Samy Akil is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies. He holds a Bachelor of International Relations (Honours) from La Trobe University, Melbourne, and a Master of Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies from the Australian National University, Canberra. He has a strong interest in diplomacy, conflict resolution, humanitarian aid, and Middle Eastern Affairs, and Australian-MENA relations with a specific focus on Syria and the Levant as a whole. Samy is the co-founder and managing editor of the ANU based Near East Policy Forum and a non-resident research fellow at the Operations & Policy Center in Gaziantep, Turkey. He is fluent in English, Arabic, and German.