Dr. Ali Bakir is also Nonresident Senior Fellow with the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, and regional editor of academic journal “Alternatives: Global, Local, Political”. He worked as Editor in Chief of “Tajseer” journal; and Nonresident Senior Fellow with the “Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative” at the Washington-based “Atlantic Council”, and a Task Force member of the “Center for Strategic and International Studies” (CSIS) in Washington, DC. As a senior foreign policy and security analyst and consultant, Bakir has over 20 years of professional experience working with senior officials, decision-makers, and stakeholders for governmental, non-governmental, and private sector institutions. Before joining Qatar University, he served for 6 years under Qatar’s Foreign Ministry as a Senior Adviser at Qatar’s Embassy in Ankara. Additionally, he was the Head of the “Gulf Studies Unit” at the Middle East Studies Center, Senior Researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies of the International Strategic Research Organization, and a Researcher and Senior Editor at (AIWA) Group for defense and economy.

Dr Andrea Ghiselli is a Lecturer in International Politics in the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy and Anthropology at the University of Exeter. He is also a non-resident Research Fellow at the TOChina Hub and Head of Research for its ChinaMed Project. His teaching and research focus on Chinese foreign policy and China’s relations with the Middle East.

Dr. Feng Zhang is a Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Institute, National University of Singapore. His research focuses on China’s foreign policy, Asian international relations, and international relations theory. He is the author of Chinese Hegemony: Grand Strategy and International Institutions in East Asian History (Stanford University Press, 2015) and A Neighbor of Neighbors: China’s Policy Toward Afghanistan, 1949–2024 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2025). With Richard Ned Lebow, he has co-authored Taming Sino-American Rivalry (Oxford University Press, 2020), Justice and International Order: East and West (Oxford University Press, 2022), and Wars and Pandemics: History, Lessons, Analogies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). His peer-reviewed scholarship has appeared in political science and China studies journals, and his commentary in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other international outlets. He has taught at Yale University, Tsinghua University, the Australian National University, Murdoch University, and the South China University of Technology. In 2024, he was a Visiting Scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center.

Liu Jia is Research Fellow at the Middle East Institute, NUS. Jia earned her PhD in Government and International Affairs from Durham University, where she was honoured to be the H.H. Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah Doctoral Fellow. Jia has also studied in China, Iran, Sweden, Jordan, worked in the UAE, and well-travelled across the West Asia/Middle East. She speaks Chinese, English, Farsi, and is learning Arabic. Jia’s research focuses on two major areas: the politics of Persian speaking world and China-West Asia/Middle East relations.