Adel Abdel Ghafar

Adel Abdel Ghafar is a fellow and director of the Foreign Policy and Security program at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. He was previously a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Foreign Policy Program and at the Brookings Doha Center, where he was also acting director of research. Abdel Ghafar is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar. He specializes in political economy and his research interests include state-society relations, socio-economic development, and foreign policy in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.

He is the author and editor of several volumes and reports including The Middle East: Revolution or Reform? (Melbourne University Press, 2014); Egyptians in Revolt: The Political Economy of Labor and Student Mobilizations 1919-2011 (Routledge, 2017); A Stable Egypt for a Stable Region (European Parliament, 2018); The European Union and North Africa: Prospects and Challenges (Brookings Institution Press, 2019); China and North Africa: Between Economics, Politics and Security (I.B. Tauris, 2021); The European Union and the Gulf Cooperation Council: Towards a New Path (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), and The Gulf Cooperation Council at Forty: Risk and Opportunity in a Changing World (Brookings Institution Press, 2022).

Abdel Ghafar has prepared studies and consulted for various international and intergovernmental organizations and government agencies including the European Union; the U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office; and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has a background in international banking and finance and has worked for several financial institutions including HSBC and Citigroup.