Dr Magdalena Karolak is an Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zayed University (ZU), UAE. Prior to working at ZU, Dr. Karolak had taught in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. In 2014-15, she was an American Political Science Association MENA Fellow. Her research interests include transformations of societies in the Arabian Gulf and comparative linguistics. Dr. Karolak has published more than 30 journal articles and book chapters on the shifting gender relations, social media, culture and identity and political system transformations in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries. She is the author of two scholarly monographs. Dr Nermin Allam is an Assistant Professor of Politics at Rutgers University-Newark, USA. Dr Allam holds a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Alberta, Canada. Prior to joining Rutgers, she was a Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada postdoctoral fellow and visiting scholar at Princeton University. Her research and teaching interests include: Social movements theories; gender politics; Middle Eastern and North African studies; and political Islam. She is the author of Women and the Egyptian Revolution: Engagement and Activism during the 2011 Arab Uprisings.
