Dr. Eberhard Kienle is the Director of Research at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Grenoble. Prior to this he was the Program Officer Governance and Civil Society at the Ford Foundation, Cairo and was the Chairman of the Near and Middle East Society. He was also a Senior Lecturer in SOAS. He received his PHD in Politics from the Freie University in Berlin. He is a Board Member for various institutions, including the Bertelsmann Transformation Index and the German Institute for Global and Area Studies. He is also the Co-initiator of the Middle East and Euro-Med political economy network.