I work on conflict and state-building in the Middle East. I focus on the countries of West Asia/the Eastern Mediterranean: especially Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. As a political scientist, I’m interested in long-term processes of political, institutional, and social transformation.

I have held academic positions at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University, the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, and the Council for British Research in the Levant, based in Jordan and Syria. I was previously Head of the Middle East & North Africa Programme at the Royal United Services Institute, a London thinktank, and have worked as a senior research consultant covering Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq for several international NGOs and political/security risk advisory firms, including Proximity International, Jane’s Information Group, Oxford Analytica, BBC Monitoring, and Menas Associates. I’ve also provided numerous expert reports for refugee resettlement cases originating in the Middle East. I have extensive broadcast experience on television and radio with the BBC World Service, BBC News 24, CNN International, and Sky News. I am currently Senior Editor at the Arab Center Washington DC.

My academic research has been published in journals such as Journal of Democracy, International Affairs, New Political Economy,  Journal of Historical Sociology, and International Journal of Middle East Studies. My first book, Occupying Syria under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space, and State Formation, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2012. I also co-edited Power, Resistance, Ideology and the State: Charles Tripp and the Comparative Politics of the Middle East (Gingko Press, 2025). My new book, A History of Modern Syria (with a slightly different title for the US market) will be published in January 2026 by Basic Books (US) and Allen Lane (UK). The book analyses the development of Syria’s politics, economics, and society from the 1800s to the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.

I am skilled at communicating expert knowledge to non-specialist audiences. I have in the past given briefings on Middle East politics to policy audiences at the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute and the UK Defence Academy, among others. I have taught Masters and undergraduate classes on the comparative politics of the Middle East & North Africa, the politics of Syria, war in the Middle East, and interdisciplinary approaches to research in the Arab world at George Washington University, Georgetown University, GU- Qatar, School of Oriental & African Studies, the London School of Economics, and the University of Exeter.

I am experienced at writing project proposals and successful grant applications for both research and institutional purposes. My own academic research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Andrew L. Mellon Foundation, Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and the British Academy; my own research training was funded by the AHRC and ESRC.

I lived in Damascus for five years between the late 1990s and 2012 and in Jordan for 18 months; I have also spent long periods in Lebanon and have travelled widely in the Middle East. I have a PhD in Politics and a MA in Middle East Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and a first class BA (Hons) in Arabic and French from St John’s College, Oxford University. I am proficient in Arabic and French for research purposes, with intermediate Turkish and beginner’s Kurmancî Kurdish.