Laurie Brand

Professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies, University of Southern California

Laurie A. Brand is the Robert Grandford Wright Professor of International Relations and Middle East Studies at the University of Southern California, where she directed the Center for International Studies from 1997-2000, served as Director of the School of International Relations from 2006-2009, and has headed its Middle East Studies program since 2014. Brand is a four-time Fulbright scholar to the Middle East and North Africa, as well as the recipient of Carnegie, Rockefeller, and numerous other fellowships and grants. Having conducted field work in Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Kuwait, she is the author of five books: Palestinians in the Arab World (Columbia University Press, 1988), Jordan’s Inter-Arab Relations (Columbia University Press, 1994), Women, the State and Political Liberalization (Columbia University Press, 1998), Citizens Abroad: States and Emigration in the Middle East and North Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and Official Stories: Politics and National Narratives in Egypt and Algeria (Stanford University Press, 2014). A former president of the Middle East Studies Association (2004), Brand has chaired its Committee on Academic Freedom since 2006. Her current research interests include: citizenship, migration and diaspora; national narrative construction; and the politics of academic freedom and educational reform.