Steven Heydemann holds the Janet Wright Ketcham 1953 Chair in Middle East Studies at Smith College, with a joint appointment in the Department of Government. He is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution. From 2007–15 he held a number of leadership positions at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. His recent publications include “No Exit: Conflict, Economic Governance, and Post-Conflict Reconstruction in Fierce States” (2019), ” Beyond Fragility: Syria and the Challenges of Reconstruction in Fierce States” (2018), and “Civil War, Economic Governance, and State Reconstruction in the Arab Middle East, (2018).