Dr. Marianna Charountaki is a Lecturer at the University of Reading (UK). Her research interests range from international relations and foreign policy analysis to the international relations of the broader Middle East. She is the author of the book The Kurds and US Foreign Policy: International Relations in the Middle East since 1945, (Routledge, 2010) and Kurdish policies in Syria under the Arab Uprisings: A revisiting of IR in the New Middle Eastern Order’, Third World Quarterly, Vol.36, Issue 2, pp. 337-356 (2015).