Robert Mogielnicki
Adjunct Assistant Professor - Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), Senior Resident Scholar - Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington
Dr. Robert Mogielnicki is a Middle East-focused political economist. He specializes in the political and economic trajectories of Gulf Arab states, China-MENA relations, and regional technology trends. His current professional affiliations span top-tier research institutes, academic institutions, NGOs, and consultancies. He is a Senior Resident Scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington (AGSIW). Beyond managing the institute’s political economy research portfolio, he created and leads the technology-focused Next Gen Gulf research series and the China-Gulf Initiative. He is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Middle East Policy Council listed Dr. Mogielnicki in their inaugural 40 Under 40 awards for influential Middle East experts.
Dr. Mogielnicki is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service and a Professorial Lecturer at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, where he teaches graduate-level seminar classes on China-Middle East and North Africa relations. He is a research mentor for undergraduate students through the Georgetown University Research Opportunities Program (GUROP) and the Laidlaw Undergraduate Leadership and Research Scholarship Programme. He has lectured and delivered talks at Chatham House, the International Monetary Fund, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Council of the European Union, the European University Institute, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and other prominent institutions.
He is a Regional and Methodology Advisor with Freedom House, an External Consultant with the Eurasia Group, and a member of the Board of Advisors of Henley & Partners, a global citizenship and residence advisory firm. He previously worked as a human resource development consultant and Head of PR & Marketing at Oxford Strategic Consulting as well as in journalism across the Middle East and North Africa.
Dr. Mogielnicki is the author of A Political Economy of Free Zones in Gulf Arab States (Palgrave Macmillan 2021), and he is currently working on an edited volume about the political economy of sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia. He recently authored a chapter on the political economy of natural gas markets in The Palgrave Handbook of Natural Gas and Global Energy Transitions (May 2022). He also published a chapter on China’s technology-related commercial engagement in the Middle East region for the Routledge Handbook on China - Middle East Relations (December 2021) as well as a technology-oriented chapter in the Artificial Intelligence in the Gulf: Challenges and Opportunities (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2021). He is an official reviewer on the editorial team of the Journal of Special Jurisdictions.
In addition to many other academic and think tank publications, his work has appeared in Foreign Policy, Axios, The Banker, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, World Politics Review, and Al Monitor. Dr. Mogielnicki regularly provides commentary for international media outlets, such as: CNN, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, Nikkei Asian Review, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, BBC World News TV, ABC News, AFP, The Associated Press, VOX, The Economist, VOA, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, S&P Global, Nature, HuffPost, Deutsche Welle, The Telegraph, and Business Insider.
Dr. Mogielnicki holds a DPhil degree from the University of Oxford’s Magdalen College and a MPhil degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford’s St Antony’s College. He received his BA from Georgetown University with a double major in Arabic and Government, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Dr. Mogielnicki speaks Modern Standard Arabic and the Egyptian dialect, and he possesses a working knowledge of the Tunisian dialect. He is a former recipient of the Sultan Qaboos Arabic Language Scholarship (2007-11) and served as a Critical Language Scholar in Tunisia in 2011.