Elizabeth Tsurkov

I am a Fellow at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a Washington D.C.-based think-tank, and a Research Fellow at the Forum for Regional Thinking, an Israeli-Palestinian think-tank based in Jerusalem. I am also a doctoral candidate in the Politics department at Princeton University.
My research focuses on the Levant, and particularly, the Syrian uprising and civil war. I am interested in documenting how civilians experience war and state violence and take an active role in conflict and peaceful civil movements. I am also interested in questions of communal identity, sectarianism and national belonging in the Middle East and particularly in multi-sectarian countries such as Syria and Iraq.

My research is based on a large network of contacts – ordinary civilians, activists, combatants and communal, political and military leaders – which I have established since 2009 across the Middle East and particularly in Syria, Iraq and Israel-Palestine. I have also conducted fieldwork in Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and other countries in the region. My research is informed by the desire to understand and convey the points of view and experiences of people in the Middle East, and highlight abuses by powerful actors, whether they are dictatorial regimes, armed groups or foreign countries intervening in the region.

I have over a decade of experience in volunteering and working for human rights organizations in the Middle East fighting for the rights of Palestinians, refugees and migrants, torture survivors, human trafficking victims and ethnic and religious minorities. I also worked as a consultant for several think-tanks such as the International Crisis Group, the Atlantic Council and the European Institute for Peace. My articles have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, New York Review of Books, Haaretz, the Forward, Newsweek, War on the Rocks, and al-Quds al-Araby, among other places. I have also published my research through the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Carnegie Endowment for Peace, Middle East Institute, and the Atlantic Council. I speak English, Hebrew, Russian and Arabic.

From a trip to Raqqa