From September 2012 to January 2013 and in 2014, she was a Research Fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Berlin), as member of the “Elite Change and New Social Mobilization in the Arab World” project. In 2011-2012, she was a lecturer in Middle Eastern politics at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (University of Exeter). Dr. Chams El-Dine holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (Florence). Her research interests lie in the resilience of authoritarianism and the democratization process in the Middle East, including political-business elite connections, social movements and civil-military relations, especially in Egypt and Iraq.