle East Dilemma: The Politics and Economics of Arab Integration (Columbia University Press/CCAS, 1999), The Palestinians: New Directions (CCAS, 1990), and Alternative Approaches to the Arab-Israeli Conflict (CCAS, 1984). His other works include The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon (Random House, 1968, 1985) and Arab Politics: The Search for Legitimacy (Yale University Press, 1977), numerous chapters, and articles appearing in Middle East Journal, Middle East Policy, International Affairs, Comparative Politics, Al-Mustaqbil al-'Arabi, and other scholarly journals. Hudson was awarded the 2011 Jere L. Bacharach Service Award from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), of which he is a past president.

Charlotte Schriwer | شارلت شريفر Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow meisc@nus.edu.sg Charlotte Schriwer’s research has focused mainly on the Levant region, primarily on agricultural history from the 12th century to the 1800s, and the use of water and water-driven technology. She has also explored the question of ethnic identity in the Ottoman architecture of the Levant. Her research at MEI involves an investigation of the Hadhrami Diaspora and South East Asia’s connections with the Indian Ocean, as well as the Islamic arts of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. She holds a PhD in History and an MA in Middle East Studies from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and an MA in Islamic Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Ali Allawi | علي علاوي Visiting Research Professor allawi@nus.edu.sg Ali A. Allawi is a writer, biographer and former government minister in Iraq. He received his education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Harvard University. He served in the World Bank group for a number of years before founding his own investment firm. Following the changes in Iraq in 2003, he served as the Minister of Trade, and then the first civilian Minister of Defence. In 2005 he was elected to the Constituent Assembly of Iraq and then served as Minister of Finance. In 2007, he left public service to pursue scholarly and academic interests. He has authored four books including The Occupation of Iraq (Yale: 2007) and The Crisis of Islamic Civilisation (Yale: 2009). His book Faisal I of Iraq will be issued in September 2013 (Yale). It will be the first comprehensive biography of this seminal figure set against the formative years of the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the founding of the state system in the Middle East. At various times, Ali Allawi has been associated with Oxford University (Senior Associate Member); University of Exeter (Fellow); Princeton University (Fellow); and Harvard University (Fellow). He has made numerous media appearances, and his articles and essays have appeared in major international journals and newspapers. He is the recipient of several public policy and diplomacy awards, and his books have garnered prizes. He is currently working on a book on the economic history of the modern Arab/Islamic worlds.

Robert Bianchi | روبرت بيانكى Visiting Research Professor meirrb@nus.edu.sg Robert Bianchi is a political scientist and an international lawyer with special interests in the Islamic World and China. He has taught at the University of Chicago, Nanjing University, Qatar University, the American University in Cairo, and the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent book, Guests of God: Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World, examines the explosive growth of the hajj with particular attention to Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Nigeria. He is currently writing a book about China’s deepening connections with Islamic countries and their role in altering the balance of power regionally and globally.

Lilia Labidi | ليليا العبيدي Visiting Research Professor meill@nus.edu.sg An anthropologist and psychologist by profession, Lilia Labidi holds a doctorate in psychology and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Paris. Labidi was a professor of clinical psychology at the Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Tunis, where from 1997-2001 she directed a program on The Construction of Public Morality in the Arab World and Africa (Senegal, South Africa, Tunisia, and Egypt). She has been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1995-1996), fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC (2001-2002), visiting professor of psychology at the American University in Cairo (2004-2005) and Yale University (2008-2009), and co-founder and active member of the Association of Tunisian Women for Research and Development and the Tunisian Association for Health Psychology. She is the author of several books and numerous articles on the Arab world, treating subjects such as the history of the feminist movement, psychology and sexuality, the construction of identity, attitudes towards death, among others, and has also organized many national and international conferences and exhibitions in Tunisia. Lilia Labidi was Minister of Woman Affairs in the new Tunisian government of National Unity (January-December 2011), following the overthrow of the old regime.

Peter Sluglett | بيتر سلغليت Visiting Research Professor meips@nus.edu.sg Peter Sluglett has been Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City since 1994. He has published widely on Iraq, including Iraq since 1958: from Revolution to Dictatorship, 3rd edn., (2001, with Marion Farouk-Sluglett), and Britain in Iraq: Contriving King and Country (2007). He has also edited and contributed to Syria and Bilad al-Sham under Ottoman Rule: Essays in Honour of Abdul-Karim Rafeq, (2010, with Stefan Weber), and The Urban Social History of the Middle East 1750-1950 (2008). His research at MEI will focus on mapping the decline in political power of the Christians of Lebanon since the Ta’if Accords. Born and educated in England, where he taught at the University of Durham between 1974 and 1993, he has a BA from Cambridge (1966) and a D.Phil from Oxford (1972).

Ali Kadri | علي القادري Senior Research Fellow meiak@nus.edu.sg Prior to joining the Middle East Institute, Ali Kadri was visiting fellow at the Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and head of the Economic Analysis Section at the United Nations regional office for Western Asia. Kadri is presently in the process of conducting research on the political economy of development in the Arab World. During his work at the United Nations, he was the lead author of the UN flagship publication dealing with the economic and social conditions of Arab Western Asia. Kadri has published on issues of the labour process in the Arab world. His forthcoming work, entitled "Arab development denied," looks into the formidable obstacles facing development in the Arab world.

Marie Duboc | ماري دوبوك Post Doctoral Research Fellow marieduboc@nus.edu.sg Marie Duboc’s research focuses on social movements and labor issues in the Middle East. Her doctoral dissertation, which researched labor protests and workers’ strikes in Egypt from 2004 to 2010, focused on channels that enable mobilization to take place despite the marginal involvement of political parties. Based on an ethnographic study of textile companies her research examined the role of the media, of gender dynamics, and of the nationalist narrative in shaping labor protests. She holds a PhD in sociology from the School of Advanced Social Science Studies (EHESS, France) and a MSc in comparative politics from the London School of Economics. During the academic year 2010-2011 she was an academic visitor at St Edmund Hall, Oxford University (Besse Scholarship). Her recent publications include “Egyptian Leftist Intellectuals’ Activism from the Margins: Overcoming the Mobilization/Demobilization Dichotomy” in J. Beinin and F. Vairel (eds.), Social Movements, Mobilization and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, and “La contestation sociale en Egypte depuis 2004: entre précarité et mobilisation locale”, published in Revue Tiers-Monde in 2011.

Navid Fozi-Abivard | نويد فوزي-أبيورد Post Doctoral Research Fellow meinf@nus.edu.sg Originally from Iran, Navid Fozi-Abivard has been researching religious minorities in Iran, including his dissertation on the Zoroastrians, a published essay on the Kurdish Ahl-e Haqq and unpublished work on the Baha’is. His new project as a postdoctoral research fellow at MEI explores the contemporary Iranian politics and is entitled “Neo-Iranian Nationalism: Pre-Islamic Grandeur and Shi’a Eschatology in Iranian Contemporary Politics.” He holds a PhD and a Master of Arts in Socio-Cultural Anthropology, from Boston University and University of Wisconsin Madison, respectively; also a Master of Arts in Applied Sociology and a Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies, both from University of Texas Dallas.

Fanar Haddad | فنر حداد Post Doctoral Research Fellow meifh@nus.edu.sg Fanar Haddad (BSc LSE, MPhil Cantab, DPhil Exon) previously lectured in modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Exeter and, most recently, at Queen Mary, University of London. Prior to obtaining his DPhil, Haddad was a Research Analyst at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office where he worked on North Africa. He has since published widely on issues relating to historic and contemporary Iraq. His main research topics are identity, historical memory, nationalism, communal conflict and minority politics. He is the author of Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (London/New York: Hurst/Columbia University Press, 2011). His research at the MEI will focus on historical memory and narratives of state in the Middle East.

Benjamin Lewis Geer | بنجامين گير Post Doctoral Research Fellow ben@nus.edu.sg Benjamin Geer obtained his doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His PhD thesis, The Priesthood of Nationalism in Egypt: Duty, Authority, Autonomy, combines sociology and cognitive linguistics to analyze the role of intellectuals in shaping nationalist concepts in Egypt, as well as the effects of those concepts on nationalist intellectuals over the long term. In 2011-2012 he was Visiting Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Middle East Studies Center at the American University in Cairo.

Linda Matar | لندا مطر Post Doctoral Research Fellow linda@nus.edu.sg Over the last few years, Linda Matar’s academic research has focused on the political economy of investment liberalisation in Syria. It examined investment or the process of capital accumulation in a developmental context. Her research at MEI will focus on outlining an alternative set of macroeconomic policies that may situate Syria on a developmental path and ensure welfare-enhancing and pro-poor outcomes. Her forthcoming publication is entitled "State Capitalism and Investment in Syria: Investment Law No. 10 and its Economic Implications" (St. Andrews Papers on Contemporary Syria). She holds a PhD in Economics from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and obtained her master’s and BA degree in Economics from the American University of Beirut.

Nazry Bahrawi | نظري بحراوي Research Associate nazry@nus.edu.sg Nazry Bahrawi is a cultural critic whose commentaries have appeared in the Guardian, South China Morning Post, Khaleej Times and Today newspapers, among others. He has also published refereed essays on postsecular Islam, as well as ideology and translation in Malaysia. At the MEI, he will be exploring critical Islam movements in modern Nusantara and their relation to the Middle East. His research interests are the intersections between literature, culture and theology; world literature and translation; as well as comparative philosophy. Nazry read comparative literature at the University of Edinburgh and University of Warwick.

Faeza Abdurazak | فائزة عبدالرزاق Research Assistant faeza@nus.edu.sg Faeza Abdurazak holds a BA in Arabic Language and Literature (minoring in Islamic scholarship) from the International Islamic University Malaysia and an MSc in International Relations from Nanyang Technological University. Her research interest mainly lies in political Islam in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

Nurhidayahti Mohammad Miharja | نورهدايتي محمد محرجا Research Assistant hidayahti@nus.edu.sg Nurhidayahti Mohammad Miharja holds a BA (Hons) in Sociology and an MA in Arts (Malay Studies) from National University of Singapore. Her research interests include contemporary Muslim thought in Southeast Asia and Turkey, ethno-religious minorities in the Middle East and Muslim civil society.