The first institution of its kind in Colorado, the ICRS Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) is dedicated to promoting and strengthening the study and understanding of the societies, political systems, and international relations of the Middle East and broader Islamic world, both at DU and throughout the Mountain West. Housed within the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, the Center seeks to generate scholarly research and foster public understanding of this critical and changing part of the world.
Engaging in and sponsoring both academic and policy research based on an interdisciplinary social science agenda, the Center produces new scholarship on the Middle East and provides a lively forum for dialogue and debate on the contemporary politics of the region. A specific focus of the Center's work is the relationship between Islamic societies and democracy.
Annual Review Newsletters
The Center for Middle East Studies keeps up a busy schedule of events, conferences, publications and interviews. We chronicle our yearly activities by publishing our annual Year in Review at the end of each summer.
Andrea Stanton (Interim Director) Associate Professor, Department of Religious Studies
Research Interests:Media and religious identity and the relationships between new technologies and claims to religious authority, and state authority, primarily in the Middle East.
Nader Hashemi (On Sabbatical) Associate Professor, Josef Korbel School
Research interests:The intersection of comparative politics and political theory; debates on religion and democracy, secularism and its discontents; Middle East and Islamic politics; democratic and human rights struggles in non-Western societies and Islam-West relations.
Tamra Pearson d'Estrée Associate Professor, Josef Korbel School
Research Interests: Identity dimensions of intergroup conflicts, peacebuilding, Track Two diplomacy, processes for intergroup conflict resolution, particularly in the Middle East, Anatolia, and the Caucasus; integration of Muslim immigrants into communities in Europe, the U.S. and New Zealand.
Jonathan Sciarcon Associate Professor, Department of History
Research Interests:Pre-modern and modern Middle East, U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Israel/Palestine, American cultural and political engagement with Israel.
Zahra Takhshid Assistant Professor of Law, Sturm College of Law
Research Interests:Torts, contracts, privacy, social media, technology, and the law. Additionally, how to use tools from torts and contracts in resolving challenges with emerging technological developments. A second strand of her interest is Islamic and comparative law.
Carole Woodall Associate Professor, Department of History
University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Research Interests: Modern Middle Eastern history, late-Ottoman and early Turkish republican history, sensory, cultural, and urban history of the Middle East.
