FPRI Announces 2018-2019 Robert A. Fox Fellows

• July 3, 2018

The Foreign Policy Research Institute is pleased to announce that Rasha Al Aqeedi, Ronen Hoffman, and Michael A.  Reynolds have been named 2018-2019 Robert A. Fox Fellows in FPRI’s Program on the Middle East.

 

Rasha Al Aqeedi is Managing Editor of Irfaa Sawtak (Raise Your Voice) and a researcher and analyst of contemporary Iraqi politics and political Islam. She is also a non-resident fellow of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism. Previously, Rasha was a researcher at the Al Mesbar Studies and Research Center in Dubai, and an analyst at Inside Iraqi Politics. Her work on Mosul and Sunni politics is frequently cited by The New York Times, Washington Post, AP and Buzzfeed. Rasha received an M.A. in Translation, a B.A. in Translation, and a B.A. in Computer Engineering from Mosul University.

 

Ronen Hoffman  is an academician and former member of Knesset 2013-2015. He served as a member of Israel’s Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee as well as the chairman of the sub-committee on Foreign Affairs and Public Diplomacy. Hoffman is an expert in the fields of Israel’s Foreign Policy and the Middle-East political negotiations. He served as Personal Assistant to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin during his political campaign, and was a member and the coordinator of the Israeli delegation to the peace negotiations with Syria. Dr. Hoffman is a lecturer at the School of Government at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya and teaches courses on strategies and tactics in the Middle-East peace negotiations, political marketing and campaign management, and psychological warfare in conflict management, among others. 

 

Michael A. Reynolds is an Associate Professor in Princeton’s Department of Near Eastern Studies where he teaches courses on modern Middle Eastern and Eurasian history, comparative empire, military and ethnic conflict, and secularism. He is the author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), co-winner of the 2011 American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize, a Choice outstanding title, and a Financial Times book of the summer. In addition to his historical research on the Ottoman and Russian empires and their successor states, Reynolds works on contemporary issues related to Turkey, the Kurds, Azerbaijan, and the North Caucasus. Reynolds has held fellowships and grants from the Smith Richardson Foundation, Harvard University’s Olin Institute for Strategic Studies, Fulbright IIE, American Research Institute in Turkey, IREX, and NCEER and others. He holds a PhD in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton, an MA in Political Science from Columbia, and a BA in Government and Slavic Languages from Harvard. Currently he is at work on a biography of Enver Pasha, hero of the Young Turk Revolution and Ottoman Minister of War during WWI.

 

“This year’s cohort of Robert A. Fox Fellows possesses a diverse set of expertise, both topical and country-specific, as well as a diverse and impressive pedigree ranging beyond the academic to the practical. I feel confident that each of these scholars will bring their unique backgrounds to bear in their scholarship in a manner consistent with FPRI’s focus on geopolitics in foreign policy” said Tally Helfont, Director of FPRI’s Program on the Middle East.