His research interests focus on state formation, economic development, and social mobilization, with an emphasis on the mid-twentieth-century Levant. Abu-Rish earned his PhD from the Department of History at the University of California Los Angeles, and his MA in Arab Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. He- serves on the editorial teams of the Arab Studies Journal and Jadaliyya Ezine. His publications include the co-edited volume, The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? (Pluto Press, 2012) and as well as a number of print and online articles. Abu-Rish is currently completing a book manuscript on debates and struggles in post-independence Lebanon around the question of economic development.