Seif Ghobash Chair in Arab Studies
Associate Professor of International Relations
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) | ICC 241
Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) | Georgetown University
37th and O St, NW
Washington, DC 20057-1020
Email: Marwa.Daoudy@georgetown.edu
2020 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award Recipient
Editorial Board Member, Environment and Security
Faculty Profile, School of Foreign Service Magazine (2022-2023): Pioneering Professor Marwa Daoudy
I am a political scientist with an interdisciplinary approach. My research program in the last decade has generally focused on the intersection of security, politics, law and economics to examine the problems of environmental/climate change and the question of human security and conflict, with a focus on the Middle East.
Prior to Georgetown University, I was a lecturer at Oxford University (UK) in the department of Politics and International Relations, a fellow of Oxford’s Middle East Center at St Antony’s College (2010-2013) and a visiting scholar at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (2011-2012). In 2023-2024, I was awarded a Global Fellowship by the Wilson Center where I collaborated with the Environmental Change and Security Program (ECSP) and the Middle East Program (MEP).
I am a member of the Academic Advisory Board at the Arab Center Washington DC. I was previously a non-resident scholar with the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center (Beirut, Lebanon) where I led the climate change, conflict and governance project. I have also collaborated with the UNESCO-World Water Assessment Program (WWAP), the UN-ESCWA (UN Social and Economic Commission for Western Asia, Beirut) and advised the United Nations Development Program (UNDP, Jerusalem) on Palestinian water rights in the Israel-Palestine peace and water negotiations.
My main scholarly contributions have focused on three more specific research interests. The first is the relationship between transboundary water resources, power, conflict and cooperation. The second is a critical examination of the climate change-conflict nexus that is applied to countries in conflict. The third (and current research agenda) is the intersection of climate change and environmental justice, revealing the colonial and gendered dimensions of climate change and adaptation and the impacts of extractivism and settler colonialism on human vulnerability. My focus is on Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Palestine (Gaza, West Bank), Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
With fluency in written and spoken Arabic, English and French, I focused on primary sources to reflect on these subjects and have published books and articles in both English and French.
I have received funding from the Wilson Center, the Swiss National Foundation, the Feris Foundation of America, Georgetown University, Princeton University and the London School of Economics. My latest book received the 2020 Harold and Margaret Sprout Award by the International Studies Association (ISA)’s Environmental Studies Section for best books in environmental studies. My first book received the Ernest Lémonon Book Prize from the French Academy (Académie Française).
