He holds a Ph.D. in history from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France. His research focuses on the political systems in Iraq and Syria as case studies to understand processes of policy-building and state-building in the Middle East during the 1950s. He examines, notably, the political engineering of power. Rey intends to publish a book on the parliamentary system in Iraq and Syria between 1946 and 1963 and a monograph on Syria. He was a doctoral fellow at the Institut Français du Proche Orient in Damascus, Syria, between 2009 and 2013, and then a research fellow at the Middle East Institute in Singapore. He is fluent in Arabic. He has spoken widely and published articles on elections in the Middle East, development policies, the Cold War, and the ‘Arab spring’.