Samyah Alfoory is a former research associate at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. Samyah Alfoory graduated from Georgetown University with a master’s degree in Arab Studies, concentrating on the Gulf and gender. Her past research includes a project for the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security in which she examined women’s agency in the Bahraini uprisings of 2011, a project which examined military expenditures in the Arab Gulf as they relate to post-Arab Spring political developments for BAE Systems, and field research conducted in Kuwait among second-generation migrants which focused on citizenship and gender and how the two intersect to impact young women’s lives.

Samyah was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Kuwait from 2012 to 2013, during which she conducted extensive fieldwork to examine women’s groups and activism within the opposition movement. She obtained her bachelors’ degree from Colorado State University in Political Science. She has previously worked as a news writer, translator, and a freelance journalist.