Rita Stephan is a Research Fellow at The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University and the Director of the Middle East Partnership Initiative at the U.S. Department of State. She is the co-editor of In Line with the Divine: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Lebanon and the author of several publications on Lebanese women’s movement, social movements, social networks, and Arab-Americans.


Mounira Charrad is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin and a Non-Resident Fellow at the Baker Institute, Rice University. She is author of the award-winning book, States and Women’s Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, as well as the editor or co-editor of Patrimonial Power in the Modern World, Patrimonial Capitalism and Empire, Women’s Agency: Silences and Voices, and Femmes, Culture et Société au Maghreb.