CMES is pleased to introduce some of the 2006/2007 Visiting Scholars and Post-Doctoral Fellows. The biographies below were provided by the scholars themselves.

Nader Ardalan is an architect with over four decades of award winning international experience. He holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Carnegie-Mellon University and a Masters in Architecture from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. He has served as Principal-in-charge of International Design and Operations at Jung/Brannen Associates of Boston from 1983 to 1994; and as Senior Vice President and Director of Design at KEO International Consultants from 1994 to 2006. Nader Ardalan was a founding member of the Steering Committee of the prestigious Aga Khan Award for Architecture and continues to serve as a Jury Member on many international design competitions. He is currently director of a research project entitled "Re-conceiving the Built Environments of the Persian Gulf". This project is a three-year academic program focused upon theory and applied research to develop new prototypes of urban design and architecture for the eight countries surrounding the Persian Gulf. It is hoped that the study will produce guidelines and innovative strategies to achieve environmentally and culturally sustainable development, water conservation, and energy efficient designs and governance strategies in this geographic area. The first year of the project will address Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. The program is cosponsored by the UAE Higher Colleges of Technology and the Kuwait Foundation for Advancement of Science.

Nizar Atrissi, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, is a professor of Finance at Université Saint-Joseph, Beirut. He is also the co-chair of the “Global Banking Risk Management” seminar at the MBA International Paris, affiliated with Sorbonne and Dauphine universities in France.

reviously a fellow of the European Research Center in Finance and Management, he was also a faculty member at Université de Paris I – Sorbonne and Université Paris – Dauphine in France.

A Visiting Scholar at Harvard, he is working on the factors that drive Foreign Direct Investment, with special focus on the role of Investment Program Agencies, as well as economic and institutional aspects. The study will introduce empirical evidence from the Middle East and North Africa region. In addition, he is preparing a case study for the Harvard Business School and will be conducting a series of lectures.

His research focus and publications are on the interaction between strategic corporate decisions and institutional characteristics and financial markets development. It also includes governance practices with empirical evidence from family-owned and developing countries’ firms.

Professor Atrissi received a Ph.D. in Finance from Université de Paris I – Sorbonne. He served as Executive Vice-President and member of the board of Directors of IDAL (Investment Development Authority of Lebanon) and is consultant to several institutions, banks and corporations.

Email: nizar_atrissi@harvard.edu

Ondrej Beranek was born in Prague, Czech Republic. He graduated from the Institute for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Charles University with a Master's degree in Arabic language and the History and Culture of Islamic Countries. During his studies he traveled extensively in many Muslim countries in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. In addition, he was granted a scholarship by the Institut des langues vivantes in Tunis, where he passed an intensive Arabic language course. In 2003 he received a scholarship at the University of King Saud in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he underwent intensive trainign in Arabic language and the history and culture of the Arab countries.

He is currently finishing his PhD dissertation concerning the contemporary history of Saudi Arabia (from the first Gulf War until now) - mainly its domestic development (various forms of opposition: the islamic, liberal, shi'a and regionalistic), and its foreign relations (especially with the US, local powers, and Russia). His other interests include West African history and culture, modern Arabic literature and mountaineering and rock climbing.

Born in Tehran, Iran, Hamideh Sedghi came to the United States to pursue higher education. She received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. from California State University at Chico, and an M.Phil., a Ph.D. and a Postdoctoral fellowship from the City University of New York. Previously a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University, and a consultant to the United Nations, Professor Sedghi's teaching includes Villanova University, University of Richmond, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Vassar College and Bard College. As the first Iranian woman who published works on women in Iran from a social science perspective in the United States, Sedghi has written extensively on women/gender in Iran and the Islamic world and contributed to studies on Islam and Muslims and American foreign policy in the Middle East. Her Women And Politics In Iran: Veiling, Unveiling And Reveiling, Cambridge University Press, is forthcoming in Spring 2007. Dr. Sedghi is currently working on three projects: one on the impact of Christian Right and Neo-Conservatives on the Bush administration's foreign policy in the Middle East; another on state and gender relations under Iran’s Pahlavis; and a co-edited volume on gender and globalization with a focus on the Muslim world. Sedghi‘s various awards include the prestigious (Pennsylvania) State System for Higher Education (SHEE) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is also the recipient of the 2005 Christian Bay Award presented for the Best Paper at the American Political Science Association.

Alireza Shomali was born in Iran and earned his MSc degree from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran. In 2000 he came to the US, to Syracuse University, where he received an MA and PhD in Political Philosophy and Middle Eastern (2006). His dissertation opens the hermeneutic sphere for a dialogue between the Islamic tradition and modernity, and facilitates the fusion of these two horizons in this space. In his post-doctoral studies, and as a continuation of his dissertation work, he is striving to explore specifically how two branches of modern Western philosophy have contributed to two distinct theories of governance and statecraft in contemporary political thought in Iran.