Jad Baghdadi

Richard and Susan Hayden Academy Fellowship, Middle East and North Africa Programme

Headshot of Jad Baghdadi

Biography

Jad Baghdadi is an Academy Fellow with the Middle East and North Africa Programme, where his research focuses on the political economy of development in Syria. He is a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy (TIMEP) and a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford.

Jad is a political economist who works primarily on Syria and Lebanon, exploring themes such as state formation, class relations, sectarianism, and state-capital relations. 

He has taught Political Economy and Middle East Politics at the University of Oxford, and previously held research positions at The Economist, the LSE Middle East Centre, and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. His writing has appeared in a range of media and policy publications

Jad holds an MSc in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford and a BSc in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship to pursue his doctoral studies.

Past experience

2026–presentNon-Resident Fellow, Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy
2022–presentDoctoral Candidate, University of Oxford
2023–2025Teaching Fellow, University of Oxford
2021–2022Research Analyst, The Economist
2020–2021Research Assistant, LSE Middle East Centre