Fellowships

Our fellowships are designed to support scholars at various stages in their academic journeys drawing on multiple disciplines and approaches to produce knowledge on/about the Arab Region and the greater Middle East.

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2025 NAACSS Fellows Program

Omar Dahi

Meet the 2025 Senior Fellow, Dr. Omar Dahi, a professor of economics at Hampshire College. Dahi is the founding director of Security in Context, a research network on peace, conflict, and international affairs. He has published in academic outlets such as the journal of Development Economics and Applied Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Political Geography, Middle East Report, Forced Migration Review, and Critical Studies on Security. His last book was “South-South Trade and Finance in the 21st Century: Rise of the South or a Second Great Divergence” (co-authored with Firat Demir). Dahi serves as an associate editor of the Review of Social Economy as well as the e-zine Jadaliyya and has served on the editorial committee of the Middle East Report. Dahi has served as a lead expert on the United Nations Economic and SOcial Commission of West Asia’s National Agenda for the Future of Syria program. Dahi gave the following comment on his fellowship experience:

“I was honored to be the NACSS inaugural Fellow, based at the ACSS in Beirut, Lebanon. My time in Beirut was deeply rewarding as it gave me a chance to work with the amazing staff and leadership of the ACSS on a number of key initiatives that included the Rethinking Development research grant programs, the future of the Critical Security Studies working group, and helping to brainstorm an ACSS response to the changing landscape in Syria. I was also fortunate to have the chance to teach a course on Economic Development for the New Generation Program. Most inspiring to me was being part of the build up to the Seventh ACSS Conference and possibly the largest, and witnessing the immense care, thoughtfulness, and attention to detail that made the conference such a stunning success.”

As NACSS Senior Fellow, Dahi contributed to the following programs:

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The Critical Security Studies Working Group

The CSS Working Group engages with existing frameworks from the field of critical security studies but also strives to move beyond them to develop alternative approaches based on regional realities, in an effort to understand the materialization of new security concerns, dynamics, spaces and affects

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The New Generation of Social Scientists in the Arab Region fellowship program

NewGen seeks to establish a pipeline of a new generation of committed, passionate and well-trained social scientists in the Arab region. It provides distinguished students at the undergraduate and graduate levels the opportunity to join a two-year journey animated by methodological and thematic workshops and courses, as well as research, publishing and networking activities.

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The Research Grants Program on Rethinking Development in the Arab Region

The Research Grants Program (RGP) provides funding to established researchers from the Arab region to conduct research across disciplinary boundaries and methodological traditions on key themes of concern to the region.