Marwa Daoudy

Member of the Academic Advisory Board, Arab Center Washington DC

Marwa Daoudy is Assistant Professor in International Relations at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) and the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Prior to arriving at Georgetown, she taught at the University of Oxford’s department of Politics and International Relations and was a fellow of Oxford’s Middle East Center at St Antony’s College (UK). In 2011-2012, Princeton University invited her to join the Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs as visiting lecturer and research scholar. She was previously a visiting fellow and graduate affiliate at the London School of Economics, Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania, a pre-doctoral fellow at the School of Oriental and African Studies (London) and post-doctoral fellow at CERI-Science-Po (Paris). Her research and teaching focus on international and regional security, international relations, the environment, and Middle East politics. Daoudy is also member of the Scientific Reference Group of the International Center for Water Cooperation (UNESCO/SIWI). She was also a consultant (UNESCO-World Water Assessment Program for the 3rd World Water Development Report, Oxford Analytica and others) and advised the United Nations Development Program/UNDP (Jerusalem) on Middle East water/peace negotiations. Dr. Daoudy also provided training in International Negotiation Theory and Practice to executives within international organizations (European Commission, UNDP) and international businesses, as well as MBA students (Switzerland).

Daoudy’s book, ‘The Water Divide between Syria, Turkey and Iraq: Negotiation, Security and Power Asymmetry’ (CNRS Editions, 2005) was awarded the Ernest Lémonon Prize. The medal prize is awarded each year by the Association des Sciences Morales et Politiques (ASMP) of the Institut de France at the French Academy for a work on contemporary foreign policy or economic and social questions. It is named after a French economist of the early 20th Century. Daoudy received the prize for conceptualizing state interactions over shared water resources in the Euphrates and Tigris basins. Her book was the first to theorize power dynamics in international river basins in the context of power asymmetry. In particular, the book analyzes the parties’ bargaining and structural power, the advantages of the upstream riparian state, as well as the incentives for weaker riparians to pursue strategies linking water and national security issues in order to improve their position vis-a-vis the dominant (upstream) state. In addition, she published her research in International Negotiation, Journal of International Affairs, Journal of Peace and Security, The World Today, and Water Policy amongst others. She is currently working on three major research projects. One is a new book manuscript on the environmental and socio-economic roots of the Syrian Uprising, and the others examine water securitization between state and non-state actors and sectarianism in the Middle East. Dr. Daoudy is also a frequent contributor to the newspapers and provides regular comments to international media (BBC, France 24, NPR, Jazeera, RFI amongst others).