Albert Charara is a political scientist with experience in the fields of political analysis, conflict prevention and conflict resolution. Currently working at the Directorate of International Relations of the Barcelona Provincial Council, his professional activity has focused on the Euro-Mediterranean and Middle East regions. He has contributed to the success of political dialogue efforts in the Basque Country (Spain/France) and Kirkuk (Iraq) and has conducted qualitative research on the consequences of the Syrian humanitarian crisis in Lebanon and Iraq, among other projects. Albert obtained his MA in Conflict Studies and Human Rights from Utrecht University in 2017, and his BA in Political Science and Public Management from the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2015. Publications

Rossana Tufaro is a PhD in Studies on Africa and Asia, specialised in the labor history of contemporary Lebanon. Her PhD research focused on the reconstruction of the history of grass-roots labor movements and mobilisations in pre-war Lebanon. Along with labor and social history, she accounts among her main research interests and specialisations, the critical historiography of contemporary Lebanon, history of the ideas and public history. In the past four years she has been a research fellow at Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, AUB, Beirut, at the Center for Arab and Middle East Studies (CAMES), AUB, Beirut, and at Centre d’Études pour le Monde Arabe Moderne (CEMAM), Université Saint Joseph, Beirut. She is currently Honorary Visiting Fellow at the Department of Political Sciences and International Studies, University of Birmingham (UK). Rossana Tufaro is also member of Lebanon Support’s editorial board of the Civil Society Review.

Joey Ayoub is a Ph.D. candidate in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. He earned his B.S. in Environmental Health from the American University of Beirut in 2013, and his MA in Cultural Studies from SOAS, University of London in 2015. His research focuses on the politics of postwar cinema in Lebanon, and on how the future is perceived in these films. He is also the editor for the MENA region at Global Voices Online and IFEX and he blogs at Hummus For Thought. In addition to Lebanon, his wider interests include deconstruction of masculinity, post-2011 Syria/MENA and global implications, de-colonisation efforts in Israel/Palestine and global developments with a focus on environmental, feminist and internationalist politics. Publications

Christiana Parreira is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Stanford University. She earned her B.A. in Public and International Affairs from Princeton University in 2013. Her research focuses on how informal institutions and social networks shape local political competition and welfare outcomes, focusing on contemporary Lebanon. Her dissertation project uses a multi-method research design to explain patterns of clientelism and service provision across Lebanese municipalities. She is also an affiliated scholar of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut, and a research consultant for the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies and the Synaps Network. Publications

Daniel L. Tavana is a PhD candidate in the Department of Politics at Princeton University. Tavana holds degrees from Cambridge University and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His research interests focus on elections, political behavior, and public opinion in the Middle East and North Africa. Publications

Lea Bou Khater is a post-doctoral fellow affiliated to the Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies at the American University of Beirut and part-time faculty at the Lebanese American University. She earned her PhD in Development Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies of University of London in 2016. As a development practitioner for more than ten years, she undertook several studies and projects commissioned by the government of Lebanon and international organisations. She also authored various reports on needs assessments, national surveys, and program evaluations mainly pertaining to labour, education, and poverty. Bou Khater had previously acquired a Master’s degree in Political Science from Saint Joseph University in Beirut and another in Development Studies from SOAS in the United Kingdom. Her research interests are economic development, public policy, social movements, and labour relations.

Lea Bou Khater is part of the review committee of the Civil Society Review, Lebanon Support's peer-reviewed journal. Publications

Bashir is a lecturer in Religion & Politics at the University of Stirling in Scotland, United Kingdom. He previously held teaching positions at the University of Edinburgh and the American University of Beirut. His research has both a contemporary and a premodern focus, using a multi-disciplinary approach, varying from Social Sciences to Philosophy. His book on the Lebanese political party Hizbullah (Cambridge University Press, 2016) analysed political parties’ use of media and cultural production at large, from a intellectual historical, as well as a political anthropological perspective. Bashir’s interest in premodern epistemologies and scholarship can be attributed to a fascination for non-Western political thought in understanding changing notions of religion, authority and tradition.

Bashir Saade is part of the review committee of the Civil Society Review, Lebanon Support's peer-reviewed journal. Publications

Sbeih SBEIH, Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, IREMAM, LabexMed, Aix-en-Provence, France.

Postdoctoral fellow at IREMAM (Institute for Research and Study of the Arab and Muslim Worlds) LabexMed, Aix Marseille University and associate researcher at the French Institute in the Near East (IFPO). He defended his doctoral thesis in sociology, in 2014, at the Printemps laboratory at the Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines University, on international development aid and the "professionalisation" of Palestinian NGOs. Subsequently, Mr. Sbeih taught at Birzeit University in Ramallah. As a researcher he has worked extensively in the Palestinian cultural field and is currently working on "new" Palestinian novelists. See: http://iremam.cnrs.fr/spip.php?article4772

Maissam Nimer is a sociologist working in the fields of migration, education, language, and social and gender inequalities. She obtained a PhD in sociology at Paris Saclay University in July 2016. In her thesis, she looked at the mechanisms of social and cultural selection that explain the inequality of access to higher education in Lebanon. Nimer’s current work at Koç University, Istanbul, deals with the integration of Syrian refugee youth in Turkey. She is the recipient of a one-year Koç University Seed Grant and a Mercator IPC fellow at Sabanci University exploring the role of language instruction in integration of Syrian refugees in Turkey. She is also a committee member of the “Axe Migrations et Mobilités” at the French Institute for Anatolian Studies, Istanbul (AMiMo, IFEA). Nimer teaches courses on the sociology of education at Galatasaray University in Turkey.

She holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and BS from the American University of Beirut. Publications

Nay is a feminist writer, activist, and ILO certified gender auditor. She has been working, since 2008, at the intersection between advocacy for gender justice, and producing critical knowledge around these themes. She has published on platforms like Assafir, Al Modon, Sawt Al Niswa and The Guardian, and have worked with Nahwa Al Muwatiniya, Oxfam in Lebanon and Tunisia, Raising Voices, and Kafa among others. Nay currently teaches Gender and Communication at the Lebanese American University (LAU), and works on gender auditing of political parties under the Women Empowered for Leadership (WE4L) with Hivos International in Beirut. The co-founder of the initiative HarassTracker to fight societal acceptance and normalisation of sexual harassment in Lebanon, she has worked on a study on the attitudes and practices towards sexual harassment in Beirut, published under the KIP project.
Nay holds a BA in Journalism from the Lebanese University, and an MA in Global Media and Gender from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), London. Some of Nay’s articles are available here, here, and here.

Estella is a Research Associate at Lebanon Support working on (in)formal security provision and the rule of law in Syrian refugee communities in Lebanon. She recently worked as a Social Research Fellow at Trends Research & Advisory - Abu Dhabi (2015). She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Sydney (Australia), with a dissertation on humanitarianism in Lebanon. After studying Humanities and Arabic at the University of Milan and the University of Damascus (2002-2007), she worked in Cairo (Egypt) for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (2008) and the International Development Research Center (IDRC) (2009-2010). Publications

Mariam joined Lebanon Support’s research department in 2015 and has since worked on several of its publications and reports. She has previously worked as research assistant at the German-Orient Institute Beirut, conducting a project on “The Reorientation of Communist Groups and Marxist Intellectuals after 1989 in Lebanon and Syria”. She has studied Middle Eastern Studies, Political Sciences and Sociology at the University of Freiburg in Germany.
Currently, she is finishing her PhD thesis entitled “Living leftism in Lebanon. A historical anthropology of leftist intellectuals in Lebanon, 1930-1990” at the University of Roskilde, Denmark under the supervision of Sune Haugbolle/Samer Frangie. Mariam focuses in her thesis on the question of political activism and ideology production in general, and the historical conditions of communism/socialism and leftism, in Lebanon from the 1930s on. Publications

Dalya is a consultant and researcher who joined Lebanon Support in 2013 and has since published several papers and reports pertaining to civil society issues in Lebanon, specifically within the Gender Equity Network. She has previous experience in research, having participated in various projects related to civil society in the Arab world, and has a strong experience in managing development and humanitarian projects in both international and local organizations.
She holds an MA in History from the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and an MA in Political Science from Science-Po Paris, France.