Zaki Alattar is a fourth-year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in Business and Middle Eastern Studies. As a 2019 Stevens Scholar, Zaki traveled to Iraq and the UAE to conduct research for his senior thesis on the restructuring of the Iraqi banking sector after 2003. His research historicizes the reconstruction of Iraq's financial institutions by Iraqi-American and American consultants and examines their influence on the current Iraqi economy characterized by ballooning debt and widespread corruption.
Hannah Ellis is a fourth year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in Political Science and minoring in Arabic. She is interested in human rights investigation and international accountability with a specific focus on the Middle East. She leads the Syria Investigations team at the Human Rights Investigations Lab at Boalt Law School. She hopes to work in a related field when she graduates. She has lived in both Jordan and Saudi Arabia. As a 2017 Stevens Scholar, Hannah spent the summer in Jordan enrolled in a three-month intensive Arabic Program in Amman.
Brent Eng is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology. He specializes in the anthropology of Islam and the secular, especially in the Levant. As a 2018 Stevens Scholar, Brent conducted research on the epistemological apparatus and political economy subtending agriculture in Lebanon, with a particular emphasis on the linkages that tie them to the formation of the post-colonial state in the region.
Hannah Hill is a third year undergraduate student majoring in Peace and Conflict Studies with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies. She recently completed an internship with the United States Department of State this past fall which has influenced her to pursue a career with the Foreign Service after graduation. As a 2018 Stevens Scholar, Hannah studied abroad for the spring semester at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel conducting research for her senior thesis on generational waves of terrorism while studying coexistence, diversity, nuclear challenges in the Middle East, Hebrew,...
Basit Kareem Iqbal is a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Critical Theory. His dissertation analyzes the charitable practices of Muslim relief workers and refugees in Jordan and Canada in the wake of the Syrian civil war. As a 2019 Stevens Scholar, he conducted the final fieldwork for his dissertation in Amman and north Jordan.
Abe Jellinek is a second-year undergraduate studying history, computer science, and Arabic, with a focus on Muslim-Jewish relations and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As a 2019 Stevens Scholar, Abe studied at the Sijal Institute's intensive summer Arabic program in Amman, Jordan, and volunteering with a Jordanian refugee support organization. After he graduates, he hopes to pursue a graduate degree in the social sciences and conduct research on the history of the Middle East. He is co-president of J Street U at Berkeley.
Sarah Klein is a junior at UC Berkeley majoring in Political Science with a specialization in International Relations, and minoring in Middle Eastern Studies. She serves as Undergraduate Curatorial Assistant for an upcoming exhibition on Moroccan Jewish life at The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life. As a 2017 Stevens Scholar, Sarah enrolled in the CIEE Summer Moroccan Studies program in Rabat. She hopes to broaden her understanding of Morocco in a global context and to further her Arabic.
Sawsan Morrar is a multimedia journalist at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. She is a graduate of UC Davis, where she received a BA in International Relations and minored in Communication and Middle East South Asia Studies. She was an associate producer at Capital Public Radio, Sacramento’s NPR affiliate news station. She currently freelances for various publications in California and the Middle East, and reports on issues ranging from gentrification in the Bay Area to legislative hearings at the state capitol. As a 2017 Stevens Scholar, Sawsan traveled to Jordan to report on...
Noam Shoked is a PhD candidate in the Department of Architecture. His work focuses on the relationship between architecture and politics. He is especially interested in the role of the built environment in processes of nation-building in the Middle East. His dissertation explores these issues by examining the design debates that accompanied the construction of West Bank settlements from 1967 to the present. As a 2018 Stevens Scholar, Noam traveled to the West Bank, where he had already conducted a year-long ethnography, in order to collect material for a journal article on the...
Gregory Waters is a Masters student in the Global Studies Department and a 2019 Stevens Scholar. He researches and writes about the Syrian civil war and extremist groups, primarily utilizing Syrian community Facebook pages for his projects. His past work has involved tracking combat deaths in Syria. He works as a research consultant at the Counter Extremism Project and currently writes...