North Africa Dialogues and Analysis (NADA) is a research initiative that brings together a select group of experts on and from North Africa, from Egypt to Morocco. Current topics of discussion broadly span the components of the relationship between citizens and ruling powers, including the political economy and governance. The aim of the group is to better understand and explain the dynamics shaping and impacting the region.
A joint initiative of the Middle East Institute (MEI) and SIPRI, the NADA seeks to foster a constructive dialogue and provide a space to discuss research and ideas collaboratively and creatively. Among the group's outputs will be summaries of discussion, public webinars and panels, and the blogs and policy relevant articles.
Conveners
Intissar Fakir
Intissar is a senior fellow and director of MEI’s North Africa and Sahel program. She is an expert on North Africa, the Sahel, and key regional thematic issues including governance, social change, migration, and security. She has written extensively on North Africa’s evolving politics including Islamist electoral politics in post-2011 Morocco and Tunisia, the Western Sahara issue, foreign policy priorities in Morocco and the broader region, and the impact of COVID-19 on regional political stability.
Ahmed Morsy
Ahmed is a Senior Researcher with the Middle East and North Africa Programme at SIPRI, focusing on state-society relations and post-conflict dynamics in the MENA region. His research interests include foreign and security policies in the Middle East as well as political reform in the Arab world. Ahmed received his PhD in International Relations from the University of St Andrews, focusing on Egyptian-Iranian relations. He is a co-founder of the Arab Political Science Network (APSN).
Founding Members
Amel Boubekeur
Amel is a sociologist at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). Her research focuses on the political scenes of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), Euro-Arab relations, and Islam in Europe. Amel is also a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute (MEI).
Amal Bourhrous
Amal is a Researcher with the SIPRI Middle East and North Africa Programme. Her research interests include the dynamics of identity, citizenship and nation-building asthey relate to statehood and sovereignty; the relationship between securitization trends and the political process; and the ways in which the wider geopolitical transformations and the new challenges to international security affect the MENA region.
Tin Hinane el Kadi
Tin is a political economy researcher. Her research interests include innovation and the knowledge economy, ICTs and Development, state-business relations, and Chinese investments in North Africa.
Riccardo Fabiani
Riccardo is North Africa Project Director at Crisis Group. He has more than ten years of professional experience as a political analyst and economist on North Africa.
Dalia Ghanem
Dalia is responsible for analysis and research on the Middle East and North Africa region at the EUISS with a focus on EU-MENA relations. She holds a PhD from the University of Versailles-Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines. Prior to the EUISS, Dr. Ghanem was for a decade a Carnegie scholar, an expert on Algeria. Ghanem is the author of numerous articles, studies, and a book published by Palgrave Macmillan, entitled “Understanding the Persistence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Algeria.”
Amr Hamzawy
Amr is a senior fellow and the director of the Carnegie Middle East Program. His research and writings focus on governance in the Middle East and North Africa, social vulnerability, and the different roles of governments and civil societies in the region. He was previously an associate professor of political science at Cairo University and a professor of public policy at the American University in Cairo.
Thomas Hill
Tom is the senior program officer for North Africa at USIP. Previously, he served as a Senior Professional Staff Member for the House Foreign Affairs Committee where he covered North Africa and was a Foreign Affairs Officer at the Department of State serving in both overseas and domestic positions related to the Middle East.
Eya Jrad
Eya is a Research Fellow at the NATO Defense College and Assistant Professor of Security Studies and Comparative Systems in Tunisia. Her areas of interest are Security and Justice Governance and Reform, Border Security, Social Resilience, and the Rule of Law, from a National (Tunisia) and Regional (North Africa) perspective.
Timothy E. Kaldas
Timothy is the Deputy Director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. He is a political economist specializing in North Africa and lived for 12 years in Cairo, Egypt from 2008 to 2020. His research interests include political economies and IFI policies in MENA, intra-regime competition, and the foreign policies of MENA countries. Timothy is pursuing his PhD at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) focusing on the political economic strategies of President El-Sisi’s regime. He is also an adjunct professor of international relations at UAB.
Asma Khalifa
Asma is a Libyan activist and researcher who has worked on human rights, women's rights, and youth empowerment since 2011. She is currently doing her PhD at the German Institute for Global Area Studies, researching the impact of civil war on inter-gender relations. Asma is also a co-founder of the Khalifa Ihler Institute.
Hamza Meddeb
Hamza Meddeb is a research fellow at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where he co-leads the Political Economy Program. His research focuses on the political economy of Tunisia and North Africa, the politics of illicit transnational flows, governance, and corruption, as well as the development-security nexus.
Tarek Megerisi
Tarek is a senior policy fellow with the North Africa and Middle East program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He is a political analyst and researcher who specializes in Libyan affairs and more generally politics, governance, and development in the Arab world.