Political Science
Karim Makdisi is an Associate Professor of International Relations, and Director of the Program in Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut (AUB). He also served as the Associate Director at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs from 2009-2014, and has coordinated the Environmental Policy program within AUB’s Interfaculty Environmental Sciences Program (IGESP) since 2004. Makdisi was a founding member and served on the first Board of Trustees of the Arab Council for the Social Sciences (ACSS), where he is also currently an associated researcher in the Critical Studies Working Group. He is currently the primary investigator, at AUB, of two 3-year European Union projects: a Horizon 2020 research project entitled Middle East and North Africa Regional Architecture (MENARA, 2017-2019), a consortium of universities and research institutes across Europe and the Mediterranean looking into regional transformation in the Middle East.; and the Erasmus+ network project entitled EU-Middle East Network In Action (EUMENIA, 2018-2021). His latest publications include the edited volumes The Land of the Blue Helmets: United Nations in the Arab World (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2017, with Vijay Prashad); Between Regional Autonomy and Intervention: New Conflict Dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa (eds. Boserup et al. Copenhagen: Danish Instituter for International Studies, 2017); and Interventions in Conflict: International Peacemaking in the Middle East (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, with R. Khouri and M. Wählisch). Recent articles include: “Writing about Insecurity and Global Politics in Beirut,” APSA MENA Newsletter (Spring 2019, with W. Hazbun and C. Hindawi-Pison); “Contested Multilateralism: The United Nations And The Middle East,” in MENARA Working Papers (February 2019); “Exploring the UN and OPCW Partnership in Syrian Chemical Weapons Disarmament: Inter-organizational Cooperation and Autonomy, ”Global Governance: A Review of Multilateralism and International Organizations (2019, with C. Hindawi); “The Syrian Chemical Weapons Disarmament Process in Context: Narratives of Coercion, Consent, and Everything in Between” (with C. Hindawi) in the Third World Quarterly, Issue 8, 2017; and “Intervention and the Arab Uprisings: from Transformation to Maintenance of Regional Order” (in eds. Boserup et al, 2017). He is currently working on a book project related to the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war and the larger United Nations framework; and is thinking about what it means to research and teach international relations, security, the UN, and global governance from Beirut.