Dr Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a political scientist and an internationally sought-after expert on geopolitics, with a particular focus on the Middle East and Iran. As founder and director of the Centre for Middle East and Global Order (CMEG), he analyses the major strategic shifts in a changing world and their implications for states, societies and international relations. At the heart of his analyses lies the question of how power is being redistributed and how this will affect the international order. In doing so, he combines regional expertise - particularly on Iran and the Middle East - with a broad perspective on geopolitical dynamics, Western foreign policy and the increasing fragmentation of global power structures. Based on this, he also develops geopolitical risk analyses and scenarios. Ali Fathollah-Nejad completed his academic training at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, where he obtained a PhD in International Relations and Development Studies. This was followed by a postdoctoral position at the Harvard Kennedy School. In the following years, he worked at leading international think tanks and institutions, including the Brookings Institution in Doha, the German Council on Foreign Relations, and the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. In 2022, he was a McCloy Fellow on Global Trends at the American Council on Germany. He has also taught at universities in London, Berlin, Doha, Tübingen and Prague. He is currently a Fellow and Guest Lecturer in International Security at the Hertie School in Berlin, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies at the University of Bonn. Ali Fathollah-Nejad is a sought-after expert in international media and regularly appears on programmes such as CNN and the BBC. He also analyses current developments in leading German media outlets such as ARD’s Tagesthemen and ZDF’s heute-journal. In his lectures, he explains the logic behind geopolitical changes and demonstrates how closely regional conflicts and global power dynamics are intertwined. He offers well-founded perspectives on the future of international politics and explains the strategic implications this holds for Europe and the world.