Attiya Ahmad is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs. Broadly conceived, her research focuses on the gendered interrelation of Islamic reform movements and political economic processes spanning the Middle East and South Asia, in particular the greater Arabian Peninsula/Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean regions. Dr. Ahmad is currently examining the development of global halal tourism networks.

Shir Alon is Assistant Professor at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where she teaches modern Middle Eastern culture and literary theory. She is a recipient of a 2024-2026 McKnight Land-grant Professorship for her ongoing project on neoliberal logics and fictions of security in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in boundary 2, Journal of Arabic Literature, Arab Studies Journal, Comparative Literature, and Cultural Critique, among other venues. Her first monograph, Static: Middle Eastern Modernisms and the Form of the Present, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press in 2025.

Mona Atia is Associate Professor of Geography and International Affairs at the George Washington University and Director of the Institute for Middle East Studies. She is a critical development geographer whose areas of expertise include Islamic charity and finance, philanthropy and humanitarianism, housing/urban development, the production of poverty knowledge and the spatial politics of marginalization.

Arash Azizi is a Visiting Fellow at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future. His work focuses on the Cold War and global south, particularly the Middle East. He is currently working on a new book project focused on the communist movement in the Middle East during the Cold War with particular attention to the working alliance between communist parties in Iran, Iraq and Israel/Palestine.

Alex Boodrookas is an Assistant Professor of History at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He received my MA in Near Eastern Studies and Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies from NYU, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University from 2020-2021. His current book project is entitled Comrades Estranged: Labor and Citizenship in the Twentieth-Century Persian Gulf.

Arang Keshavarzian is an Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He is the author of Bazaar and State in Iran: The Politics of the Tehran Marketplace and co-editor, with Ali Mirsepassi, of Global 1979: Geographies and Histories of the Iranian Revolution. His most recent book, Making Space for the Gulf: Histories of Regionalism and the Middle East, was published by Stanford University Press in 2024. His articles on various topics related to the politics of Iran and the Middle East have appeared in Politics and Society; Journal of Church and State; International Journal of Middle East Studies, Geopolitics; Economy and Society; Arab Studies Journal; and International Journal of Urban and Region Research. He has previously served on the editorial committee and board for Middle East Report.

Marwa Koheji is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities, in the Division of Arts and Humanities at New York University Abu Dhabi. Her research combines historical and ethnographic methods to explore energy infrastructures in Bahrain and their socio-political implications. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Air-Conditioning Bahrain: Towards an Ethnography of Excess. From that research, she published her work in academic journals as well as magazines aimed at broader audiences. She also has a professional background in the heritage industry, working with the Bahrain Authority for Culture. More recently, she has contributed to Bahrain's National Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2023).

Mandana Limbert is Professor of Anthropology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory, and Social Life in an Omani Town (SUP, 2010), co-editor (with Elizabeth Ferry) of Time Assets: The Politics of Resources and their Temporalities (SAR, 2008) and (with Nelida Fuccaro) Life Worlds of Middle Eastern Oil, (EUP, 2023). She is also the author of numerous articles and book chapters, including in Social Text, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and Ethnos. Her forthcoming book is tentatively titled, Oman, Zanzibar, and the Politics of Becoming Arab. Her research has been supported by the National Endowment of the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Advanced Research Collaborative (CUNY). She is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Noora Lori is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. Her research focuses on citizenship, migration and racial politics in the Middle East and in comparative perspective. Her book, Offshore Citizens: Permanent “Temporary” Status in the Gulf (Cambridge University Press 2019) received three book awards from the American Political Science Association and the International Studies Association. She has published in International Migration Review, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Journal of Global Security Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, and International Relations (selections). She was previously an Academy Scholar at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies, a fellow at the International Security Program of the Harvard Kennedy School, and a visiting scholar at the Dubai School of Government. She received her PhD in Political Science from Johns Hopkins University in 2013.

Amin Moghadam is Research Lead for Cities and Migration at CERC in Migration and Integration, Toronto Metropolitan University. He holds a PhD in Human Geography from the University of Lyon II, France. His research explores migration policies, diaspora politics, cultural and economic circulations, and, more recently, transnational housing, with a focus on the Persian Gulf region and the Iranian diaspora in Toronto and Istanbul. He is also part of a collaborative research project based in France on urban and social transformations in Al'Ula, Saudi Arabia. Previously, Amin was a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University’s Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies (2016–2020) and lectured at Sciences Po Paris, Aix-Marseille University, and Inalco. He has also served as an academic advisor for Sciences Po’s Master of Public Affairs and consulted for organizations including the Louvre Abu Dhabi and UNHCR.

Omer Shah is a cultural anthropologist. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Pomona College. His current book project, Made in Mecca: Expertise, Technology, and Hospitality in the Post-Oil Holy City, examines recent efforts by the Saudi state to intensify and optimize Mecca’s pilgrimage through new sciences and technologies of crowd management, logistics and secular hospitality. He received his doctorate at Columbia University in June 2021 in the Department of Anthropology. His two-years of ethnographic fieldwork in Jeddah and Mecca was supported by the Social Science Research Council and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. His research has been published in Arab Studies Journal and Public Culture.

Samer Shehata is the Colin Mackey and Patricia Molina de Mackey Associate Professor of Middle East Studies in the Department of International and Area Studies (IAS) at the University of Oklahoma. He has also been the Middle East Studies Program Coordinator and the Director of Graduate Studies in IAS. Dr. Shehata has previously taught at the American University in Cairo, Georgetown University, and the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. His areas of research include Middle Eastern politics, Egyptian politics, Islamist politics, U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East, elections, authoritarianism, and democratization. He is the author of Shop Floor Culture and Politics in Egypt (SUNY, 2009 and republished with a new "Afterward" by the American University in Cairo Press in 2010), and editor of Islamist Politics in the Middle East: Movements and Change (Routledge, 2012) and The Struggle to Reshape the Middle East in the 21st Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). His articles have appeared in both academic and policy journals including the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Current History, MERIP, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, Middle East Policy, Folklore and as book chapters and encyclopedia articles. His analysis and op-ed pieces have been published in the New York Times, Guardian, Al Jazeera, Boston Globe/International Herald Tribune, Salon, Slate, Arab Reform Bulletin, Al Hayat, Al Ahram Weekly and other publications.

Andrea Wright received her PhD from the Joint Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History and the University of Michigan. She is currently the Class of 1952 Distinguished Associate Professor of Anthropology and Asian & Middle Eastern Studies at William & Mary, where she has taught since 2016. She is author of Between Dreams and Ghosts: Indian Migration and Middle Eastern Oil (Stanford University Press, 2021) and Unruly Labor: A History of Oil in the Arabian Sea (Stanford University Press, 2024). Her research explores the histories of capitalism and its contemporary expression, and her focus is on the ways labor movements and energy production shape governance, economies, and geopolitics in South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and globally.