Striking from the Margins I: Fellows

Harith Al-Qarawee

Senior Fellow

Dr. Al-Qarawee is a non-residential fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University where he previously worked as a research fellow. He was also a fellow at Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies-Harvard University (2014/15). He completed his graduate studies at Leeds University and obtained a PhD at Sant’Ann School for Advanced Studies. Dr Al-Qarawee’s current research interests deal with authority, religion and identity politics in the Middle East. He has published both in English and Arabic dealing with themes such as sectarianism, identity politics, Iraq’s system of government, ISIS and Shi’a political and religious groups. Dr Al-Qarawee was a member of the working group on religion and identity, as part of the Atlantic Council’s Task Force for the Middle East, a member in the Atlantic Council’s Task Force for the future of Iraq. He is now a member of the working group on minorities and gender in the “International Panel on Exiting Violence” in Paris.

Harout Akdedian 

Post-Doctoral Fellow

Harout Akdedian holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of New England. His research interests lie at the intersection of political science and political anthropology with a particular focus on institutional and socio-cultural formulations of state atrophy and state-society relations in Syria. He was a research fellow at the Human Rights Center in Costa Rica and worked as research consultant at the United Nations - Economic and Social Commission of Western Asia (ESCWA), Carnegie Middle East Centre, and other organizations. He holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Political Science and International Law and he has taught and written on Middle East Politics, Islamic Studies, Peace and Conflict studies and International Law. He is currently Carnegie SFM senior post-doctoral fellow at the Central European University and a visiting scholar at Portland State University’s Middle East Studies Centre.

Bahadir Dinçer

Associate Fellow

Dr. O. Bahadir Dinçer (Ph.D., Bilkent University, Ankara) is a Senior Researcher at Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC) in Germany. Before joining the BICC team, he was an associate post-doctoral research fellow at CEU’s Striking from the Margins. He is the former director of the International Strategic Research Organization’s (USAK) Center for Middle Eastern Studies, an Ankara-based think-tank. Dinçer’s research primarily focuses on Middle Eastern politics and Turkish foreign policy.