ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳

Dr Rim Turkmani

Rim is the Principal Investigator of the project. She conducts research on identity politics, legitimate governance, transforming the war economy into a peace economy, and the relationship between local and external drivers of the conflict. Rim supervises the work of the team and will share the results of the project with policymakers.

She is a Senior Research Fellow in the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit, directing the  and publishing several papers and reports on the Syrian conflict. 

Dr. Mohamad Hasan

Mohamad is a consultant conducting a comparative analysis between the Syrian and Iraqi constitutions. Mohamad is an academic and legal adviser, having over 13 years of legal experience in the Middle East and Europe. He holds a PhD in Constitutional Law from the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (Sorbonne University in Paris

Dr Ibrahim Draji

Ibrahim is a Visiting Senior Fellow in the Department of International Development at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳. He holds a PhD in International Law from Ein Shams University, Egypt, and has over 17 years' experience as a lecturer in law.

He is an Attorney Consultant to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on protection of refugees and displaced and stateless persons, and a member in the Syrian constitutional process that was launched under the auspices of the United Nations in Geneva in 2019.

Professor Mary Kaldor

Mary Kaldor is a Professor of Global Governance and Director of the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit in the ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳ Department of International Development. Professor Kaldor also directs the unit’s largest research project, the Conflict Research Programme (CRP), an international DFID-funded partnership investigating public authority, through a theoretical lens of the political marketplace and the concept of civicness, across a range of countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Professor Kaldor is highly regarded for her innovative work on democratisation, conflict, and globalisation. She was a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament (END), a founder and Co-Chair of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly and a member of the International Independent Commission to investigate the Kosovo Crisis, established by the Swedish Prime Minister.

Professor Kaldor pioneered the concept of new wars and global civil society and her work on the practical implementation of human security has directly influenced European and national politics. Her books include: The Baroque Arsenal, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in a Global Era, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War and Human Security: Reflections on Globalization and Intervention. She is also the editor and co-author of the annual Global Civil Society Yearbook. Her most recent book International Law and New Wars, co-authored with Professor Christine Chinkin, was published in May 2017. At the request of Javier Solana, she was Convener for the Study Group on European Security Capabilities, which produced the influential Barcelona report, ‘A Human Security Doctrine for Europe’.

Professor Kaldor has been awarded Honorary Professorships at the University of Sussex and Corvinus University, Budapest, and holds the 2015 Ludvig Quidde Award for academic achievement in the field of peace. 

In 2003, Professor Kaldor’s work was recognised with the receipt of Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for ‘services to democracy and global governance’.

Mazen Gharibah

 Mazen Gharibah is Research Associate at the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is part of the Syria Team in the Conflict Research Programme at the Unit.

Gharibah’s work focuses on public policies, legitimacy, elections, the role of civil society and governance during and in post- conflict settings. He combines academic research with policy work and strong grassroots experience. Previously, Gharibah worked as a governance advisor with Adam Smith International and GIZ, and a consultant for several national and international think tanks, focusing on the Syrian conflict. 

He is also a member of the UN-backed Syrian Constitutional Committee, where he is a member of the drafting committee representing the Syrian Civil Society. 

Marika Theros

 Marika Theros is a policy fellow at the Conflict Research Programme at the London School of Economics, where she coordinates their cross-cutting research stream investigating local peace agreements across six key conflict-affected sites, and where she works on the Syria CRP team to examine the design of inclusive mechanisms in Syrian political talks with a focus on questions of legitimacy and sustainability.  She also advises key stakeholders  involved in the Afghan peace process on developing structures for public participation. Over the last 20 years, she has designed a number of research and dialogue processes in the Balkans, South Asia and the Middle East, in order to support multi-level, multi-dimensional peace-making and peace-building approaches. 

She publishes on security, justice and state-building issues in academic journals, currently serves on boards of the Humanitarian Law Centre and Women for Peace and Participation, and is a non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council and Institute for State Effectiveness. Marika is completing her doctorate in International Development at ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳, and holds an M.A. in International Affairs from the Columbia University and an MSc in Human Rights from ÐÓ°ÉÂÛ̳.

Dr Khouloud Al Zghayare

 Khouloud Al Zghayare is a Syrian sociologist and poet based in Paris. She holds a master and PhD in sociology from the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3. Her PhD thesis comparatively examines the Syrian political elites of the period between (1946-1963) in terms of socio-political and historical composition, discourse and political practices. She worked as an assistant professor at the University of Damascus between 2005-2007 and published a number of research articles and studies in research centres, journals and websites on the Syrian situation, addressing the issue of political discourse, the institution of the Syrian Army and the question of identity.

Basileus Zeno 

Basileus Zeno is an archaeologist and a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst. He holds a BA (2006) in Archaeology and Museum Studies and an M.A. (2011) in Classical and Islamic Archaeology from Damascus University (Syria). Until summer 2012, Basileus was doing his Ph.D. in classical archaeology at Damascus University, but he could not complete his research because of the outbreak of the war. In 2013, he started his M.A. in Political Science at Ohio University, which he completed in 2015. Currently, he is finishing his doctoral dissertation, “Displacement and Identity (re)Formation in Exile: Syrian Asylum-Seekers and Refugees in the United States,” which is a political ethnography of institutional violence and racialized immigration policies in the United States.

 Basileus is broadly interested in the areas of Comparative Politics, Contemporary Political Theory, and Identity Politics. His scholarly interests primarily focus on refugees and forced migration, nationalism and sectarianism, colonialism, interpretive methodology, and social movements in the Middle East.