Founder and current director of the European Institute for Studies on the Middle East and North Africa (EISMENA), formerly the French Research Centre on Iraq (CFRI), Dr Adel Bakawan is a sociologist and is particularly active within research institutions specialising in the Middle East. In addition to having been director of the research department at iReMMO and the Centre for Sociology of Iraq at Soran University (Iraq), he is now also an associate researcher at the Turkey and Middle East Programme of the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI) and the Arab Centre for Research and Policy Studies (CAREP). In 2010, he defended his thesis on the Islamist movement in Iraqi Kurdistan and then became an associate researcher at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). He has also been a lecturer in sociology at the University of Évry since 2011. Dr. Adel Bakawan pays particular attention to Middle Eastern issues in the fields of humanities, social sciences and geopolitics. He specialises in Kurdish issues, Islamism, jihadism, terrorism, nationalism and the militias of the Middle East.

He publishes his research papers in journals such as Confluences Méditerranée, Moyen-Orient, and Politique étrangère, published by the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI). Having become a recognised expert on the MENA region, he is regularly sought after by French and foreign newspapers, television channels, and radio stations, such as France 24, Franceinfo, and LCI.

He has published several works, including Sociologie des mouvements sociaux au Kurdistan (Sociology of Social Movements in Kurdistan), published by Gazalnous (Iraq) in 2015, and his book L’Irak, un siècle de faillite. De 1921 à nos jours (Iraq: A Century of Failure. From 1921 to the Present Day), published by Tallandier. His latest work, La décomposition du Moyen-Orient (The Decomposition of the Middle East), has also just been published by Tallandier.

Guided by its academic spirit, Adel Bakawan sees EISMENA as a driving force behind scientific literature on the Middle East and a producer of statistical data on the consequences of the conflicts, attacks and uprisings that are spreading throughout the region. By creating links between the Middle Eastern and French academic worlds and providing private and public organisations interested in the MENA region with knowledge and objective data, Adel Bakawan hopes to build bridges between France and the Middle East, enabling these two very different worlds to understand each other and interact more easily.