Bio: Carmen Geha is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration at AUB. She teaches courses on public and human resource management, leadership and civic engagement. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Weatherhead Center in Harvard University (Spring 2018) and at the Watson Institute in Brown University (Summer 2015). Carmen’s research focuses on the nexus of political systems, mobilization and reform in the Middle East and North Africa. She is particularly interested in refugee policies, women’s political participation, civil society and protest movements. She is the 2018-2019 fellow at the Summer Program for Social Sciences in the Institute for Advanced Study.

Carmen is author of “Civil Society and Political Reform in Lebanon and Libya” (Routledge, 2016). She has published articles in the Journal of North African Studies and the British Journal for Middle Eastern Studies. She is also currently a Princial Investigator on two research grants focusing on the Syrian refugee crisis and on civic education for refugees.

In addition to her academic track, Carmen has had almost a decade of experience in development work as a consultant to governments, UN agencies and international organizations in Myanmar, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq. She has led policy, research and capacity building projects on social cohesion, women’s political representation, voter education, constitutional dialogue, and local governance.

Carmen is an activist and a founding member of leading of campaigns and coalitions on access to information, electoral reform, and anti-racism. She currently serves as a member of the National Commission for Lebanese Women. She holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of St. Andrews, and a BA and MA in Public Administration from the American University of Beirut.