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Ziad Abu Rish

Director, MA in Human Rights & the Arts
Director, MA in Human Rights & The Arts

[email protected]
Ziad Abu-Rish is the director of the MA Program in Human Rights & the Arts, and Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle Eastern Studies at Bard College. His research centers around state formation, economic development, and popular mobilizations, particularly in Lebanon and Jordan.

Ziad is the author of The State of Lebanon: Popular Politics and Institution Building in the Wake of Independence (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2026). He serves as co-editor of Arab Studies Journal and Jadaliyya e-zine, and co-director of the Lebanese Dissertation Summer Institute and Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative. Ziad is co-editor of The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? (2012), Critical Voices: A Collection of Interviews from and on the Middle East (2015), and What Is Political Economy? (2016). He is the author of articles appearing in Middle East Report and Review of Middle East Studies and chapters in edited volumes on the political economy of the Middle East, the Arab uprisings, and teaching Middle East history.

Ziad teaches courses on human rights, comparative state formation, various themes in Middle East history and contemporary politics, and research methodologies. He earned his PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies.
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