CMES Scientific Advisory Board

Anders Jägerskog is Senior Water Resources Management Specialist at the Water Global Practice at the World Bank. Previously he was Counsellor for regional water resources in the MENA region at the Swedish Embassy in Amman, Jordan; Director, Knowledge Services, at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) where he headed the Transboundary Water Management Unit. He managed the UNDP Shared Waters Partnership which facilitates and promotes dialogue and cooperation on transboundary water resources. He is Associate Professor (Docent) at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg where his work focuses on global water issues. In 2003 he finished his PhD on the water negotiations in the Jordan River Basin at the Department of Water and Environmental Studies at the Linköping University. He has published over 100 scientific articles, book chapters, debate articles and reports on global water issues.

Ellen Lust is the Founding Director of the Program on Governance and Local Development at Yale University (est. 2013), at the University of Gothenburg (est. 2015), and Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg. She received her PhD in Political Science from the University of Michigan (1997). She was previously a faculty member at Rice University and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at Yale University, and a visiting scholar at the Institute of Graduate Studies (Geneva) and the Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution at NYU. She is a founding associate editor of Middle East Law and Governance. Ellen has conducted fieldwork in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Tunisia and Zambia. Her current research examines the role of social institutions in governance in sub-Saharan Africa and the MENA region.

Professor Kaveh Madani is a globally recognized scientist, educator, and activist, working on complex human-nature systems at the interface of science, policy, and society. He is currently the Director of the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health (UNU-INWEH) and a Research Professor at the City University of New York’s Remote Sensing Earth Systems Institute (CUNY CREST). He has previously served as the Deputy Head of Iran’s Department of Environment, Vice President of the UN Environment Assembly Bureau, and Chief of Iran’s Department of Environment’s International Affairs and Conventions Center. He held different strategic roles during his public service and led Iran’s delegation in different major intergovernmental summits, including the COP23 climate change negotiations. Before public service, he was a tenured faculty member of the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London. He joined the United Nations University from Yale University in 2021 as the Head of Nexus Research Programme at UNU-FLORES, where he founded the Resource Nexus Analytics, Informatics and Data (AID) Programme. Professor Madani is an expert in developing and applying mathematical, economic, and systems analysis models to complex problems involving water, energy, food, climate, and environment to derive policy and governance insights. His publications address issues such as water management, environmental policy, energy systems, food security, climate change impacts, and adaptation, environmental and financial risk analysis, sustainable development, transboundary conflicts, and environmental security, diplomacy, and justice.

Marie-Joëlle Zahar is Professor of Political Science, Director of the Research Network on Peace Operations and Fellow at the Centre for International Research and Studies at the Université de Montréal. She is also a member of the Scientific Board of the Network for Strategic Analysis and a non-resident Senior Fellow with the International Peace Institute (New York) and a member of the Folke Bernadotte Academy’s research working groups. Marie-Joëlle has served as Senior Expert on Power Sharing on the Standby Team of Mediation Experts at the UN Department of Political Affairs where she remains on the UN mediation roster and she was a senior expert in the Office of the Special Envoy of the United Nations for Syria. She received her PhD in Political Science from McGill University (2000). Her research interests span the dynamics of civil war, the politics of conflict-resolution and the Middle East. She is a specialist of the study of non-state armed groups, transition violence and post-conflict power sharing.

Michelle Pace is a Professor of international politics with more than 27 years of experience across research, higher education, international collaboration, and policy engagement in Europe and the Middle East.
Her work focuses on conflict, migration, democracy, governance, political violence, refugee integration, and EU–Middle East relations, with particular expertise in the politics of protracted conflict and humanitarian crises. Across her academic and policy work, she seek to bridge rigorous research with practical engagement on some of the most pressing international challenges facing policymakers, civil society actors, and international institutions today.

Morten Valbjørn is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University. He is active in the research project SWAR – Sectarianism in the Wake of the Arab Revolts, as well as conducting research in on Arab Shia and Sunni Islamism(s) in a sectarianized Middle East. Additionally, Morten is working on a project on the transformation of the Islamist scenes in the Middle East. He received his PhD in Political Science at Aarhus University (2008). His research interests include: the role of cultural diversity and otherness in international relations and the implications for the IR-discipline; global IR/Middle East Studies; challenges to the study of politics in an (un)exceptional Middle East; sectarian politics before, during and after the Arab Revolts; identity politics in (the study of) the modern Middle East; the transformation of Arab nationalism(s); authoritarian resilience and democratization in a 'new Middle East'; and Middle Eastern Islamism(s) before and after the Arab Revolts.

Nadim Houry is the executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI). Prior to ARI, Nadim was at Human Rights Watch (HRW) where he started and ran HRW’s Beirut office before taking on the role of director of HRW’s Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism Program. During his time at HRW, he worked across the MENA region, particularly on Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan on a range of human rights issues ranging from freedom of expression to abuses by security forces to labour rights. He has conducted extensive research in conflict zones and his writing often focuses on the themes of governance and accountability. A lawyer by training, Nadim worked in the UN as Deputy Counsel for the Volcker Commission which conducted investigations into allegations of corruption into the Oil-for-Food Program in Iraq.

Nicola Pratt is Professor of International Politics of the Middle East at the University of Warwick. She recently led a research project on politics and popular culture in post-uprising Egypt, resulting in the curation of a digital archive documenting the 2011 uprising and its aftermath. Additionally, she was the co-director of a research partnership on transnational perspectives on gender. Her research interests are located at the intersections between the politics of the Middle East and feminist international relations theory, particularly the ways in which ‘ordinary people’ are shaped by and also influence national and international politics. Nicola has previously worked at the University of East Anglia and lived and worked in Egypt on projects concerning human rights and democratization. She is active in the international peace/anti-war movement. She was the Vice President of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (2018-2021). She has written on women's activism, democratization, human rights and conflict in a number of Middle Eastern countries.

Raphael Cohen-Almagor earned his doctorate at the University of Oxford and is an scholar of political theory, ethics, and human rights. He has founded and led several influential academic centers, including the University of Haifa’s Center for Democratic Studies, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute’s Medical Ethics Think Tank, and the Middle East Study Centre at the University of Hull. His leadership roles also include serving as President of the Association for Israel Studies, Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, and Olof Palme Guest Professor at Lund University.

Raphael has taught at several universities in the UK, the US and Israel, including Oxford University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, UCLA and Johns Hopkins University. He has published extensively in the fields of political science, philosophy, law, sociology, history, media ethics and medical ethics. His major books include The Boundaries of Liberty and Tolerance, The Scope of Tolerance, Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism, and The Republic, Secularism and Security. His forthcoming book, Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, will be published by Cambridge University Press.

Prof. Sihem Jebari's background is in Agricultural Engineering. She has been working as a researcher at INRGREF (Tunisian National Research Institute for Rural Engineering, Water and Forestry) since 1999. Her research work is focused on semiarid and arid areas. It involves water erosion modeling, climate change impacts on water availability, agricultural environment degradation, reservoir siltation and transboundary water management. She has a PhD in Hydrology and Water Resources Sciences from Lund University (2009).