Dania Arayssi is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow in the Middle East Center at New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she specializes in comparative politics and public policy and teaches Middle Eastern politics. Her doctoral dissertation examines how remittances influence recipients’ political behavior in Lebanon, using a mixed-methods approach that includes focus group interviews, original data collection, and a survey experiment.
Originally from Beirut, Lebanon, Arayssi has conducted research and worked across the Middle East and the United States on topics related to political economy, political behavior, and institutional trust in authoritarian and transitional contexts. She holds master’s degrees in the History of International Relations from Saint Joseph University of Beirut, Public Policy from the University of Denver, and Political Science from the University of Colorado Boulder, which inform her interdisciplinary approach to academic and policy research. She holds a bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the American University of Science and Technology.
Her professional experience includes roles with the World Bank Group, USAID, Oxfam America, and the U.S. Army War College. She is also the co-founder of Gleam of Hope, an NGO supporting post-conflict recovery and gender empowerment in Lebanon. Arayssi has briefed U.S. and international institutions on gender, democracy, and youth issues in the MENA region, and has contributed to research published by major development agencies.
Her academic work has been published in The Digest of Middle East Studies, and she has presented at leading scholarly forums, including the Midwest Political Science Association. Arayssi’s research is currently supported by several awards, including the ICPSR Diversity Scholarship and the CARTSS Seed Grant, which fund her fieldwork and advanced training in quantitative methods. She tweets at @DaniaArayssi.