This edited volume stems from a workshop that we co-directed as part of the Gulf Research Meeting that takes place every year at the University of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom.
Dania Koleilat Khatib and Marwa Maziad
Dr. Dania Koleilat Khatib currently holds the position of Executive Director at Al Istishari Strategy Center for Economic and Future Studies, a UAE-based independent think tank. She is also an affiliated scholar at the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. She specializes in US-Arab relations, and her research also spans sectarianism, extremism, governance, and media biases. Dr. Khatib authored a book on the Arab lobby and the factors for its successes and failures. Her first book was published by Routledge UK; the Arabic version was published by the Center of Arab Unity for Studies in Beirut. She is a regular publisher on US relations with the Arab Gulf in several regional newspapers and is also columnist for United Press International and Bahrain’s Al Watan. Dr. Khatib has had regular appearances on a series of Middle Eastern TV stations. She has co-directed, participated in, and presented scholarly papers, as well as speaking in numerous workshops and conferences. She has been a guest speaker on several high-profile platforms, such as NATO, the European Parliament and the Heritage Foundation. She is a member of the Arab Council of Social Studies. Dr. Khatib holds a PhD in Politics from the University of Exeter and both an MA and a BA in Business Administration from the American University of Beirut.
Dr. Marwa Maziad is an international relations and Middle East media and politics expert. She received her MA in Intercultural Communication from the University of Washington. Her PhD at the University of Washington is on comparative civil-military relations in Turkey, Egypt and Israel. Dr. Maziad is a former Faculty Member at Qatar University and Northwestern University in Qatar. She was also a Visiting Scholar at Istanbul Şehir University and the American University in Cairo. She has published extensively on Gulf Studies including a book chapter entitled “Qatar: Cultivating the Citizen of the Futuristic State” (Routledge 2016); and “Qatar in Egypt: The Politics of Aljazeera,” (2018) in the peer-reviewed academic journal, Journalism. She has been a columnist on international affairs for Almasry Alyoum, Egypt’s leading independent daily newspaper. Dr. Maziad is also a regular political analyst on Aljazeera English, BBC Arabic, France 24 and CNN International. Her research agenda includes: comparative politics; international relations; communication studies; security studies and civil-military relations.
