since March 2020 member of the Expert Forum on Asylum and Migration at the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees
since April 2019 member of the Scientific Committee of the European University Institute's Middle East Directions Programme
since May 2017 member of the International Advisory Board of Mediterranean Politics
May 2016 - April 2017 Sabbatical
since 2014 member of the Advisory Board of the Zeit-Stiftung's Ph.D. programme "Trajectories of change. Ph.D. Scholarships in Humanities and Social Sciences"
2014-2015 Project Director »The Fragmentation of Syria«
2012-2015 Project Director »Elite Change and New Social Mobilization in the Arab World«
March - August 2008 Sabbatical, Guest Researcher at the Carnegie Middle East Office in Beirut, Lebanon
October 2006 - June 2012 Head of Research Division Middle East and Africa
Since October 2001 Researcher in the Research Division Middle East and Africa
Areas of Expertise:
Political systems,
Israel,
Middle East,
Palestinian Territories,
Syria,
Civil wars,
Fragile states,
Middle East conflict,
Regional and interstate conflicts
The Arab-Israeli conflict, political Islam, as well as German, European and US-American policies towards the region, security in the Eastern Mediterranean