Status Audio Magazine

Dr. Katty Alhayek is an Assistant Professor in the School of Professional Communication at Ryerson University (renaming in process) in Toronto, Canada. Alhayek’s research centers around themes of marginality, media, audiences, gender, intersectionality, and displacement in a transnational context.

Alhayek completed her Ph.D. in Communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States of America with a graduate certificate in Advanced Feminist Studies. Her publications include articles in the International Journal of Communication; Feminist Media Studies; Gender, Technology and Development; and Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies. Twitter: @kattyalhayek

Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. She is also Associate Faculty in Anthropology and the Co-Editor of the University of Chicago Book Series, “Studies in Practices of Meaning.”

Her publications include three books: Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (1999; with a new preface, 2015); Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power and Performance in Yemen (2008); and Authoritarian Apprehensions: Ideology, Judgment, and Mourning in Syria (2019). Among her articles are the following: “Conceptualizing ‘Culture’: Possibilities for Political Science” (2002); “Concepts and Commitments in the Study of Democracy” (2004), “Ethnography as an Interpretive Enterprise” (2009), “Reflections on Ethnographic Work in Political Science” (2010), “Ideology and Humor in Dark Times: Notes from Syria” (2013), and “Scientific Knowledge, Liberalism, and Empire: American Political Science in the Modern Middle East” (2016). She is the recipient of the David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award and an NSF fellowship, and is currently completing an edited volume with Joseph Masco, entitled Conspiracy/Theory.

Dr. Basileus Zeno is Karl Loewenstein Fellow and Visiting Lecturer in Political Science at Amherst College. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in September 2021.

His academic publications include articles in Nations and Nationalism; Middle East Law and Governance; and Digest of Middle East Studies.

Basileus is strongly committed to public engagement and applied research. He is a co-editor of the Syria Page at Jadaliyya, and a co-founding member of Security in Context. He also served as a consultant and a researcher at several international organizations such as the Carter Center’s Conflict Resolution Program, The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA), and the LSE Policy research project "Legitimacy and Citizenship in the Arab World".

Twitter: @BasileusZeno

Omar S. Dahi is a research associate at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and associate professor of economics at Hampshire College. He has published in academic outlets such as the Journal of Development Economics, Applied Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Political Geography, Middle East Report, Forced Migration Review, and Critical Studies on Security. His last book was South-South Trade and Finance in the 21st Century: Rise of the South or a Second Great Divergence (co-authored with Firat Demir). From 2014-2018 Dahi served as a Lead Expert on the UN ESCWA's National Agenda for the Future of Syria program. He is a co-founder and coordinator of the Beirut School of Critical Security Studies and the Latin East initiative. Dahi is the project director of Security in Context.

Ibrahim Hamidi is London based journalist and Research fellow and co-founder at Center for Syria Studies At the Center for Syria Studies (CSS) in St Andrews University, Scotland. He is the head of Syrian office of the leading Arab daily newspaper Al-Hayat, which he previously headed its Damascus Bureau. His daily reporting and analysis of the events in Syria have gained reputation as the leading source of information and analysis to the conflict in Arabic. Many of his articles are translated to English and published in several outlets. His work focuses on strategic issues in the Middle East with special insight into Syria's internal and regional politics and the spread of extreme Islamist groups in the country. He is particularly interested in researching and analysing Jabhat al Nusra (JAN), which gained a strong hold in Idleb countryside, the area he comes from and in examining the dynamics that enabled JAN to infiltrate the Syrian society, the way in which it is transforming the area and the local communities and the risks is poses on and prospect for a stable united Syria. Hamidi is a co-founder of the Arab Investigative Journalism Program (ARIJ), and previous head of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) office in Damascus. He holds B. A. in journalism.