Live with ASI: Episode 2.7 - January 2022

Mouin Rabbani is a researcher and analyst specialising in the contemporary Middle East and Co-Editor of Jadaliyya. He has previously served as Principal Political Affairs Officer with the Office of the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Head of Middle East with Crisis Management Initiative/Martti Ahtisaari Centre, Senior Middle East Analyst and Special Advisor on Israel-Palestine with the International Crisis Group, and Project Director with the Association of Netherlands Municipalities. He is Senior Fellow with the Institute for Palestine Studies, Contributing Editor of Middle East Report, Associate Fellow of the European Council on Foreign Relations, and Policy Advisor to Al-Shabaka - The Palestinian Policy Network. A graduate of Tufts University and Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, Rabbani has published, presented and commented widely on Middle East issues, including for most major global media.

Lisa Hajjar is a full professor of sociology at the University of California - Santa Barbara. Her research and writing focus on the laws of war and conflict, human rights and torture. She is the author of Torture: A Sociology of Violence and Human Rights, and was serving as the Edward Said Chair of American Studies at the American University of Beirut 2014-2016. 

Adel Iskandar is Assistant Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. He is the author, coauthor, and editor of several works including Egypt In Flux: Essays on an Unfinished Revolution (AUCP/OUP), Al-Jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism (Basic Books), Edward Said: A Legacy of Emancipation and Representation (University of California Press), and Mediating the Arab Uprisings (Tadween Publishing). Iskandar's work deals with media, identity and politics and has lectured extensively on these topics at universities worldwide. His latest publication is the co-edited volume Media Evolution on the Eve of the Arab Spring (Palgrave Macmillan). Iskandar taught for several years at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and the Communication, Culture, and Technology program at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He is a co-editor of Jadaliyya.

Publication director of Orient XXI. A specialist in the Near East, he is the author of several books, including De quoi la Palestine est-elle le nom ?, Les Liens qui libèrent, 2010 and et Un chant d’amour. Israël-Palestine, une histoire française, with Hélène Aldeguer, éditions La Découverte, 2017.

Samer Abboud is Associate Professor of Global Interdisciplinary Studies at Villanova University and is interested in how neoliberalism has manifested in the Arab World, with an emphasis on how policies of privatization and marketization have shaped the political economies of countries in the region, especially Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. 

He completed his doctorate at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University in Exeter in 2007 with a thesis entitled “The Political Economy of Marketization in Syria”. This research focused on the post-2000 market reforms and the multiple transitions and transformations embedded therein.

Twitter: @samer_abboud

Paola Cossermelli Messina is Associate Producer and Post-Production Manager of Status / الوضع  Audio Magazine. As an audio producer and writer born in Brazil, her research interests fall at the intersections between music, culture and gender in the Middle East. She previously worked as a producer and reporter at a radio station in her home country.

Paola has a B.A. in Music and Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an M.A. in Media Studies from The New School. She was awarded the Middle East Studies Assocation's  Graduate Student Paper Prize for her research on Iranian women musicians. Her written works have been published by Reorient, Mashallah News and O Estado de São Paulo newspaper. She has also been credited as a sound designer and editor in several short narrative and documentary films.

Twitter: @ICanHearPaola