Mandy Terc, Executive Director
Mandy Terc is the executive director of the Middle East Research and Information Project. Previously, she served as founding director of the Sheikh Faisal Center for Entrepreneurship in the Middle East at DePaul University where she developed programs to strengthen Qatar’s entrepreneurial capacity and to connect entrepreneurs in Doha and Chicago. Terc has written extensively about the region’s new generation of entrepreneurs and has conducted 18 months of field research on entrepreneurship in Syria. She speaks fluent Arabic and holds a PhD from the University of Michigan.
Katie Natanel, Executive Editor
Katie Natanel is a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. Her research explores how gender and sexuality shape—and are shaped by—political participation and mobilization, conflict and political violence, and political emotions. She is particularly interested in micro-politics, or the politics of everyday life, and psycho-social dynamics. Her recent book project, Sustaining Conflict: Apathy and Domination in Israel-Palestine, was awarded the 2017 Feminist and Women’s Studies Association (UK & Ireland) Book Prize. Now her research has shifted focus to decolonization, in particular feminist decolonial politics and decolonial ecologies. She is a member of the Exeter Decolonising Network steering group. She joined MERIP as executive editor in February 2022.
Marya Hannun, Managing Editor
Marya Hannun is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter and the Managing Editor of MERIP. Her research is on the history of women’s movements in Afghanistan and transregional feminist organizing in the early 20th Century.
Michelle Woodward, Photo Editor
Michelle Woodward is the photo editor of MERIP, a position she has held since 2003. Previously she served as managing editor, media coordinator, administrative assistant and intern for MERIP. She holds an MS in Comparative Media Studies from MIT. A scholar of the history of photography and photojournalism in the Middle East, she has published in History of Photography, Photographies and Jerusalem Quarterly and the edited collection Film and Risk. While based in Beirut she was editor of Jadaliyya’s Photography Page from 2012 until 2017.
Michael Kaplan, Staff Editor
Michael Kaplan is a PhD student in anthropology at the George Washington University. His research explores Islamic reform and revival communities in Turkey, with a focus on transnationalism, migration and mobility.
Karisa Gingerich, Website Assistant