Session One: ‘Order and disorder in a context of global instability: where do things stand in December 2024?’
Rt Hon Alistair Burt is Pro-Chancellor of Lancaster University, a Distinguished Fellow at RUSI, and the UK’s Commissioner on the International Commission on Missing Persons. He was a Member of Parliament for thirty two years, and held a number of Ministerial and Opposition posts, notably as Minister for the Middle East and North Africa 2010-2013 and 2017-2019 at the FCO and DFID.
Sir William Patey served as a senior British diplomat until April 2012. He served as Ambassador to Afghanistan (2010-2012), to Saudi Arabia (2007-2010) to Iraq (2005-2006) and to Sudan (2002-2005). He was also Head of the Middle East Department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from 1999-2002. Since retiring from government service in 2012, he has become an international consultant and regular media commentator on Middle East affairs. He is currently Government and International Affairs adviser to Control Risks. He was, until 2019, a Non-Executive Director at HSBC Middle East Ltd and a Senior Adviser to AECOM. Previous positions include Chairman of the HMBE Financial Systems Vulnerability Committee and member of HSBC Holdings Ltd FSVC.
Jasmine El Gamal is a former Middle East policy advisor at the Pentagon who now advises organizations and individuals on crafting empathy-based, culturally driven approaches to policy, strategic communications, and workplace mental health. Jasmine has served for over 25 years in public and private-sector organizations covering issues related to national security and international affairs, including as a consultant to the United Nations and the European Union. During her tenure at the Pentagon, Jasmine served three Secretaries of Defense, advising on Middle East issues in times of crisis, including post-war Iraq, the Arab Spring, the war against ISIS, and Syria. She also served as the Acting Chief of Staff for the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Middle East Policy and later as Special Assistant to three consecutive Under Secretaries of Defense for Policy (USDP).
Professor Raihan Ismail is the His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies at the University of Oxford. She is a Fellow of St. Antony’s College. Raihan’s research interests include Political Islam, Sunni-Shia relations, and the intertwining nature of religion and politics in Muslim societies. She is the author of Saudi Clerics and Shia Islam (Oxford University Press, 2016) and Rethinking Salafism: The Transnational Networks of Salafi ‘Ulama in Egypt, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Session Two: ‘Examining conflict, cooperation and co-existence in the Gulf-MENA region’
Professor Simon Mabon is Chair in International Politics at Lancaster University where he directs SEPAD and the Richardson Institute. Mabon is the author of a number of books on the contemporary Middle East including: Houses built on sand: Sectarianism, revolution and violence in the Middle East (Manchester University Press, 2020); The Struggle for Supremacy: Saudi Arabia and Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2023); Saudi Arabia and Iran: Soft Power Rivalry in the Middle East (IB Tauris, 2013); and The Origins of ISIS (IB Tauris, 2016). He has published in a range of Middle East and International Relations journals including: Review of International Studies; Middle East Journal; Middle East Policy; British Journal of Middle East Studies; Politics, Religion and Ideology; and Third World Quarterly.
Dr Rahaf Aldoughli teaches courses on the Comparative Politics and International Relations of the Middle East, and is a Visiting Fellow at LSE Middle East Centre. Her areas of research expertise include identifying the ideological borrowings between European and Arab nationalism, the rise of the nation-state in the Middle East, the Syria crisis, militarism and the construction of masculinity in the Arab world. Her research also focuses on the association between the rise of nation-states in the Middle East and the perpetuation of militarism, despotism and fundamentalism, analysing militarism in the Arab context not only as an institution used by the state, but also as an ideology that perpetuates masculinity and gender bias. Before moving to Lancaster, Rahaf was lecturer at the University of Manchester teaching Modern Middle Eastern History. She was based at the Centre for Cultural History of War. She completed her doctorate in Politics at Lancaster University in 2017.
Dania Akkad is Middle East Eye’s senior investigative editor. In 2022, her reporting on women’s rights in the Middle East was recognised with a Write to End Violence Against Women feature of the year award and she was shortlisted as Drum award’s journalist of the year. She started her career covering crime and farming at the daily newspaper in Salinas, California, where John Steinbeck once worked, and then reported from Syria as a freelance journalist before the war, including investigating the 2005 suicide bombing in Amman that killed members of her family.
Dr Shabnam Holliday is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Plymouth. Her research is based around three themes: 1) The role of ideas in Iran and their relationship with domestic and international politics; 2) Approaches towards a more inclusive and non-Eurocentric IR; and 3) Political change, revolution, and legitimacy in post-revolutionary situations in IR. She is author of Defining Iran: Politics of Resistance, Routledge and co-editor with Philip Leech of Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East, Rowman and Littlefield International.
Session Three: ‘Human (in)security in the Gulf-MENA region: Understanding and addressing new and emerging threats in a context of crisis’
Dr Edward Wastnidge is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Studies at the Open University where he is also the Director for the International Studies programme. He holds a PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Manchester. His main research interests concern the politics and international relations of the Middle East and Central Asia, with a particular focus on contemporary Iranian politics and foreign policy. His current research explores the intersection of ideas and foreign policy, soft power, cultural and religious diplomacy, and the role of identity in international relations. His monograph Diplomacy and Reform in Iran was published by I.B. Tauris in 2016.
Anna Chernova is a Senior Research Fellow and has a background in human rights, conflict resolution and humanitarian issues. She served as Programme Director for the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, where she led the work of the General Committee for human rights and democracy – known as the OSCE’s Human Dimension. Prior to joining the OSCE, Anna managed large-scale humanitarian operations in Russia’s North Caucasus at the close of the second Chechen war, and worked on refugee issues with the UN in Bulgaria. Since 2014, she has been advising Oxfam on working in fragile and conflict affected contexts with a focus on the MENA region. She works on analysis and advocacy around root causes of violence driving humanitarian crises, such as the injustice of extreme inequalities and restricted civic space, as well as feminist foreign policy approaches to security and economic issues. Anna leads on Oxfam Great Britain’s Gender, Women, Peace and Security advocacy in the UK.
Alex Ballinger is a Labour Party politician and the Member of Parliament for Halesowen. Alex served in the Royal Marines from 2005 until 2013 undertaking two tours of Afghanistan and attaining the rank of captain. Upon leaving the armed forces, Alex pursued a career in international development working on projects across the Middle East and Pakistan. Before his election to Parliament in 2024, Alex ran a charity supporting people experiencing mental health challenges. In Parliament, Alex sits on the Joint Committee for Human Rights.
Eleanor Nott is a Senior Adviser and Co-Founder of the David Nott Foundation. Since 2015 the DNF has trained over 2,000 doctors in life and limb-saving surgical skills. Eleanor oversaw the development of the Hostile Environment Surgical Training (HEST) course, a trademarked programme accredited by the Royal College of Surgeons of England and supported by bespoke simulation equipment. Eleanor was recognised with her husband and Co-Founder, Professor David Nott, on Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers list of 2016 for their work training doctors in conflict areas. She has contributed to The Telegraph, British Medical Journal, IISS Voices, CNN and has appeared on Sky News. Eleanor is also a PhD student in the department of War Studies at King’s College London.
Zoe Swanwick is a Researcher at the Coalition for Global Prosperity and author of their latest report, ‘The Rising Price of Freedom’. Previously, she worked in the research team at Strand Partners, a public affairs and communications consultancy in London, conducting polling and focus groups for FTSE 100 clients and international organisations. In her spare time she volunteers for a pro-bono geopolitical risk consultancy, focusing on socio-environmental issues. Zoe holds a MSc in International Relations from LSE and a BA in Modern Languages from the University of Cambridge.
Session Four: ‘Political agency and expression:The role of individuals in shaping the future of the Gulf-MENA region’
Dr Tahirih Danesh is a Senior Advisor at the Foreign Policy Centre. Particularly passionate about young marginalised and minority communities, she is a serial civic entrepreneur, an advocate of the United Nations Global Compact Principles and a member of The 30% Club. She teaches human rights law, serves as the Executive Director of a niche foundation, and assists as an advisor to a number of charities and StartUps. She seeks and welcomes opportunities to promote learning and earning through spoken and written words, but remains most passionate about elevating shared consciousness through practical approaches to complex processes. Tahirih Danesh holds a PhD in law and has contributed to a range of publications, including in human rights, policy and education.
Joey Shea is a researcher in the Middle East and North Africa Division investigating human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. She has lived and worked in the Middle East for over a decade. Shea has an M.A. from the University of Toronto in Political Science and a B.A. from McGill University in Political Science.
Mahsa Alimardani, (she/her) is an internet researcher focusing on the Middle East and North Africa region with a specialisation on Iran. She has worked on matters related to human rights, technology, and freedom of expression online for over a decade. She is currently a senior researcher with the international human rights organisations ARTICLE 19. She’s also a DPhil candidate at the Oxford Internet Institute at the University of Oxford, and has previously served as a Senior Information Controls Fellow for the Open Technology Fund at the University of Oxford.
Drewery Dyke is the Chairperson of Rights Realization Centre, a UK-registered human rights promotion organisation and a founder / steering committee member of Hawiati, the Middle East and North Africa-focused umbrella research and advocacy body relating to statelessness. He is the International Relations contact point for the Bahrain and Gulf-focused Salam for Democracy and Human Rights (SALAM DHR) and currently a researcher with the Centre for Supporters of Human Rights, an Iran-focused organisation. Between 2017-2019 he worked with the Saudi Arabia-focused ALQST. He implemented and wrote SALAM DHR’s 2023 report Voices from the Stateless Bidoon Community in Kuwait During the Covid-19 Pandemic and the 2020 Ceasefire / Minority Rights Group report In the Name of Security – Human rights violations under Iran’s national security laws . With FPC fellow Hadi Enayat he co-authored a chapter on Iran’s criminal justice system for a forthcoming publication. He was a Researcher at Amnesty International between 1999 and 2017, where he led work on Afghanistan and Iran; Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and in 2016-17, statelessness.
Fiona O’Brien is the UK Director of Reporters Without Borders, an international NGO working for the freedom, pluralism and independence of the press. She was previously a foreign correspondent in Africa and the Middle East and course director of the MA in Journalism at Kingston University.