Eckart Woertz
Eckart Woertz joins us from the Gulf Research Center (GRC) in Dubai--the leading think tank of the Gulf region--where he heads the Economics Department. His research interests include the political economy of the Middle East, financial markets and energy issues. Dr. Woertz's many publications deal with petrodollar recycling, strategic foreign investments and the impact of the global financial crisis on the GCC countries. Since 2008 food inflation in the Gulf and GCC agro-investments abroad have been special interests of his, and it is on this topic that he will be engaged in research and writing at Princeton. He will also teach a graduate seminar course in the spring 2010 term entitled "The Political Economy of the Arab Gulf Countries".
Giacomo Luciani
Giacomo Luciani is a Princeton Global Scholar (2010-2013) and the Scientific Advisor for the Master in International Energy at Paris School of International Affairs. He has held several visiting professorships, and serves as an adjunct professor of international relations at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center in Italy. A leading specialist in the political economy of the Middle East, as well as the economics of energy in the Persian Gulf, Luciani focuses on understanding the political and economic context in the Middle East and how it affects the rest of the world. Every spring, Luciani teaches a 6-week course at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs entitled "The Politics and Economics of Middle East Energy in the Global Context".
Roger Stern
Roger Stern is a graduate of the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. His thesis research appears twice in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as well as in Energia, and his oped essays on Iran in The International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal. At Princeton he plans to complete a new paper on the national security cost of oil market power, collaborate with Professor Socolow on technology cost estimates for CO2 transportation to the Persian Gulf (for oil recovery enhancement & carbon sequestration benefits), and begin a history of Western ideas about the relation of commodities to state power. Dr. Stern will teach the flagship course of the OEME project entitled "Oil, Energy and the Middle East" in the spring 2010 term.
Catherine Millard
Catherine Millard is a retired Wall Street executive with extensive experience in the petroleum industry. She began her Wall Street career as a corporate lending officer in the Petroleum Division of The Chase Manhattan Bank and went on to become an equity analyst following the Domestic Exploration and Production sector of the U.S. petroleum industry at Merrill Lynch. She later moved to Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. At DLJ, she maintained coverage of the Domestic Exploration and Production industry and was also appointed as Principal in her capacity as Director of Corporate Credit Research, a position she held for over ten years. In 1994, Catherine was appointed Director of Corporate Credit Research at Goldman Sachs where she directed a team of investment security professionals and was responsible for all corporate credit research. Upon retirement, Catherine renewed her interest in the Middle East and completed a Masters degree in Near Eastern Studies at New York University. She is currently a consultant to the Oil, Energy and the Middle East Project at Princeton University. In spring 2009, she co-taught the undergraduate course “Oil, Energy and the Middle East”. She is presently completing a major study of the current industrialization policies and projects in Saudi Arabia.
Toby Jones
Toby Jones is assistant professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University. His main research interests focus on the history of oil, state-building, politics, and Shia-Sunni relations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the Gulf. Jones teaches courses on the history of the modern Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran and Iraq in the 20th century, the history of oil, and Islam and politics. He also worked as the Persian Gulf Analyst for the International Crisis Group from 2004-2006 where he wrote about reform and sectarianism in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. Jones is currently completing a book manuscript on Saudi Arabia for Harvard University Press.
Steffen Hertog
Steffen Hertog received his PhD in politics from the University of Oxford, working on the political economy of Saudi Arabia. He is one of two post-doctoral associates in the interdisciplinary working group on Oil, Energy and the Middle East, and worked with Profs. Pacala and Socolow in the PEI. His current research interests include the history of oil policy making in Saudi Arabia and comparative political mobilization on the Arabian Peninsula.
Christopher Boucek
Christopher Boucek completed his PhD at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies in 2006. Prior to this, Dr Boucek was a security editor with Jane’s Information Group and was an analyst at the Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC for nearly four years. He has published widely in academic and professional publications on a number of issues related to political and security developments in the Middle East and Central Asia, and has worked with a political risk consultancy in London. He is also a Lecturer in Public & International Affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School. While at Princeton, Dr. Boucek will research issues related to terrorism, security, and regime stability in energy producing countries in the Middle East and Central Asia. He is currently working on a project examining recent counter-terrorism and security efforts in Saudi Arabia, specifically rehabilitation and re-education programs for militants and extremists in the kingdom and the reintegration process for Guantanamo returnees.
Miriam Lowi
Miriam Lowi is Associate Professor of Political Science at The College of New Jersey. She earned her Ph.D. in Politics and Near Eastern Studies from Princeton in 1990. Professor Lowi has held research grants from the World Bank, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and is a Carnegie Scholar (2008-2010) for a project entitled, Oil and Islam: the Economy of Meaning. She was a visiting research scholar at Princeton’s Transregional Institute in spring 2007. Her research focuses on the natural resource dimension of political behavior, the political economy of oil-exporting states, and politics in Algeria. She is the author of Water and Power: the Politics of a Scarce Resource in the Jordan River Basi (Cambridge, 1993, 2nd. ed. 1995), and editor (with Brian Shaw) of Environment and Security: Discourses and Practices (MacMillan, 2000). At the TRI, Miriam completed a book manuscript, Oil Wealth and the Poverty of Politics: Algeria Compared (Cambridge, 2009). As a research scholar in the Oil, Energy, and Middle East Program in 2007-08, Professor Lowi will work on a new book – to be published by Cambridge University Press -- that explores the various ways in which oil has impacted the states and societies of the Middle East and North Africa.