People

Salmaan Keshavjee

Salmaan_Keshavjee@hms.harvard.edu

CMES Interim Director

Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Dr. Keshavjee is a professor in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine and Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. He also serves as a physician in the Division of Global Health Equity at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He...

Leila Ahmed

leila_ahmed@harvard.edu

Victor S. Thomas Research Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School

Leila Ahmed came to the Divinity School in 1999 as the first professor of women's studies in religion and was appointed to the Victor S. Thomas chair in 2003. Prior to her appointment at HDS, she was professor of women's studies and Near Eastern studies...

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...

Sultan Alamer

salamer@fas.harvard.edu

Associate of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Nonresident Scholar, Carnegie Endowment of International Peace

Sultan Alamer is a nonresident scholar in the Carnegie Middle East Program. His research focuses on nationalism and state-formation, governance and technology, regional politics in the broader Middle East, with a special focus on the Arabian Peninsula...

Dimiter Angelov

dangelov@fas.harvard.edu

Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History

Dimiter Angelov is Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History at Harvard University. His research and teaching focus on the intellectual, political, and institutional history of the Byzantine Empire. His diverse scholarly interests include empire and...

Ali Asani

aliasani@fas.harvard.edu

Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies

Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures

Committee on the Study of Religion and Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Ali Asani is Murray A. Albertson Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Professor of Indo-Muslim and Islamic Religion and Cultures. After completing his high school education in Kenya, he attended Harvard College, with a concentration in the comparative...

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...

Elif Irem Az

elifiremaz@fas.harvard.edu

Disaster Studies Postdoctoral Fellow

Elif Irem Az is a medical and political-economic anthropologist, poet, and Disaster Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. She received her PhD in sociocultural anthropology from Columbia University in...

Don Babai

babai@fas.harvard.edu

Associate of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Don Babai (PhD, University of California, Berkeley) specializes in the political economy of the Gulf countries. He is currently working on a book on business-state relations in Saudi Arabia and is also finishing editing a festschrift, consisting of twelve...

Efe Murat Balıkçıoğlu

ebalikcioglu@fas.harvard.edu

Visiting Scholar

Balıkçıoğlu is a textual scholar and an intellectual historian whose research focuses on the intersection of philosophy, theology, and Sufism in the early modern Ottoman Empire. He is particularly interested in the Ottoman synthesis of Graeco-Arabic...

Ran Bechor

rbechor@fas.harvard.edu

Preceptor in Modern Hebrew, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

Ran Bechor is an educator, Hebrew playwright, and theater director. He was the principal of a school for the gifted in Jerusalem. Bechor had previously initiated and managed an Arabic language school through theater. A former fellow of the Mandel school...

Lorenzo Bondioli

Assistant Professor of History

On leave for the 2025-26 academic year. Lorenzo Bondioli's work investigates the political economy of medieval Islamic empires, aiming to lay bare the antagonistic symbiosis between the merchant and ruling classes, and the ever-embattled entanglement of...