CCAS Staff
Osama Abi-Mershed
Director
abimerso@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-5648
Office Location: 241 ICC
Dr. Osama Abi-Mershed is Associate Professor at Georgetown University, and a historian of North Africa and the Middle East. His research focuses on the ideologies and practices of modernization and civilization in nineteenth century Algeria, and on the processes of state- and nation-making in colonial France and North Africa. He teaches courses on the history of North Africa and the Western Mediterranean (medieval and modern); on Arab and Ottoman societies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and on colonial and postcolonial Franco-Maghrebi relations.
Rania Kiblawi
Associate Director
rk97@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-5647
Office Location: 248 ICC
Ms. Kiblawi has been CCAS's Associate Director since June 2008, but began her tenure at the Center in December 2003, when she became its Public Affairs Coordinator. In January 2007, she was made Assistant Director, a position she held until her promotion to Associate Director. Ms. Kiblawi holds a B.A. in finance and management from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. from the University of Texas at Dallas in the humanities, with a focus on linguistics/cross-cultural understanding and history/gender studies. Of Palestinian-American descent, Ms. Kiblawi has lived in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and Dallas, Texas. She has experience in management, events, media, and public relations, having managed a small medical practice, owned a marketing and event planning consultancy, and worked at Al Jazeera's Washington bureau.
Zeina Azzam
Director of Educational Outreach
seikalyz@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-6176
Office Location: 247 ICC
Ms. Azzam began working as CCAS's Outreach Coordinator in 1994. She became Director of Educational Outreach in June 2008. Her experience in Middle East studies at Georgetown dates back to the 1980s, when she was Assistant Director and Publications Manager at CCAS for eight years. She earned a B.A. in psychology at Vassar College and an M.A. in sociology at George Mason University, and holds a Publication Specialist certificate from George Washington University. Currently she is working on a second M.A. in Arabic literature at Georgetown. Before coming to the Center, Ms. Azzam worked as a writer, copyeditor, and proofreader, conducted sociological research on environmental attitudes and Third World women's issues, and taught an undergraduate course in statistics at George Mason University. She served for many years on the board, and then as president, of the Middle East Outreach Council and is very involved in outreach efforts locally and nationally.
Brenda Bickett
Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies Bibliographer
bickettb@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-4482
Office Location: 330 Lauinger
Ms. Bickett is the Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies Bibliographer, Joseph Mark Lauinger Library (M.A., library and information science and M.A., Middle Eastern studies, University of Michigan). Ms. Bickett develops Georgetown University Library's collections in Arab, Islamic, and Turkish studies to meet the curricular and research needs of students and faculty. Her research interests focus on the Arabian Gulf, especially the Sultanate of Oman.
Steven Gertz
Multimedia and Publications Editor
smg237@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-6177
Office Location: ICC 254
Mr. Gertz joined CCAS in November 2011, and is responsible for producing the Center's publications and updating content on the website. He has a M.Phil. in Islamic Studies and History from the University of Oxford (England), where he focused his studies on aspects of Islamic law, and a M.Sc. in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Edinburgh (Scotland), where he specialized in Muslim-Christian relations. He also holds a B.A. in History from Wheaton College (IL). He edited the newsletter of the Centre for Muslim-Christian Studies while he was a graduate student at Oxford, and before that he served as an assistant editor for the magazine Christian History. Mr. Gertz has also studied Arabic at the Qasid Institute in Amman, Jordan, during which he traveled to and within various Arab countries.
Kelli Harris
Academic Program Coordinator
kmh79@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-8957
Office Location: 241 ICC
Ms. Harris attended the University of Virginia, where she majored in Middle Eastern studies and history. From 2006 to 2008, she lived in Jordan, where she taught English at a school in Amman. Ms. Harris worked in Georgetown's Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies for a year before coming to CCAS.
Nicholas Hilgeman
Information Officer
nh387@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-5793
Office Location: 241 ICC
Mr. Hilgeman joined CCAS in April 2012. A native of Ohio, he holds a B.A. in political science and international studies with a minor in Arabic from Case Western Reserve University. After graduating, he was awarded a Fulbright grant to Egypt where he taught English at Zagazig University. He has also worked as a research assistant and intern at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Marina Krikorian
Public Affairs Coordinator
mrk72@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-6215
Office Location: 241 ICC
Ms. Krikorian became the CCAS Public Affairs Coordinator in December of 2011 after serving for two years as the Center's Information Officer. Prior to coming to CCAS she worked as the Administrator for the Advocacy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights non-profit. She has a B.A. in political science with a minor in Middle Eastern studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and an M.A. in Middle Eastern studies from the American University of Beirut, where her research focused on the relationship between the Armenian diaspora in Lebanon and the Armenian homeland.
Liliane Salimi
Development Coordinator
ls363@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-7902
Office Location: 241 ICC
Ms. Salimi joined CCAS as Development Coordinator in September 2006. She holds a B.S. in foreign service and an M.A. in Arab studies from Georgetown University, with a concentration in business. Of Bahraini and French descent, Ms. Salimi was born and raised in Bahrain, where she attended high school. Her previous experience includes being the Director of Marketing and Membership for the National U.S.-Arab Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. She has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, as well as Europe and Southern Asia, for both personal and professional reasons.
Courtney Elizabeth Smith
Grants Administrator
ces62@georgetown.edu
Phone: 202-687-9101
Office Location: 244 ICC
Courtney Elizabeth Smith joined CCAS in 2011. Her professional experience involves work in the fields of international democracy promotion, environmental and sustainable development policy, and the development of new social movements in Latin America. As CCAS's Grants Administrator, Courtney administers the Title VI National Resource Center (NRC) grant from the U.S. Department of Education. She first worked on a Title VI NRC grant from 2006 to 2008 as a research assistant at Georgetown University’s Center for Latin American Studies, where she earned her M.A. with a concentration in government in 2008. Courtney received a B.A. in political science and Latin American studies from Hobart and William Smith Colleges in 2005. She is a native of Windham, Maine.
Judith Tucker
Academic Program Director
tuckerje@georgetown.edu
202-687-5238
611 ICC
Dr. Judith Tucker (Ph.D., history and Middle Eastern studies, Harvard University) is Professor of History, Director of the Master of Arts in Arab Studies Program, and former Editor of the International Journal of Middle East Studies. She is the author of many publications on the history of women and gender in the Arab world, including Women in 19th Century Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 1985), In the House of the Law: Gender and Islamic Law in Ottoman Syria and Palestine (University of California Press, 1998), Women, Family, and Gender in Islamic Law (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and co-author of Women in the Middle East and North Africa: Restoring Women to History (Indiana University Press, 1999). She is the editor of Arab Women: Old Boundaries, New Frontiers (Indiana University Press, 1993) and co-editor of A Social History of Women and Gender in the Modern Middle East (Westview Press, 1999). In addition, she has authored numerous articles for professional journals and edited volumes. Her research interests focus on the Arab world in the Ottoman period, women and gender in Middle East history, and Islamic law, women, and gender.
