Each academic year, CMES hosts roughly a dozen visiting researchers doing work on any number of projects related to the Middle East. The bios beow were provided by the scholars themselves.
Visiting Fellow
As president of Ardalan Associates, LLC, 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. During this period he has won a number of International Design Competitions, including the Citizen's Bank Headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island and the Abu Dhabi Oil Company Headquarters of ADMA/OPCO. For the past twelve years, he has served as senior vice president and director of design at KEO International Consultants, a leading multi-disciplinary firm with over 1,300 staff located in the Persian Gulf Region. Here he attained first prize in a number of major design competitions, including the Information Technology College and the Student Activity Center/Teaching Facilities for the UAE University. He has been 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 the co-author of "The Sense of Unity", published by Chicago University Press, and a number of other publications. He has been a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Tehran University. Ardalan has been written about in professional journals and publications including Newsweek, Architectural Review, National Geographic, Contemporary Architects, and Who’s Who in the World. He is a registered consultant with the World Bank and a member of a number of professional societies internationally. As of September, 2006, he serves be a fellow of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University, where he is project director of the Gulf Research Project.
Visiting Scholar
Halil Berkay is Associate Professor of History at Sabanci University (Istanbul, Turkey) and until recently also program coordinator for both History and Turkish Studies. He is currently on research leave and a visiting scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies, Harvard. Berktay earned his BA and MA in Economics (Yale '68) and PhD in History (Birmingham, UK ’91). He is a founding member of the History Foundation of Turkey, as well as of the Turkish branch of the Helsinki Citizens’ Assembly. He serves on the editorial advisory boards of (formerly) the Journal of Peasant Studies and (now) the Journal of Agrarian Change and, until recently, of the Journal of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies. He is also a member and vice-chairperson of the History Education Committee of the Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe (Thessaloniki), as well as a member of the advisory board of Pasts, Inc Centre for Historical Studies at CEU (Budapest).
Berktay's doctoral focus was on the self-particularisations of 20th century Turkish nationalist historians, especially over the “non-feudal nature,” so-called, of the Ottoman social formation. His broader research interests over the last decade have come to cover: the initial construction of Turkish national memory in the early 20th century; the Young Turks’ and the Kemalist revolutions in comparative perspective; the role of ethnic cleansings, atrocities, and genocides in revolutions and nation-building; and the construction of national forgetting, self-exoneration, or denial (with special emphasis on the Armenian genocide of 1915). Other recent work includes comparative studies and critiques of nationalist textbooks and history education, as well as attempts to create alternative textbooks and teachers’ resource files, both for Turkey and Southeast Europe. Berktay has publisehd three large and two smaller books and edited two books, plus numerous articles (including some in English, German, and Hungarian, as well as many in Turkish).
Visiting Scholar
I am a professor of Political Science, University of Washington where I teach courses on the Persian Gulf countries, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and comparative politics. I received my BA in English at Harvard College and a PhD in Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. The general theme here appears to be moving from smaller to larger bodies of water: the banks of the Charles to the shores of the Golden Gate and thence to Puget Sound. However, I have been a visiting professor twice at an educational institution in rural New Jersey (Princeton) which has a small lake and a canal suitable for canoeing. I have been awarded fellowships by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Ford Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. I have published book length studies of Egyptian labor (Trade, Reputation and Child Labor in 20th century Egypt and Tinker, Tailor, and Textile Worker: Class and Politics in Egypt). I also edited The Social History of Labor in the Middle East. Thanks to the Carnegie grant I have been working on a project about how several important political figures in the Middle East imagine citizenship, community, and sovereignty in the context of Islamic discourse. The book will focus on the published works of Tariq al-Bishri, Muhammad Abid al-Jabari, and Ridwan al-Sayyid. Oddly enough I’m best known for an article that has nothing to do with the Middle East, a critique of Robert Putnam’s book, Making Democracy Work. I’ve been told that that article, “Thinking About How Democracy Works” is one of the 50 most cited articles from Politics and Society. I have also contributed early but not frequently to the literature on Islamism with “Smashing Idols and the State: The Protestant Ethic and Egyptian Sunni Radicalism” in Comparative Studies in Society and History.
Visiting Fellow
Bio unavailable at this time
Visiting Fellow
Elaheh Kheirandish is a historian of science (PhD, Harvard ’91) with a specialty in sciences in Islamic lands. Her main research area is the history of mathematical sciences with a focus on mixed mathematical-physical sciences such as optics and mechanics. Her projects and publications have ranged from the Arabic and Persian traditions of ancient Greek sciences to the applications of the new technologies to historical studies. Her publications include a two-volume published dissertation. Her most recent courses are titled “From Alexandria to Baghdad: Classical Sciences in Islamic Lands” and “From Baghdad to Isfahan: Classical Sciences in Persian Lands” offered through Harvard’s Department of Classics and Near Eastern Languages and Civilization respectively.
Visiting Fellow
Ozlem is a Ph.D. candidate at the department of Political Science, Bilkent University. She completed her B.A. at Koc University, her M.A. at Bilgi University and second M.A. at Central European University. Currently, she is doing research and writing her dissertation at Harvard University. Her dissertation aims to examine interactive relationship between new conservative and pro-Islamic elite and the resultant new societal, economic and political landscape in Turkey after the 1980s, and to understand it in the larger Middle Eastern and global context. These elite started to be visible in 1980s, and influential in 1990s and beginning of the 2000s. Today, they, though mostly concentrated within the AKP (Justice and Development Party) cadre, are strongly represented in every segments of life, stretching from political, economic and social areas. Doubtless, emergence of these new elite is one of the most important political, economic and sociological phenomenon in contemporary Turkey and in the globe. In a Bourdieu’s sense, this new class is developing a new cultural capital and habitus, distancing itself from other elite, and also disseminating its values to the other sectors of life in Turkey. The main purpose of her dissertation is to interpret the new conservative elite in its larger societal context that takes into account specific tastes, institutions, practices, personalities and networks. In doing so, her dissertation also attempts to contribute to the literature on multiple modernities by demonstrating how economy and culture are articulated in a specific national context. It will also indirectly address the questions of Islam and Democracy, Islam and Capitalism and Islam and the West.
Visiting Scholar
Senior Lecturer, Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Israel.
Dr. Peled specializes in international political economy (with a focus on the Middle East), business-government relations, and globalization. She is the academic director of the Argov Fellows Program in Leadership and Diplomacy at IDC. She completed her PhD in History and Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University and her M.A. in International Economics and Finance at Brandeis University. She has held teaching and research positions at Harvard University, Brandeis University, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. She also has worked as an equity investment analyst in Israel and in Boston. Her first book, Debating Islam in the Jewish State examines Israeli policy towards Islamic institutions in Israel. Her current book project focuses on the rise of American universities in the Middle East and how higher educational reform can spark economic development in the region.
Visiting Scholar
Hamideh Sedghi was Born in Tehran, Iran. She received a BA in political science from the University of California, Berkeley, an MA from California State University at Chico, and an MPhil, a PhD, and a postdoctoral fellowship from the City University of New York. Formely a visiting scholar at Columbia University, Professor Sedghi's teaching posts have included Villanova University, University of Richmond, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and Vassar College. The first Iranian woman to publish works on women in Iran from a social science perspective in the United States, Professor Sedghi has written extensively on women/gender in Iran and the Islamic world and contributed works on Islam, Muslims, and American foreign policy in the Middle East. Her most recent work is Women and Politics in Iran: Veiling, Unveiling, and Reveiling, Cambridge University Press, July 2007. Her current projects include writing a monograph, Failed Secularism and Gender Under the Pahlavis, an anthology with a focus on the Islamic world, gender, and globalization, and co-authoring The Christian Right and the Neo-Conservativism and the Making of American Middle East Policy, 2000-2008. A consultant to the United Nations, Professor Sedghi‘s various awards include the prestigious (Pennsylvania) State System for Higher Education (SHEE) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Most recently, she is the recipient of the 2005 Christian Bay Award presented for the Best Paper at the American Political Science Association.
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