Biography

Lina Khatib

Head, MENA Programme, Chatham House and Research Associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She was formerly an Associate Senior Researcher with the Arab Reform Initiative. Previously she was the director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut and prior to that the co-founding head of the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.  Her research interests include the international relations of the Middle East, Islamist groups, political transitions, and foreign policy. She has also published widely on public diplomacy, political communication, and political participation in the Middle East.

Lina has published seven books, including Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle (I. B. Tauris, 2013),  Taking to the Streets: The Transformation of Arab Activism (co-edited with Ellen Lust, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014),  and The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication (co-authored with Dina Matar and Atef Alshaer, Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2014).  Her published research articles include “The Islamic State’s Strategy: Lasting and Expanding” (published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace),  “Qatar’s Foreign Policy: The Limits of Pragmatism” (published in International Affairs) , and “Hizbullah’s Political Strategy” (published in Survival).

Since 2008, Lina has been a founding co-editor of the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication and a research associate at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.  From 2010 to 2012, she was a nonresident research fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center on Public Diplomacy.  She lectured at Royal Holloway, University of London from 2003 to 2010.   Prior to joining the academic field, Lina worked in broadcast journalism in Lebanon.