On January 30th at 3 PM, you are invited to join Portland State University's Middle East Studies Center and the Politics and Global Affairs department for a panel discussion on conflict and peacemaking in the Middle East.
Syria’s President Assad was overthrown December 8, 2024, inaugurating a new phase in the country’s political transition. The Middle East region has seen more than a decade of profound change that has included the Arab uprisings that began in 2010 and the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine, marked by the events of October 7, 2023. This panel will offer perspectives on conflict and transition in the greater Middle East drawn from social science research on conflict and peacemaking studies.
MODERATOR: Dr. Josh Eastin is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Politics and Global Affairs Department in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Washington, and previously served as a visiting research fellow at the University of the Philippines. His research addresses political dimensions of environmental degradation and economic deprivation, particularly in the context of civil conflict. Recent projects have analyzed the impact of climate change on violence in armed conflict; the recruitment and behavior of non-state armed groups; and the gendered impacts of climate change in low-income and agrarian states. His work has appeared in journals such as Defence and Peace Economics, International Interactions, International Studies Quarterly, Political Geography, Terrorism and Political Violence, World Politics, and World Development. He is currently working on a book project that compares the formation and function of local non-state security institutions (commonly referred to as “militias”) in the Philippines and Peru.
PANELIST: Dr. Harout Akdedian is a Program Analyst at the Oregon Department of Justice and Visiting Scholar at PSU’s Middle East Studies Center. Prior to joining the Civil Rights Unit at ODOJ, Akdedian worked as research consultant for organizations and think tanks including the United Nations – Economic and Social Commission of Western Asa (ESCWA), and Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. He was a Carnegie SFM Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Central European University in Vienna. He studies state-society relations, extremism and Middle East politics and society. He is the author and co-editor of peer review journal articles and books including his latest: Spoils of War in the Arab East (co-edited with al-Azmeh and Dukhan, I.B. Taurus, 2024) and State Atrophy in Syria: War Society and Institutional Change (Edinburgh University Press, 2023) which is now available in paperback. His participation in this panel is in his capacity as an independent scholar and his views do not reflect those of his employer.
PANELIST: Dr.Lindsay J. Benstead is Professor of Politics and Global Affairs in the Mark O. Hatfield School of Government and Director of the Middle East Studies Center (MESC) at Portland State University. Previously, she served as Fellow in the Middle East Program and the Women’s Global Leadership Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC (2018-2019 & 2022) and Kuwait Visiting Professor at SciencesPo in Paris (fall 2016). Her research on women and politics, public opinion, and survey methodology has appeared in Perspectives on Politics, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Governance, and Foreign Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in Public Policy and Political Science from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and served as a doctoral fellow at Yale University and a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. For more on her research, see https://pdx.academia.edu/LindsayBenstead.