Middle East Expert Profiles

For media requests, please see the individual bios of our members and contact them at their email addresses, listed at the end of their bios. 

To add your profile, please send a bio of less than 200 words, with an email address at the end, to Buket Oztas at edsermeiss@gmail.com. 

Calvin H. Allen, Jr. (Cal)                                                                                                                                                                                  

Calvin H. Allen, Jr (PhD, History, University of Washington) is Dean Emeritus of the College of Arts and Sciences at Shenandoah University (Winchester, VA), where he was also Professor of Middle Eastern & Islamic History. He previously taught at the University of Memphis. Cal specializes on Oman and the Arabian Peninsula with particular interest in globalization in the 19th century, Indian merchant communities, and contemporary political issues. He is the author of Oman: Modernization of the Sultanate (Westview Press/Croom Helm: Boulder, CO/London, 1987 (reissued Routledge Press: London, 2016); Oman (Chelsea Press: Philadelphia, 2002); with W. Lynn Rigsbee, Oman under Qaboos, From Coup to Constitution, 1970-1996, (Frank Cass: London and Portland, OR, 2000; paperback edition 2002) and more than 50 articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries and has lectured widely on Oman. He also served as the Oman country expert for the Varieties of Democracy Project (V-Dem) at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. callen@su.edu

Vincent Cornell                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Vincent J. Cornell is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Middle East and Islamic Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.  From 2011-2016 he was Chair of the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory.  From 2000-2006, he served as Professor of History and Director of the King Fahd Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.  From 1991-2000, he taught at Duke University. His published works include over 40 articles, three books, one book set, and a co-authored volume.  These include The Way of Abu Madyan (The Islamic Texts Society, 1996), Realm of the Saint: Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism (University of Texas Press, 1998), the five-volume set Voices of Islam (Praeger Publishers, 2007), and Do Jews, Christians, and Muslims Worship the Same God? (with Baruch Levine, Jacob Neusner, and Bruce Chilton, Abingdon Press, 2012).  Dr. Cornell obtained his Ph.D. in Islamic Studies at UCLA in 1989.  His dissertation won the 1990 Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award in the Humanities of the Middle East Studies Association.  His academic interests cover the entire spectrum of Islamic thought from Sufism to theology and Islamic law. His current book projects include Islam and Democracy: A Critical Analysis and The Shared Revelation: Ibn Sab‘in (d. 669/1270) and Islamic Hermetism. He is active in critical theology and interfaith initiatives.  From 2002-2012 he was a key participant in the Building Bridges seminars of Christian and Muslim scholars organized by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams.  vcornel@emory.edu

Allen Fromherz

Dr. Allen Fromherz is Professor of History, President of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS) and Director of the GSU Middle East Studies Center. His specializations span both North Africa and the Gulf. His recent books on the Gulf  include Qatar, a Modern History (Georgetown, 2016) and the editing of The Gulf in World History, Arabia at the Global Crossroads (Edinburgh, 2018). His books on North Africa and the western Mediterranean include The Almohads, Rise of an Islamic Empire (IB Tauris); Ibn Khaldun, Life and Times(Edinburgh) and The Near West (Edinburgh). Dr. Fromherz has been a guest for several media outlets including NPR All Things Considered, BBC Radio 4, Foreign Affairs and The Los Angeles Times. He was recipient of the Senior Humanities fellowship at NYU Abu Dhabi and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center fellowship. His current project is a world history of the gulf under contract with Harvard University Press provisionally entitled The Global Gulf, A History. afromherz@gsu.edu

Lillian Frost

Lillian Frost is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Tech and a 2020–21 Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. She specializes in forced migration, citizenship, and gender issues, particularly in the Arab World. She has been traveling regularly to the Arab world since 2009, including for Arabic study, research, and work. Previously, she was a United States Institute of Peace-Minerva Fellow, Research Fellow at the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs’ Middle East Initiative, Council of American Overseas Research Centers' Fellow at the American Center of Research in Jordan, and a Fulbright Research Fellow in Jordan. She also previously worked for the World Bank’s Middle East and North Africa Social Protection unit, primarily on projects in Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, and the Palestinian Territories. She received her Ph.D. in political science, focusing on comparative politics and research methods, from the George Washington University. lfrost@vt.edu

Maia Carter Hallward                                                                                                                                                                                            

Dr. Maia Carter Hallward (PhD International Relations, American University) is Professor of Middle East Politics and Editor of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development at the School for Conflict Management, Peacebuilding and Development at Kennesaw State University (Kennesaw, GA). She specializes in civil resistance movements in the region, particularly in Israel and Palestine. She has written two books, Transnational Activism and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) and Struggling for a Just Peace: Israeli and Palestinian Activism in the Second Intifada (University of Florida Press, 2011), and has co-authored three others, including Understanding Nonviolence (Polity Press 2015), and Global Responses to Conflict and Crisis in Syria and Yemen (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming). Current projects include women leaders in Arab monarchies and a comparative study of religious and secular human rights groups around the world. Maia has written over twenty peer-reviewed articles and served on the editorial team of the Journal of Peacebuilding and Development for 15 years. She teaches a range of courses on conflict theory and analysis and Middle East politics to undergraduate, masters, and PhD students. mhallwar@kennesaw.edu

Fran Hassencahl                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Dr. Fran Hassencahl (Ph.D. Case Western Reserve University) is Associate Professor of Communication and Assoc. Dept. Chair at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She directs the Minor in Middle Eastern Studies and teaches communication & culture in the Middle East, contemporary Turkish politics, and intercultural communication. Recent publications (book chapters) related to the M.E. are: 2012: “Framing Women’s Issues in The Fountain Magazine” in The Gülen Hizmet Movement and its Transnational Activities Eds. Sophia Pandya and Nancy Gallagher, Brown Walker and “On the Road or between the Pages: Seeking Life’s Answers” in Global Perspectives on Orhan Pamuk: Existentialism and Politics. Eds. Menhaz M. Afridi and David M. Buyze. Palgrave, “Experiencing Hüzün through the Loss of Life, Limb, and Love in Bahman Ghobadi’s Turtles Can Fly” in Never There: Lost and Othered Children in Contemporary Cinema. Eds. Debbie Olson and Andrew Scahill, Lexington; 2016: “A Rhetorical Vision of Tolerance: Teaching Tolerance through Post-9/11 TV Dramas.” (Co-authored with William B. Hart) in Friends, Lovers, Co-Workers and Community: Everything I Know about Relationships I Learned from Television, Eds. Kathleen M. Ryan, et al,Lexington; 2018 :“Fears of Dissolution and Loss: Orhan Pamuk’s Characters in Relation to the Treaty of Sèvres" in Language and Literature in a Global World. Ed. Sandhya Rao Mehta, Springer.   fhassenc@odu.edu

Andrew Kurt                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Andrew Kurt (PhD, University of Toronto) is Associate Professor of History at Clayton State University (GA). A specialist in medieval Iberia, he has also written on the intersection of Muslim and European interests in medieval Ethiopia and on US policy on Afghanistan in the late 1970s. He recently published Minting, State, and Economy in the Visigothic Kingdom: From the Settlement in Aquitaine through the First Decade of the Muslim Conquest of Spain(Amsterdam University Press, 2020).  This study of the monetary system in post-Roman Spain and Portugal incorporates comparison with early Islamic currency, which was likewise rooted in the later Roman monetary dynamics. It sets minting in relation to questions of state, monarchical power, administration and apparatus, motives for money production, and economy. In Summer of 2018 Dr. Kurt led an 11-day educational trip, “SERMEISS in Medieval Spain: Guided Tour of the Lands of Al-Andalus.” AndrewKurt@Clayton.edu

Ryan J. Lynch

Ryan J. Lynch (DPhil Oriental Studies, University of Oxford) is Associate Professor of the History and Director of the Honors Program at The Citadel. He is a specialist in early Islamic history, specifically the Arab-Islamic conquests, the Umayyad and early ‘Abbasid dynasties, the Islamization of the Middle East, and Arabic historiography.  Much of his research and publications focus on the early Arabic historical tradition and the surviving work of the ‘Abbasid secretary al-Baladhuri (d. ca. 279 AH/892 CE), including his monograph Arab Conquests and Early Islamic Historiography: The Futuh al-Buldan of al-Baladhuri (I.B. Tauris, 2020).  ryan.lynch@citadel.edu 

Samaneh Oladi

Dr. Samaneh Oladi is an Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her research focuses on women’s faith-based activism, Islamic jurisprudence, and Islamic mysticism. She is the author of Women, Faith, Family: Reclaiming Gender Justice through Religious Activism (University of California Press, 2024), which examines Iranian women who embrace their faith as a central component of their pursuit of gender justice. Dr. Oladi’s scholarship explores the evolving roles of Muslim women as religious authorities and intellectual contributors to Islamic thought. Her work highlights how women engage with sacred texts, challenge patriarchal interpretations, and shape contemporary religious discourse. soladighadiko@vcu.edu

Buket Oztas

Buket Oztas is an assistant professor of Politics and International Affairs and the co-chair of the Middle East and Islamic Studies minor at Furman University. Originally from Izmir (Turkey), she holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florida (2016) and a B.A. (summa cum laude) and B.S. (summa cum laude) in global and international affairs from Binghamton University and Bilkent University (2010). She specializes in comparative politics and her research focuses on the changing institutional dynamics in predominantly Muslim countries, with particular interest in non-state actors,  post-Islamism,  and transnational identities. It also includes an ongoing research initiative on the agenda-setting powers of the European Commission.  buket.oztas@furman. edu 

Curtis R. Ryan

Curtis R. Ryan is a Professor of Political Science at Appalachian State University in North Carolina. He has written extensively on international relations in the Middle East, on inter-Arab relations, alliance politics, and on Jordanian domestic politics and foreign policy. He is the author of three books: Jordan in Transition: From Hussein to Abdullah (Lynne Rienner, 2002), Inter-Arab Alliances: Regime Security and Jordanian Foreign Policy (University Press of Florida, 2009), and most recently, Jordan and the Arab Uprisings: Regime Survival and Politics Beyond the State (Columbia University Press, 2018). Professor Ryan served as a Fulbright scholar at the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He is a past president of SERMEISS and currently serves as the organization’s program director. He is a member of the Executive Board of the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) and a member of the Editorial Board of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and its quarterly journal, Middle East Report.   ryanc@appstate.edu

Michael Samuel

Michael Samuel is an assistant professor of history at UT Chattanooga specializing in the legal history of Israel-Palestine, Indigenous history in the Anglosphere, international law, and critical legal theory. He earned his Ph.D. in Islamic Civilizations Studies from Emory University’s Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and his J.D. from Boston College Law School. Prior to his academic career he worked as an attorney in Israel-Palestine, focusing on civil and human rights matters. 

Annie Tracy Samuel                                                                                                                                                                                           

Annie Tracy Samuel is an associate professor of history at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Policy Council, and president of the Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society. Prior to joining the UTC faculty, Prof. Tracy Samuel served as a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She is an interdisciplinary scholar of the modern history and politics of Iran and the Middle East focusing on Iran’s foreign and security policies, its armed forces, and U.S. involvement in the Middle East. Her book on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the Iran-Iraq War, entitled The Unfinished History of the Iran-Iraq War: Faith, Firepower, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022 and is available on Amazon.

Don Zeigler                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Dr. Don Zeigler is a geographer who studies the urban, political, and cultural geography of the Middle East.  He has had research and travel fellowships in Morocco, Syria, Jordan, and Turkey. His chapter on ‘Cities of the Middle East and North Africa’ has been included in the book Cities of the World since the 3rd edition appeared in 2003.  He also serves as one of the editors of that book, which is now going into its 7th edition. For 37 years he taught at Old Dominion University in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and he continues to give lectures for the US Air Force on Middle Eastern boundaries. He is also an avid traveler and posts many of his best pictures, including many from the Middle East and Islamic World, on his blog, Geographically Yours. In 1997 he served as President of the National Council for Geographic Education, and in 2015 and 2016, he served as President of SERMEISS.   zeiglerdon2@gmail.com