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Steering Committee

Assistant Professor, Government

Begüm Adalet is Associate Professor in the Department of Government. She is a political theorist with research and teaching interests in infrastructures and ideologies of empire, racism, anti-colonialism, and transnationalism, with a focus on the Cold War period.

Associate Professor, History of Art and Visual Studies

Benjamin Anderson studies the visual and material cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and adjacent landmasses, with a particular focus on late antique and Byzantine art and architecture. His first book, Cosmos and Community in Early Medieval Art, addresses the reception of Greco-R

Assistant Professor, Government
Alexandra Blackman's research focuses on the relationship between political regimes and religious institutions. She was a 2021–22 Global Public Voices fellow.
Director, Southwest Asia and North Africa

Seema Golestaneh is an associate professor in Cornell’s Department of Near Eastern Studies. Her research, situated at the nexus of anthropology and religious studies, is focused on expressions of contemporary Islamic thought in the Persian-speaking world.

Paul and Berthe Hendrix Memorial Professor, Near Eastern Studies

Kim Haines-Eitzen (Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1997) is a Professor of Ancient Mediterranean Religions with a specialty in Early Christianity, Early Judaism, and Religion in Late Antiquity in the Department of Near Eastern Studies.

Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Studies

Jonny Lawrence completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2022, where he then worked as the Departmental Lecturer in Classical Arabic Literature until coming to Cornell.

Associate Professor, History
Mostafa Minawi studies different forms of imperialism in the Middle East and Northeast Africa.
Professor, Near Eastern Studies

Deborah Starr is Professor of Modern Arabic and Hebrew Literature and Film in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. She received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan.

Assistant Professor, History

Paraska Tolan-Szkilnik is a historian of 20th century Africa and the Middle East. She specializes in questions of race, gender, and sex in the post-colonial Maghreb.