Bio

Maro Youssef is a non-resident fellow at the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University and the Strauss Center for National Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Texas at Austin and speaks Arabic, English, and French. Her research focuses on gender, social movements, religion, and policy in the Middle East and North Africa. As an applied sociologist, she has shared her research findings with academics and policymakers through oral and written briefings with Congress, the US State Department, USAID, the UN, the Foreign Ministry of Canada, and think tanks on women’s rights and feminist activism in the Middle East. Youssef’s RSDR project examines women’s rights and political mobilization in non-consolidated democracies, examining how women activists and politicians formed broad coalitions around women’s rights in Tunisia.