Lydia Khalil

Lydia Khalil has worked at home and abroad for the U.S. government, international organizations, private companies and think tanks on a variety of international political and security issues. She specializes in Middle East politics and international terrorism. Lydia was recently appointed as an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is also a lecturer at MacQuarie University in Sydney, Australia for the Centre on Policing, Intelligence and Counterterrorism. She is also a non resident fellow at the Lowy Institute as part of the West Asia Program focusing on the Middle East. Prior to her appointments in Sydney, Lydia was a counterterrorism analyst for the New York Police Department focusing on international terrorism trends and terrorism cases in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. Previously, Lydia worked in Iraq as a policy advisor for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad where she worked closely with Iraqi politicians on political negotiations and constitutional drafting. Prior to her assignment in Iraq, she was appointed to the White House Office of Homeland Security as a graduate fellow. She is also a senior policy associate to the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) which examines and advocates the development of genuine democracies in the Middle East. Ms Khalil holds a B.A. in International Relations from Boston College and a Masters in International Security from Georgetown University. She has published extensively on issues relating to Middle East politics, terrorism and insurgency. Her current research involves extracting lessons learned for fighting insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. And she is also working on a book examining the challenges facing this current generation of Middle East youth and how the solutions they come up with transform the region. She was born in Cairo, Egypt and is a native Arabic speaker.