People

Omar Abdel-Ghaffar

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

Omar Abdel-Ghaffar is a PhD candidate in the History and Middle East Studies program. He is primarily interested in Mamluk hinterlands and agricultural populations; their relationships to each other, to the law, to various networks of authority, and to...

Didar Ayşe Akbulut

didarakbulut@g.harvard.edu

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

person

Hasibe Akın Demir

hasibe@caticiftligi.com

PhD Candidate, Landscape Department, Istanbul Technical University

Hasibe Akın graduated with a bachelor's degree in architecture from Istanbul Technical University (İTÜ) in 2012 and completed her master's thesis in İTÜ's Architectural Design Program. She is currently writing her doctoral thesis in the İTÜ Landscape...

Shayma Al Harthi

salsinawi@g.harvard.edu

AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

Shayma Al Harthi is a writer and researcher tracing the private lives of language: its capacity to encrypt, translate, and reassemble at the seams. Working bilingually across poetry, policy, and archival practice, she explores how meaning survives, and...

Mahmoud Al-Thabata

mahmoudalthabata@college.harvard.edu

AB/AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

2025-27 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship

Student Advisory Board, Harvard Radcliffe Institute

Mahmoud Al-Thabata is a researcher of international law, political economy, and Arab and Palestinian diplomatic history in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies’ concurrent AM program. His research examines Palestine and the broader Global South in the...

Mohamed Albulushi

malbulushi@g.harvard.edu

AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

person

Alreem Alghafri

alreemalghafri@g.harvard.edu

AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

Alreem Alghafri is a master’s student in Middle Eastern studies at Harvard University. Her research interests focus on the political economy of the Gulf and the region’s transition toward knowledge economies in a post-oil future, particularly through...

Sarah Allen

sarahgraceallen@g.harvard.edu

AM Candidate in Regional Studies—Middle East

person

Hanna Alshaikh

halshaikh@g.harvard.edu

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

Hanna Alshaikh is a researcher of Arab and Palestinian intellectual history in the joint History and Middle Eastern Studies PhD program. Her research examines the role of the Palestinian diaspora in Arab world political discourse, with a special focus on...

Francesco Anselmetti

fanselmetti@g.harvard.edu

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

Francesco entered Harvard’s Joint PhD Program in History and Middle Eastern Studies in 2021. His doctoral research examines the formation of social classes and modern states in the Eastern Mediterranean over the course of the 18th and early 19th centuries...

Gayane Ayvazyan

gayvazyan@g.harvard.edu

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

Gayane Ayvazyan entered the Joint PhD Program in History and Middle Eastern Studies in 2021. At Harvard, her aim is to analyze and explain the transformations of the interconnected networks and organization of Armenians within the Ottoman Empire, Safavid...

Mitch Bacci

mbacci@g.harvard.edu

PhD Candidate in History and Middle East Studies

Mitch began the joint History and Middle Eastern Studies PhD program in 2017. His research focuses broadly on the social and economic history of the late modern Eastern Mediterranean. He is particularly interested in informal political economy, the...