Mounir Abi Said studied at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and at the University of Kent at Canterbury in the United Kingdom. He has been a part-time lecturer in several universities including the AUB and the Lebanese University. His research interests range from biodiversity conservation and resolving human wildlife conflict to sustainable development and use of natural resources. He is currently serving as the president of the Animal Encounter, a leading and educational centre for wildlife conservation. Besides, he is serving on different international boards related to biodiversity and sustainable development. His major challenges are to develop new approaches towards the sustainable use of natural resources and biodiversity conservation in the region.
Amin al-Hakimi is Director of the Yemeni Genetic Resources Center, Faculty of Agriculture, Sana'a University. He received his PhD in Agronomy from the Practical School of High Studies, Montpellier, France. Al-Hakimi served as UNESCO Chair in Genetics, and is a member of the Yemeni Society of Biology as well as the National Committee for Genetic Resources. He has published in the areas of plant biodiversity, sustainable agriculture, indigenous knowledge, germplasm management, food security, protected area management, environment conservation and environment monitoring system.
Zahra Babar is Assistant Director of Research at the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. Previously, she worked in the international aid, community development and poverty alleviation sectors. She has served with the International Labour Organisation and the United Nations Development Programme. Her current research interests lie in rural development, Gulf migration and labour policies, citizenship in the Persian Gulf states and GCC regional integration. Babar received her BA in Government from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, and her MA from the School of International Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Raymond Bush is Professor of African Studies and Development Politics at the University of Leeds working on the political economy of Africa and the Near East. He has had visiting research appointments at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo and the Social Science Research Centre at the American University in Cairo. Bush is deputy chair of the journal Review of African Political Economy and works with the African Studies Association of the UK. He is also series editor of Pluto's The Third World in Global Politics. Bush's research interests include the political economy of resources, political and economic reform, and rural transformation and resistance.
Elisa Cavatorta is a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and an associate researcher at Birkbeck College, University of London, where she obtained her PhD in Economics. Her research interests are in the areas of development economics, applied microeconomics, defence economics and GIS. She is particularly interested in questions related to food insecurity, risk attitudes and agricultural-health linkages. She has worked in the Middle East, conducting research for FAO and regional research institutes. She has presented her research at several international conferences, including ERF Annual Conferences and the African Econometric Society meetings.
Jad Chaaban joined the American University of Beirut (AUB) as an Assistant Professor of Economics in September 2006, where he currently teaches development and agricultural economics. Prior to coming to AUB, he was an economist in the World Bank's regional office in Beirut, where he undertook research related to poverty reduction and economic management, covering Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Chaaban is the president and founding member of the Lebanese Economic Association. He also currently serves as an expert for the Middle East Youth Initiative at the Wolfensohn Center for Development at Brookings; and as an Associate Researcher with the Toulouse School of Economics in France. Chaaban holds an MBA from the European School of Management (2000), a Masters in Environmental and Natural Resources Economics from the Toulouse School of Economics (2001) and a PhD in Economics (2004) from the same university. His current research interests include poverty and inequality in polarised societies, youth development and the economics of agro-food industries. He has published several scientific articles in international academic journals.
Tahra ElObeid is Head of the Department of Health Sciences at the College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University. Dr ElObeid has taught at several institutions in Qatar, Sudan and Austria. She has also served as a consultant for a number of organizations, most notably the United Nations World Food Programme, the World Health Organization and the Qatar National Food Security Programme. She is a member of the Qatar Standardization Organization Committee for Food Standards. Her current areas of research interest are: food safety: novel and functional foods: analysis of indigenous foods: micronutrient deficiency and fortification.
Hala Ghattas joined the American University of Beirut as Assistant Professor of Community Nutrition in 2009. Her research interests include nutrition-infection interactions, micronutrient interventions and the measurement and prevention of food insecurity and malnutrition. Ghattas holds an MSc in Public Health Nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (2000) and a PhD from St George's, University of London (2004). She is a part-time lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Managing Editor of the BioMed Central journal Emerging Themes in Epidemiology. Ghattas's previous research focused on maternal and child nutrition and its interactions with immunity, morbidity and mortality in Gambia, Zanzibar and the Ivory Coast. Ghattas is now based in Lebanon where she has been conducting research on the prevalence and determinants of food insecurity and malnutrition in marginalised populations and those vulnerable to emergencies in Lebanon, including Bedouin populations, Palestinian refugees and those living in conflict-prone areas.
Shadi Hamadeh studied at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and at New Mexico State University in the USA. He has been a professor of animal science at AUB since 1988. His research interests range from animal environment interactions to sustainable farming systems. He is currently leading the Environment and Sustainable Development Unit at AUB and serving on the executive board of the Resource Centers on Urban Agriculture and Food Security. His major challenge is to reconcile chaos theory with the bitter realities of rural development in the Arab world.
Jane Harrigan is Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She has worked extensively on World Bank and IMF activities in sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA region and is co-author of three recent books on MENA: Aid and Power in the Arab World: IMF and World Bank Policy-Based Lending in the Middle East and North Africa; Economic Liberalisation, Social Capital and Islamic Welfare Provision and Globalisation, Democratisation and Radicalisation in the Arab World. She has also worked on the political economy of foreign aid to both Africa and MENA and on agricultural policy and food security issues in Africa. Professor Harrigan has written eight books and is the author of numerous journal articles, including papers in World Development, Food Policy, The Middle East Journal and Review of Middle East Economics and Finance.
Abdelmoniem Hassan is Associate Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Qatar University's College of Arts and Sciences. In 2012 he was elected Chair of Muslims in Dietetics & Nutrition, a member interest group of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly known as the American Dietetic Association). Hassan's research focuses on nutrition and obesity issues in Qatar and the GCC.
Mehran Kamrava is Director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. His current areas of research interests are on the international and domestic politics of the Gulf. In addition to a number of publications, he is the author of The Modern Middle East: A Political History Since the First World War (2005) and Iran's Intellectual Revolution (2008). He has also edited The New Voices of Islam: Rethinking Politics and Modernity (2006) and is the co-editor of the two-volume work Iran Today: Life in the Islamic Republic (2008). Kamrava's edited volumes include: The International Politics of the Persian Gulf (2011); Innovation in Islam: Traditions and Contributions (2011); The Nuclear Question in the Middle East (2012); Migrant Labour in the Persian Gulf (2012, edited with Zahra Babar); and The Political Economy of the Persian Gulf (2012).
Suzi Mirgani is Manager and Editor for CIRS Publications at the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in Qatar. She holds a PhD in Communication and Media Studies from Eastern Mediterranean University. Mirgani's research is based on critical discourse analyses of government and corporate-sponsored media messages and their influence on social attitudes towards issues of copyright and the circulation of cultural material. In addition, she writes creatively on the intersection of politics and popular culture. She has published in Critical Studies in Media Communication (2011); International Feminist Journal of Politics (2007); and Anthology of Contemporary African Diasporic Experience (2009).
Toktam Mohtashami received her undergraduate degree from Ferdosi University with a specialisation in Agricultural Economics. She continued her MA and PhD in the Faculty of Economic and Agricultural Development, University of Tehran. Agricultural policy and Development is her major field of study. Mohtashami's research interests include time series modelling, quantitative agricultural sector analysis using positive mathematical programming, partial equilibrium modelling, analysis of trade-related issues in agriculture, credit scoring and agricultural policy analysis. She has published several articles in these fields and has participated in research projects supported by various Iranian organisations.
Martha Mundy is Reader in Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Mundy is a specialist in the anthropology of the Arab World whose research has concerned anthropology of law and the state, the comparative sociology of agrarian systems and the anthropology of kinship and family. Her first major fieldwork was conducted from 1973-77 in North Yemen. During that time she began to work on the anthropology of Islamic law. Before joining the LSE she taught at UCLA, Lyon 2 Lumière University, the American University of Beirut and Yarmouk University in Jordan. During her ten years in Jordan (1982-92) she began a project of historical anthropology examining the transformation of political and economic relations in late Ottoman Southern Syria, presently north Jordan. This combines work on law. the state and village society and has involved archival work in Istanbul and Damascus as well as research into oral history and administrative records in Jordan. From 2000-02 she held a British Academy Research Readership. She has recently returned to work on contemporary issues of law and society and the crisis of agriculture in the Arab East. Her books include Law and Anthropology; The Transformation of Nomadic Society; and Domestic Government: Kinship, Community and Politics in North Yemen.
Mohamad Saeid Noori Naeini has served as the Ambassador of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN and the World Food Programme (WFP) as well as the President of the Executive Board of WFP. Noori has also served as the Vice Chancellor of Shahid Beheshti University in Iran, as Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science and as Professor of Agricultural Economics. He is the author of over thirty articles on various topics ranging from resource allocation in smallholder agriculture, food security and rural poverty alleviation projects to evaluation of agricultural projects and land tenure issues.
Frédéric Pelat is an agronomist who studied tropical agronomy in Toulouse (ENSAT) and Montpellier (CNEARC/IRC). He lived in Yemen from 1998 to 2011, working through the NGO that he created (Iddeales) on small development projects aiming at the enhancement of local resources and farmers' knowledge. He is presently studying social anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science and plans to pursue doctoral study in anthropology. Pelat's recent publications include, 'Health issues in the mountains of Yemen: healing practices as part of farmers' traditional knowledge,' in Herbal Medicine in Yemen: Traditional Knowledge and Practice and their Value for Today's World, edited by I. Hehmeyer, H. Schonig and A. Regourd (Leiden: Brill Publishers, 2012), co-authored with Al-Hakimi and Ya'ni.
Habibollah Salami is Professor of Agricultural Economics and Director of the Centre of Excellence of Studies in Strategy of Agricultural Development at the University of Tehran. His expertise include econometrics and CGE modelling, production structure analysis and modelling, productivity measurement, measurement of technological change, trade and agricultural policy analysis, as well as income distribution, agricultural project and water pricing analysis. He has published over fifty journal articles on topics related to agricultural economics across the Middle East and food security in Iran.
Karin Seyfert is project manager of the AUB research project on 'Fresh Foods and Value Chains Project' a firm survey-based research project which compares Lebanon and Qatar. She also held an appointment as an economist in the Office of the Chief Economic Adviser with the Scottish Executive in Edinburgh. Karin is about to complete her PhD thesis with the School of Oriental and African Studies, a college of the University of London. Her research involves a critical assessment of NGOs' ability to foster sustainable rural development. Karin holds a MA in Arabic and Economics from the University of Edinburgh and a MSc from the Toulouse School of Economics.
Benjamin Shepherd is a PhD candidate in the Food Security programme at the Centre for International Security Studies, University of Sydney. Shepherd's research is examining foreign investment in developing country farmlands. This project has included field research in the Philippines, Cambodia and Ethiopia. Shepherd was 2010 Research Fellow at the Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies in Asia. Prior to embarking on the PhD, Shepherd had a corporate career which included selling and implementing data secrecy technologies with government agencies and financial institutions around the world.
Salwa Tohmé Tawk studied at the American University of Beirut (AUB) and at the Institut National de Recherche Agronomique Paris-Grignon France. She has been an associate researcher and lecturer at the American University of Beirut since 2005 and her research interests focus mainly on sustainable farming systems in the urban and rural context and in field surveys. She is currently leading the knowledge management activities at the Environment and Sustainable Development Unit at the AUB, including training and facilitating various development projects covering countries in the Middle East and North Africa region (Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Yemen). She is the editor of the Arabic version of an urban agriculture magazine; she is also serving on the board of MADA, a Lebanese non-governmental organisation.
Mary Ann Tétreault is Una Chapman Cox Distinguished Professor of International Affairs at Trinity University in Texas. She has also held positions at the American University of Kuwait, Iowa State University, Old Dominion University, Kuwait University, Kitakyushu University and Comenius University. She is an associate of the Association of Genocide Scholars, International Studies Association, Middle East Studies Association and the Middle East Institute. She has published numerous journal articles and books, the most recent of which are: World Politics as if People Mattered (2005); Rethinking Global Political Economy: Emerging Issues and Unfolding Odysseys (2003); Feminist Approaches to Social Movements, Community, and Power (2003); and Stories of Democracy: Politics and Society in Contemporary Kuwait (2000).
Deborah L Wheeler is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis and a Visiting Professor of Political Science at the American University of Kuwait. Her interests in food security developed from a focus on questions of human security and political stability in the Middle East. Her research on food security in the Middle East adds another layer to considerations of ways in which non-traditional security questions affect political stability in the Middle East. Her publications include The Internet and the Middle East: Global Expectations and Local Imaginations in Kuwait (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006) and a wide range of articles and book chapters spanning a decade and a half of research on the Middle East. She has conducted fieldwork in Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel/Palestine, United Arab Emirates, Syria, Turkey, Kuwait and Oman.
Sam Waples is an established geographical researcher with a strong track record in public policy and commercial applications of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and other methods of data modelling and spatial analysis. He is a researcher at Birkbeck College, University of London where he also teaches GIS. Waples is attached to the Government's Rural Evidence Research Centre hosted by Birkbeck, and previously contributed to both the National Sure Start Evaluation Project and the Home Office's National Evaluation of CCTV. Waples has a degree in geography from the University of Edinburgh and a MA degree in GIS from the University of Nottingham.
Eckart Woertz is a visiting fellow at Princeton University. Formerly he was Director of Economic Studies at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai. He has consulted at international and regional organisations such as UNCTAD, UNDP, the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Saudi Ministry of Economy and Planning. In 2011 he edited the book GCC Financial Markets. His publications include The Role of Gold in the Unified GCC Currency and GCC Stock Markets at Risk. Since 2008 he has focused on food security and international agro-investments by Gulf countries, which will be the topic of his forthcoming book (Oxford University Press). He holds a MA in Middle Eastern Studies and a PhD in Economics from Friedrich-Alexander University, Erlangen-Nuremberg, where he conducted research about structural adjustment politics in Egypt.
