Monica Marks is a Rhodes Scholar, PhD candidate at Oxford University, and leading expert on politics and Islamist movements in Tunisia and Turkey. She conducts research in Arabic, Turkish, and French. From 2012 to 2016, she was based in Tunisia, where she has conducted over 1,200 interviews with Tunisians ranging from cement factory owners and small-town police officers to leftist revolutionaries and Salafi jihadists. This research forms the backbone of her dissertation and forthcoming book, which explores the role of Islamism in shaping Tunisia’s democratic transition.

A former Fulbright Scholar to Turkey, Monica is currently based in Istanbul, where she has taught as a Visiting Professor in the Politics and International Relations Department of Istanbul’s Bogazici University. She also co-directs The Exchange, a series of professional immersion courses on the politics of Libya, Tunisia, and Iraqi Kurdistan. These “politics in the field” courses bring academics, diplomats, and analysts from around the world to the region itself, where they engage in dozens of intensive Q&A meetings with local experts and leaders across the political and ideological spectrum.

Recently, Monica was a Visiting Fellow at Columbia University’s SIPA school, a Doctoral Fellow with the European Research Council-funded WAFAW program, and a Visiting Fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.
Fun-fact: Monica is fascinated by the interplay of religion and political power, an interest she traces to her childhood growing up as a Jehovah’s Witness in evangelical Eastern Kentucky.