Dr. Maro Youssef has recently joined the Elliott School as a non-resident fellow at the the Institute for Middle East Studies. She is a National Science Foundation (NSF) Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California (USC) and  a non-resident fellow at the Strauss Center for International Security and Law.

Dr. Youssef’s specialization and research interests focus on gender, political sociology, social movements, religion, democratization, and the Middle East and North Africa and has field experience in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Turkey. She previously served as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa. She published numerous academic articles and co-authored some with preeminent scholars.

Dr. Youssef holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, an M.A. in Middle East Studies, George Washington University and B.A. in History, University of California Santa Cruz. In addition to English, she is proficient in Arabic, including the Egyptian and Tunisian dialects, French and some Turkish.