Hear from Students & Alumni
CMES is home to approximately 50 graduate students in our AM and joint PhD programs. Our network of over 700 alumni have gone on to distinguished careers in academia, NGOs, business, government, journalism, and more. Meet a few of our students and alumni here and learn about their research and experiences at CMES.
Student Profiles
Q&A with Chloe Bordewich
Chloe Bordewich is a PhD candidate in History and Middle Eastern Studies. How did you become interested in Middle Eastern studies? In 2006, when I was 16, I went to Cairo for three weeks as part of a now-defunct State Department–funded exchange program...
Q&A with Kim Quarantello
Kim Quarantello is a second-year student in the AM in Middle Eastern Studies program. How did you become interested in Middle Eastern studies? I became interested in Middle Eastern studies as an undergraduate at Wellesley College, where I studied Arabic...
Q&A Anna Boots
Anna Boots is a second-year student in the AM in Middle Eastern Studies program. Why did you choose CMES? I really liked that Harvard’s Middle Eastern Studies Master’s program is fundamentally academic and not policy-centric like some other similar...
Q&A with Theo Wye
Theo Wye is a second-year student in the AM in Middle Eastern Studies program. How did you become interested in Middle Eastern Studies? In my second to last year of high school the Arab Spring happened and that was the first time that I was really exposed...
Q&A with Ian McGonigle
Ian McGonigle is a PhD candidate in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies. How did you become interested in Middle East studies? It was a cold January evening in Cambridge England, when my friend arrived to my dorm room to invite me on a spontaneous...
Alumni Profiles
Q&A With Becca Wadness
Becca Wadness is a 2018 graduate of the CMES AM Program in Middle Eastern Studies. She currently works as Senior Tunisia Desk Officer in the Bureau for the Middle East at USAID. What is the mission of the USAID Bureau for the Middle East, in general and...
Q&A With Medhini Kumar
Medhini Kumar is a 2016 graduate of the CMES AM Program in Middle Eastern Studies. She currently works as Communications Manager for UNRWA USA, an American nonprofit that is committed to bettering the lives of Palestine refugees through advocacy efforts...
Q&A with Asher Orkaby
Asher Orkaby is a 2014 graduate of Harvard’s joint PhD program in History and Middle Eastern Studies. He is currently a research associate at Harvard’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies and a lecturer at Harvard Extension School. His book...
Q&A with Eugene Rogan
Eugene Rogan is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History and Director of St. Antony’s Middle East Centre at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Arabs: A History , which has been translated into ten languages and was named one of the best...
Q&A with Emrah Yildiz
Emrah Yildiz is Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University. He completed his PhD in Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Harvard in 2016. How was your first term on the faculty at...
