Event: The Middle East in flux
The Lowy Institute is pleased to invite you to a conversation with two of Australia’s leading Middle East experts, Dr Rodger Shanahan and Dr Sarah Phillips. Chaired by the Lowy Institute’s Research Director, Anthony Bubalo, the conversation will explore the region’s ongoing instability, from Yemen and the horn or Africa to Iraq and Syria, and how regional states in particular are responding.
Dr Rodger Shanahan is a Research Fellow at the Lowy Institute.
A former army officer, he had extensive service within the Parachute Battalion Group (PBG) and has had operational service with the UN in South Lebanon and Syria, with the PBG in East Timor, in Beirut during the 2006 war, and in Afghanistan. He was the former director of the Army's Land Warfare Studies Centre, and has also been posted to the Australian Embassies in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi. Assoc Prof Shanahan has MAs in International Relations and Middle East Studies from the ANU, and a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from the University of Sydney.
He is also on the staff of the National Security College, Australian National University and a part-time member of the Refugee Review Tribunal. He has written numerous journal, media and policy articles, is a frequent commentator on Middle East issues for Australian and international media and is the author of Clans, Parties and Clerics: the Shi’a of Lebanon.
Sarah Phillips lectures in international security and development at the University of Sydney. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Middle East and the Horn of Africa - particularly in Yemen, Somaliland, Kenya, Jordan, Pakistan, and Oman - and has advised numerous governments and international development agencies on matters pertaining to these areas.
Her most recent book, 'Yemen and the Politics of Permanent Crisis' analyses the dynamics of the country¹s informal institutions amid rapid political and social change.
