Our Team

Chairman and co-founder of Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies and a non-resident fellow at both the Carnegie Middle East Center and Middle East Institute in Washington, D.C. Appointed to the UN Advisory Group of Experts for the Progress Study on Youth, Peace and Security (2016).

Published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, New York Times, The Independent, The Guardian, Al-Hayyat, As-Safir, Al-Monitor. Named to Foreign Policy’s Top 100 Global Thinkers (2013) and The Guardian’s Top 30 under 30 list (2014).

Rhodes Scholar and PhD Candidate at Oxford University, and a doctoral fellow with the European Research Council’s WAFAW program. Her work, which focuses on politics, institutional reform, and Islamist movements in Tunisia and Turkey, has appeared in peer-reviewed books and journals, news outlets including The Guardian, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post, and for think tanks including the Carnegie Endowment, the Brookings Institute, and The Century Foundation.

A former Fulbright Scholar to Turkey, Ms. Marks has taught as a Visiting Professor in the Politics and International Relations Department of Istanbul’s Bogazici University. Recently she has been a Visiting Fellow at Columbia University’s SIPA school and at the London-based European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). She speaks Arabic and Turkish.

Political advisor for Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Geneva. Regional Organizing Director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign in Michigan. Has lived in Beirut (2004–present) and Tunis (2012–2014); co-editor of Heinrich Boell Foundation’s Perspectives journal; co-founder of Mideastwire.com (2005–present). Provides analysis for Al-Jazeera International, BBC, US and European publications.

Author of White Paper “Re-Imagining the Lebanon Track: Towards a New US Policy.” Editor of the 2007 book “Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah.” Visiting fellow with European Council on Foreign Relations (2014). Graduate of Cambridge University (MPhil, International Relations, 2006); Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University (1999). Policy Fellowship at European University Institute in Florence (2020).

International Relations graduate from the Higher Institute of Human Sciences at Al-Manar University; degree in English Linguistics, Literature and Civilization from the University of Manouba. Freelance journalist and research consultant on Tunisian politics and women’s rights.

Assistant Researcher and PhD Research Fellow in Political Science at the ERC-funded Sociology of Civil Wars program at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University (Paris 1) since 2015. He was previously (2010–2014) a Junior Research Fellow in Iraq at the Institut français du Proche-Orient (IFPO). His doctoral thesis focuses on sectarian conflicts in Northern Iraq, where he conducted extensive fieldwork since 2009.

He has also conducted parallel fieldwork in Libya (2011–2012) and Syria (2012–2013 and 2016) with insurgent groups. Taken together, his work highlights social and political transformation through the Middle East Civil Wars. As co-director of Noria MENA Program, Mr. Quesnay calls for social scientists to adopt new methodological and conceptual approaches to understanding these extreme situations and for combining micro and macro analyses.

Communication Media Degree from Lebanese American University in Beirut (1999). Producer and cameraman for Lebanese and international media organizations including CNN, Arte, and Al-Jazeera.