Valeria Talbot is Senior Research Fellow and Co-Head at ISPI’s Middle East and North Africa Centre. She teaches History and Institutions of the Middle East at the IULM University in Milan and at the Master in Middle Eastern Studies of ASERI (Catholic University of Milan). She coordinates the ISPI publications within the framework of the Parliament’s International Political Observatory and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, for which she also oversees the “Mediterranean Focus”, a quarterly report on the evolution of geo-political dynamics in the MENA region. She is a member of the Scientific Committee of the Med Think 5 + 5 network. She was a member of the Steering Committee and Scientific Coordinator for ISPI of the Arab Transformations project, funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Programme.