Thursday, March 27, 2025, 4:30pm to 6:00pm - in person at CGIS Knafel 262, 1737 Cambridge St, Cambridge, MA
Syria-Turkey-and the Kurds: Prospects for Peace in the Future
The WCFIA/CMES Middle East Seminar presents
Amy Austin Holmes
Bush School of Government and Public Service in DC and Research Professor of International Affairs, George Washington University
Discussant: Soli Özel, Kadir Has University, Istanbul; Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna
Dr. Amy Austin Holmes is at a professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service and a Research Professor of International Affairs, George Washington University. Dr. Holmes has published widely on the global American military posture, the NATO alliance, non-state actors, revolutions, military coups, and de-facto states. With more than 15 years global experience conducting research in the Middle East and Europe, including various conflict zones, she is a noted expert on issues of American foreign policy and international security.
Dr. Holmes earned her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University, and previously served as a tenured Associate Professor at the American University in Cairo. She has held Visiting Scholar positions at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, the Weatherhead Center also at Harvard University, and at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Dr. Holmes is the author of three books and more than 50 articles.
Her first book "Social Unrest and American Military Bases in Turkey and Germany since 1945" (Cambridge University Press) analyzed seven decades of American security relations with NATO allies Turkey and Germany. Her second book "Coups and Revolutions: Mass Mobilization, the Egyptian Military and the United States from Mubarak to Sisi" (Oxford University Press) was informed by her experience of living in Egypt throughout the period of revolutionary upheaval. Her third book "Statelet of Survivors: The Making of a Semi-Autonomous Region in Northeast Syria" (Oxford University Press) is based on a pioneering field survey of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) she conducted in Northeast Syria over a period of seven years. Dr Holmes is leading a new project that involves the creation of the largest dataset in existence on the Turkish-Kurdish conflict covering four decades, in order to analyze how it has transformed across time and space.
In addition to her academic career, Dr. Holmes served as an advisor at the U.S. Department of State through a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship, where she first worked in the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations, focused on Iraq and Syria. She then also served on the Turkey Desk in the Office of Southern European Affairs, which covers Turkey, Greece, Cyprus, and Malta. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, she also served as a volunteer lecturer at the Kyiv School of Economics during the summer of 2023, where she taught a course on Global Disinformation.
Co-sponsors: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Center for Middle Eastern Studies
Source: Syria-Turkey-and the Kurds: Prospects for Peace in the Future | Center for Middle Eastern Studies