WASHINGTON, January 11, 2021 – The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington is pleased to announce that Geneive Abdo has joined the institute as a visiting fellow.
Abdo is a consultant at the World Bank and was formerly a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center. Her current research focuses on the shifting political and religious alliances within Shia communities in the Middle East. Abdo has worked at several Washington-based think tanks, including the Atlantic Council and the Stimson Center. She was a non-resident scholar at the Brookings Institution from 2013-17. Among her extensive list of publications, including monographs and works in scholarly journals, Abdo is the author of four books on the Middle East, including The New Sectarianism: The Arab Uprisings and the Rebirth of the Shi’a-Sunni Divide (Oxford University Press, 2016). Her articles and commentaries have been published by The New York Times, Newsweek, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy Magazine, and The Washington Post. And she has been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim fellowship and Nieman Fellowship for study at Harvard University.
Abdo was formerly the liaison officer for the Alliance of Civilizations, a United Nations initiative established by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, which aimed to improve relations between Islamic and Western societies. Before joining the United Nations, Abdo was a foreign correspondent, where her 20-year career focused on coverage of the Middle East and the Muslim world. From 1998 to 2001, Abdo was the Iran correspondent for The Guardian and a regular contributor to The Economist and the International Herald Tribune. She was the first American journalist to be based in Iran since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Abdo commented, “I am pleased to work with a first-rate team of scholars and diplomats. AGSIW has developed into a serious think tank and reliable source of knowledge on Gulf affairs.”
AGSIW Executive Vice President William Roebuck said, “AGSIW is delighted to welcome Geneive Abdo as a visiting fellow. Her impressive scholarship and previous background as a journalist with regional expertise uniquely position her to cover evolving dynamics among diverse Arab Shia communities and related issues with insight and substantive depth.”
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The Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW), launched in 2015, is an independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to providing expert research and analysis of the social, economic, and political dimensions of the Gulf Arab states and key neighboring countries and how they affect domestic and foreign policy. AGSIW focuses on issues ranging from politics and security to economics, trade, and business; from social dynamics to civil society and culture. Through programs, publications, and scholarly exchanges the institute seeks to encourage thoughtful debate and inform the U.S. foreign-policy, business, and academic communities regarding this critical geostrategic region.
