Eberhard Kienle is Research Professor at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) and teaches politics at the Institut d’études politiques (IEP) de Grenoble and Sciences-Po Paris. He is also Head of the Institut français du Proche-Orient (Ifpo) in Beirut. His publications include Ba’th versus Ba’th: The Conflict between Syria and Iraq, 1968-1989 (I.B.Tauris, 1990); A Grand Delusion: Democracy and Economic Reform in Egypt (I.B.Tauris, 2001) and Democracy Building and Democracy Erosion: Political Change north and south of the Mediterranean (2009).
Nadine Sika is Humboldt Foundation visiting fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin (SWP) as well as assistant professor of Comparative Politics at the American University in Cairo (AUC). She is author of Educational Reform in Egyptian Primary Schools since the 1990s (2010) and editor of The Socio-Economic Returns to Education in Egypt (Arabic 2014). The author of articles in journals such as the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, she is currently writing a book on youth activism and contentious politics in Egypt.