Şafak Baş

Şafak Baş (Associate Fellow, until 2019)

Şafak Baş, M.A., studied Political Science and Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the Ruprecht-Karls University in Heidelberg as well as Persian at the Dekhoda Lexicon Institute in Tehran. After completing his studies, he worked as a policy analyst at the European Stability Initiative in Berlin and Istanbul (2012-2013) and as a freelance journalist in Istanbul and Tehran (2013-2014). Currently, Şafak is a Ph.D. student at the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Politics at the Otto-Suhr Institute of Political Science at Free University Berlin.
In his dissertation project, which is funded by the Hanns Seidel Foundation, Şafak is working on the foreign policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran and Turkey in the Middle East. In addition to dissertation related topics of the foreign policies and geopolitics of Iran and Turkey, he is particularly interested in topics of the social sciences such as flight and migration. In this context, he visited the Turkish-Syrian border area between March and July 2015 and gathered numerous impressions and information on the situation of the Syrian refugees in Turkey in talks with politicians, helpers and refugees.


Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann

Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann (Advisory Board, until August 2020)

Prof. Dr. Stephan Conermann is Director of the Department of Near Eastern History and Languages at the University of Bonn, where he has been Professor of Islamic Studies since 2003. He is also Vice President for International Affairs at the University of Bonn and founding member of the Center for Religion and Society at the university. With research interests in the fields of transformation processes in Muslim societies in the era of European colonialism and imperialism, Muslim historiography and identification processes and Islam in Germany – amongst others – he has published extensively on the history of the modern ‘Orient’ as well as on resulting European – Middle East relations today. He is also series editor of „Bonner Islamstudien“ (BIS), „Bonner Asienstudien“ (BAS), „Bonner islamwissenschaftliche Hefte“ (BiH), „Narratologia Aliena“ und „Mamluk Studies“.


Dr. Jasmin Khosravie-Gödert

Dr. Jasmin Khosravie-Gödert (Founding Member, until September 2018)

Dr. Jasmin Khosravie-Gödert is a co-founder of CARPO and was Board member from 2014 until 2018. During this time, she was CARPO’s Head of Programs & Research and supported CARPO’s conceptual and strategic development. While holding her position at CARPO, Jasmin was also a post-doc fellow and lecturer in Near and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Bonn. In October 2018 she joined the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb).


Dr. Gudrun Harrer

Dr. Gudrun Harrer (Advisory Board, until August 2020)

Dr. Gudrun Harrer is Senior Editor of Austria’s national daily newspaper “Der Standard” where she previously served as the foreign editor. She holds an MA in Islamic and Arabic Studies and a PhD in International Relation Studies, with a doctoral thesis on the Iraqi nuclear program. She is a lecturer on modern history and politics of the Middle East at the University of Vienna, and at the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna. In 2006, she was Special Envoy of the Austrian EU Presidency to Iraq and Chargé d’Affaires of the Austrian Embassy in Baghdad. Gudrun Harrer was awarded the prestigious “Bruno Kreisky Award for the political book“ for her publications on the Middle East, among others for “Dismantling the Nuclear Programme: The Inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Iraq 1991-1998” (Routledge 2014) and “Nahöstlicher Irrgarten: Analysen abseits des Mainstreams” (Kremayr & Scheriau 2014). She is member of the board of the Austrian Orient Society (ÖOW) and of the Austrian Institute for International Affairs (OIIP).


Dr. Ulrike Stohrer

Dr. Ulrike Stohrer (Associate Fellow, until September 2020)

Ulrike Stohrer, social anthropologist, studied Social Anthropology, History, Theatre-, Film- and Media Sciences, Musicology, and Modern Standard Arabic at the University of Frankfurt/Main. Additionally, she completed training in classical singing at the conservatory of Frankfurt/Main. Her dissertation Barʿa. Rituelle Performance, Identität und Kulturpolitik im Jemen deals with a cultural practice in Yemen and its relevance for tribal, regional, and national identities. Ulrike also does research on material culture, traditional architecture, clothing and consumption.
From 2007 to 2009, she implemented a pilot project at the Institute for Near Eastern Archeology at the University of Frankfurt/Main in the field of applied anthropology on intercultural communication and local identities at an archeological site in Tell Chuera/Syria. Since 2004, she regularly lectures at the universities of Frankfurt, Heidelberg, and Marburg. She also works as a teacher for Arabic and as an independent corrector and lector.


Mareike Transfeld

Mareike Transfeld (Associate Fellow, until October 2020)

Mareike Transfeld holds a master in Political Science, Islamic Studies and Modern History with a specialization on the Middle East from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. She is currently Director of the Yemen Policy Center in Berlin and a PhD Student at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. Previously, she was a research fellow at the German Institute for Security and Foreign Affairs in Berlin, and headed the Research Department of the Yemen Polling Center (YPC) in Sanaa.
In her PhD thesis, Mareike explores the boundaries of the Yemeni state as experienced by Yemeni youth through a digital anthropology of a community on Facebook. This topic ties together her interests in state-society relations, youth activism and digital media. Previously, she did research on opposition parties and elite change. As consultant for YPC, Transfeld has designed numerous projects on the livelihoods of Yemeni youth and the political and economic conditions for youth activism. She has conducted field research in Yemen, Malaysia, Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon.