Dr. Ora Szekely is Associate Professor of Political Science at Clark University in Worcester, MA, where she teaches courses on the comparative politics of the Middle East, the politics of ethnicity and identity, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and seminars on civil war and forced migration. She is affiliated with the programs on Peace Studies and Women and Gender Studies at Clark.

Professor Szekely’s research focuses on the behavior of non-state armed groups in the region. She is the author of two books: Insurgent Women: Female Combatants in Civil Wars (with Jessica Trisko Darden and Alexis Henshaw, Georgetown University Press, 2019), and The Politics of Militant Group Survival in the Middle East: Resources, Relationships and Resistance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Dr. Szekely has also published a range of articles on organizations that include Hizbullah, Hamas, the PLO, the Kurdish forces in Syria and Turkey, and a number of other organizations, in such journals as Middle East Policy, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. Her work is based on field research conducted across the Middle East.

Dr Szekely received her Ph.D. from McGill University, M.A. from the University of Chicago, and B.A. from Cornell University.

Thanks go to LCFR member Gail Becker for helping arrange this timely speaker.