Dania Arayssi is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Middle East Center at New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she specializes in comparative politics and public policy and teaches Middle Eastern politics. Her doctoral dissertation examines how remittances influence recipients’ political behavior in Lebanon, using a mixed-methods approach that includes focus group interviews, original data collection, and a survey experiment.

Mariana Karkoutly is a PhD fellow and associated researcher in the MeDiMi project on “Human Rights Crimes, Norm Entrepreneurs, and the Implementation of the Principle of Universal Jurisdiction in Germany”. Her educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in law from Damascus University, a Master of Arts in Social Work as a Human Rights Profession from Alice-Salomon-Hochschule Berlin, and a master’s degree in Social and Political Science from Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Presently, Mariana serves as a co-founder and a legal investigator at Huquqyat, an organization of self-identifying women lawyers and legal practitioners engaged in legal accountability in Syria. Her role involves actively contributing to the development of case files concerning war crimes and crimes against humanity in Syria. She holds senior fellow positions at Humanity in Action and the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship, along with a research fellowship at the Research Lab: Constitutional Politics in Turkey. Additionally, Mariana is a board member at both Huquqyat and GEM (Guardians of Equality Movement). Her expertise extends to conducting research projects within the realm of social and political sciences.

Noor Hamadeh is a Senior Advocacy Counsel at the International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR) where she works towards advancing US legal safeguards against corporate abuse in United States supply chains, including through strengthening existing forced labor and human rights enforcement mechanisms and advocating for mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence legislation. Prior to joining ICAR, Noor founded and headed the Human Rights & Business Unit at the Syrian Legal Development Programme. She was also a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, where she contributed to policy advocacy around business and human rights in the Middle East.

Ana Paulina Maestre was born and raised in Colombia, and she holds a degree in Economics and International Relations. Throughout her academic and professional journey, she has been actively involved in supporting the implementation of the Colombian Peace Agreement. She has worked with USAID and the Pan American Development Foundation to promote dialogue among diverse actors in conflict-affected communities, aiming to build trust and enhance resilience in the face of war and violence. Currently, she is pursuing a Master’s degree in Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with a regional focus on the Middle East and Latin America.

Mohammad Al Abdallah is a Syrian human rights and democracy researcher and activist prior to 2011. He received a Bachelor’s of Law from the Lebanese University in 2007, on 2014, he received a Master’s of Public Policy from George Mason University with a specialty in governance and international institutions. He previously worked as a research assistant for Human Rights Watch in Beirut from where he covered Syria from 2007-2009. Al Abdallah is a former prisoner and survivor of torture who was imprisoned in Syria on two separate occasions for his work defending human rights and lobbying for political reform.