Louisa Ajami
Louisa Ajami received her BA in French from Rutgers University, NJ. She joined CAMES in 2005 and continued to work at AMIDEAST while completing her MA. She wrote her MA thesis about the living conditions of the thousands of Filipina, Ethiopian and Sri Lankan female domestic workers in Lebanon. After graduating in 2007, she worked freelance for some time writing articles for local newspapers in Beirut, and then joined the NOW Lebanon news and culture website where she is now the Production Manager. At NOW Lebanon, she also heads the copyediting desk and continues to edit articles and special sections. She lives with her husband in Beirut.
Laure Chedrawi
Laure Chedrawi holds a BA in Political Science from AUB and a BA in Journalism from the Lebanese University. She graduated with an MA from CAMES in 2005. While at CAMES, Laure worked as an intern at An-Nahar newspaper and then as an editor for Al-Balad newspaper, publishing articles in both papers. During her last year at CAMES, she joined Future Television where she worked for two years as an editor and reporter. In 2006, she joined the UNHCR office in Beirut where she now works as a Public Information Assistant, acting as a spokesperson for the UN Refugee Agency. She was was part of the UNHCR's relief assistance effort in the July war in Lebanon (summer 2006) and in the Northern Yemen Emergency (September-October 2009).
Lily Chryssis
Lily Chryssis holds a BA in Political Science and International Affairs from Northeastern University in Boston and received her MA from CAMES in 2007. After graduating from AUB, she began working as the coordinator of International Study Programs at Northeastern University. She now holds the position of Assistant Director of International Study Programs at Northeastern University and maintains a strong interest in the Middle East, especially with regards to global education programs for American students. In 2009, Lily developed a study abroad program at AUB for Northeastern University undergraduate students.
Isabelle Dana
Isabelle Dana holds a BA in History from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. After graduating with an MA from CAMES in 2007, she joined IC Publications, a London-based media company publishing pan-African and pan-Arab current affairs magazines including New African and The Middle East, as Events Project Director. She was in charge of launching their events department with an innovative forum entitled SkillsInvest: Growth through Education in the Arab World which took place in Dubai in June 2009. Isabelle then worked as a free lance journalist and researcher for various media in Europe and the MENA region. She recently joined the Amadeus Institute, a Moroccan think tank based in Rabat, Morocco, as Director of Strategy, Events and Communications where she will be in charge of their international forum MEDays taking place in Tangier every year.
Daniel del Castillo
Daniel del Castillo received a BA in Latin from the University of Minnesota and graduated from the CAMES program in summer 2003. While at CAMES, he worked as the Middle East Correspondent for the Chronicle of Higher Education. From 2004 to 2007, Daniel worked in Iraq; initially on a USAID Iraq Local Governance Program and then for the last two years in the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad as a liaison between the Embassy and the Iraqi and Pan-Arab media. Daniel transferred to Washington in 2007 where he worked as an Arab media officer in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Office of Press and Public Diplomacy. In 2008, he joined the State Department’s Foreign Service and in 2009 began a two-year tour as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu (Nepal). In 2011, Daniel will be posted to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo for a two-year tour.
Ina Issa
Ina Aurelia Issa holds a B.Sc. in Hotel Management from Montreux Hotel Institute and also received her M.Sc. in International Hotel and Restaurant Management from Oxford Brookes University in the UK. At CAMES, her thesis was entitled “The Tourist Dream: Dissonance between Perception and Experience” and dealt with tourism in Lebanon. She graduated with an MA from CAMES in 2008. She is currently working as Coordinator for the Hospitality Department at American University of Technology (AUT) in Byblos, Lebanon, where she lives with her husband and son.
Marina Krikorian
Marina Krikorian has a B.A. in Political Science with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She joined CAMES for her M.A. in 2005, where her research focused on the relationship between the Armenian diaspora in Lebanon and the Armenian homeland. After graduating from CAMES in 2007, Marina worked as Administrator for the Advocacy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights non-profit. She currently holds the position of Information Officer at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University.
Dennis Kumetat
Dennis Kumetat holds an M.A. from the University of Cologne, Germany. Following his graduation from CAMES in summer 2008, he joined the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics to pursue his doctoral studies. As Kuwait Programme PhD Scholar at LSE, he works on renewable energy strategies in the Arab OPEC states. Apart from his research and teaching at LSE, Dennis is the spokesperson of the German-African leadership program “Go Africa - Go Germany” and an editor of the program’s monthly newsletter on European-African affairs. He is also a visiting researcher at the German Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy. He has published parts of his MA thesis on the perception of German foreign policy in Lebanon as a working paper at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). http://personal.lse.ac.uk/kumetat.
Solveig Malvik
Solveig Malvik received a Cand. Mag (BA) in Public Administration from the University of Bergen, Norway. She joined CAMES in 2003 and received her MA in 2006. While at CAMES, Solveig was involved in the Women as Global Leaders conference series in the UAE, graduated as an International Student from United Nations University in Tokyo, and presented her MA thesis “Participation and informal institutional arrangements in the Jordanian Public Administration” at the 2005 Middle East and Central Asia, Politics, Economics and Society Conference at Utah University. Following graduation she worked for an investment bank splitting her time between Beirut, Dubai and Washington (DC), she then got involved in the Middle East alternative music scene managing artists through Lebanese Underground. In 2008 Solveig joined RJI Capital where she is a Director, New Ventures splitting her time between Zurich and London managing projects in the Middle East, Asia and Russia. In 2010, Solveig is President of the London chamber of Junior Chamber International (JCI).
John Redwine
John Redwine received a BA in History from the University of Montana. He joined CAMES in 2004 and received and his MA in February 2008. While completing his master’s degree at CAMES, he worked freelance as a copy editor for The Middle East Reporter. During the July 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, he worked as an Arabic interpreter for ABC News, and also he also managed ABC’s news desk for part of that conflict. Following the war, he worked as a press officer in south Lebanon for the aid organization International Medical Corps. His thesis, “Hizbullah’s Political Capital and the July War”, was largely informed by these experiences. After graduating, John worked as a staff writer for the English language, pan-Arab business publication, Executive Magazine in which he headed the editorial department before leaving to join the UK-based consulting firm Albany Associates. John is currently Project Director for Albany Associates’ consultancy to the Government of Lebanon.
Stuart Reigeluth
Stuart Reigeluth received a BA in Political Science and Comparative Literature from Williams College in 2001 and graduated from CAMES in 2005. After graduating, he covered the Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005 and worked freelance writing articles for The Daily Star, Al-Ahram Weekly, the Palestine-Israel Journal and Foreign Policy Spanish Edition. He has contributed a chapter - “The Art of Repetition: the Poetic Prose of Mahmoud Darwish and Mourid Barghouti” - to a collection of essays entitled Mahmoud Darwish; Exile's Poet (Interlink, 2007), and his thesis, which was in comparative literature and dealt with Palestinian poetry and politics, is forthcoming with I.B. Tauris. He worked as Projects Manager for the Africa and Middle East Program at the Toledo International Center for Peace (CITpax) in Madrid, Spain, and is now a columnist at Gulf News and editor of Revolve: www.revolve-magazine.com