Roger Hardy has been a Middle East and Islamic affairs analyst with the BBC World Service for more than twenty years. Educated at Oxford, he worked in book publishing and then edited a review journal (Gazelle) and a monthly magazine (The Middle East), before joining the BBC in 1985. His radio series have included The Making of the Middle East, Islam: Faith and Power, Israel among the Nations, Europe’s Angry Young Muslims and, most recently, Jihad and the Petrodollar. He is the author of Arabia after the Storm, a study of the impact of the Kuwait war on the Arabian monarchies (Chatham House, 1991), and has contributed articles and reviews to the Economist, International Affairs, the New Statesman, Index on Censorship, and Middle East International.

Pascal Ménoret earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Paris-La Sorbonne, where he wrote a dissertation entitled “Thugs and Zealots: The Politicization of Saudi Youth 1965-2007”. He is the author of The Saudi Enigma: A History (London: ZedBooks, 2005). Between 2005 and 2007, he has been a visiting researcher at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh. His current research focuses on youth issues in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world. While at Princeton he will work on a book project entitled “Youth, Politics and Violence in Saudi Arabia”.

Oil, Energy and Middle East Postdoctoral

Roger Stern earned the PhD in Engineering from Johns Hopkins University.  He presently holds positions as Research Fellow of Princeton University’s Oil, Energy and the Middle East Program, Doctor of the University at Johns Hopkins and Executive Director of the Marine Studies Consortium, Sherborn, MA.

His recent papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describe the relation of oil monopoly oil rents to US national security policy, Persian Gulf violence, and the political economy of the oil firm-state.   His most recent paper in PNAS, “The Iranian petroleum crisis and United States national security", analyzed the systemic problems of Iran’s petroleum sector in relation to US national security.  His  op ed essays in The Wall Street Journal and The International Herald Tribune introduced the idea that France and the EU to cease energy investment in Iran, policies they appear to be adopting.

Dr. Stern also publishes regularly on Iran and European energy policy in Energia, an Italian-language journal.  In a forthcoming paper “The 7 trillion dollar illusion, oil, national security and the opportunity cost of Persian Gulf force projection”, he argues that the cost of US Persian Gulf operations is three times greater than Congress recognizes.  A book-length work in progress considers the role of perceived commodity scarcity in war and statecraft from the mercantile to the present.

Toby Jones is assistant professor of Middle East history at Rutgers University. He received his Ph.D. in Middle East history from Stanford University in 2006. His main research interests focus on the history of oil, state-building, politics, and Shia-Sunni relations in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the Gulf. Jones teaches courses on the history of the modern Middle East, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran and Iraq in the 20th century, the history of oil, and Islam and politics. 

Before joining the History Department at Rutgers, Jones was a visiting assistant professor and Mellon post-doctoral fellow at Swarthmore College. He also worked as the Persian Gulf Analyst for the International Crisis Group from 2004-2006 where he wrote about reform and sectarianism in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. He has published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies, Middle East Report, Foreign Affairs, the Arab Reform Bulletin, the CTC Sentinel and elsewhere. Jones is currently completing a book manuscript on Saudi Arabia for Harvard University Press.