Brussels Forum Session: The Middle East: Crisis and Opportunity at a Time of Global Disruption 

Dalia Ghanem is a senior fellow and director of the Conflict and Security Program at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs. Her research focuses on Middle Eastern and North African politics, including issues of political violence, radicalization, civil-military relations, and gender studies.

Previously, Ghanem served as director of the MENA Program and senior analyst at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), where her research focused on the intricate interplay between the Middle East, North Africa, and the European Union. Prior to her tenure at EUISS, Ghanem was a senior resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, where she worked extensively on Algeria’s complex political, economic, and security landscape.

Ghanem is the author of Understanding the Persistence of Competitive Authoritarianism in Algeria (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). She has contributed to numerous scholarly publications, including How Border Peripheries Are Changing the Nature of Arab States (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), and Russia Rising: Putin’s Foreign Policy in the Middle East and North Africa (I.B. Tauris, 2021). Ghanem’s recent analysis has been featured in publications such as Chaillot Papers, where she explored Türkiye’s global role, EU–North Africa relations, EU–Iraq relations, and China and India’s growing presence in the Maghreb. Ghanem is a member of the Africa Board of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC).

Ghanem’s analysis has been featured in leading Arab and international media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Times, Al Jazeera, Middle East Eye, France 24, Le Monde, and Financial Times, among others.

Brussels Forum Session: Euro-Atlantic Security and Ukraine: Scenarios for the Future

Maxime Prévot began his political career in 2004 as the political director of the Humanist Democratic Center (cdH) party. He was elected as a federal deputy in 2007 and a Walloon deputy in 2009, and subsequently became the leader of the cdH group in the Walloon Parliament.  

In 2012, Prévot was elected mayor of Namur, the youngest person to hold the position. He later served as vice-president of the Walloon government and minister of public works, health, social action, and heritage. In 2019, he was elected cdH president and, in 2022, led the party’s transformation into a citizen-driven political movement under a new name, “Les Engagés”.

Brussels Forum Session: Delivering Democracy at the Local Level

Zaynab Mohamed has been a state senator in Minnesota since 2023. She is the vice chair of the Jobs and Economic Development Committee and a member of Capital Investment, Finance, Housing and Homelessness Prevention, and Human Services committees.

Mohamed previously worked at Ayada Leads, a nonprofit dedicated to elevating Black immigrant women into political and civic participation, and as the community advocacy director at the Council of American Islamic Relations. In the latter position, she worked with a coalition of advocates, organizers, legislators, and families who had lost loved ones to police violence to lobby state legislators to pass eight bills to expand public safety and strengthen police accountability.

Mohamed emigrated from Somalia to the United States when she was nine years old.

Brussels Forum Session: Delivering Democracy at the Local Level

Cici Battle builds immersive programs, workshops, and learning spaces that center the forgotten—specifically youth, women, and girls—especially those of color.

Battle most recently served as executive director of Young People For, where she led the country's largest national social justice incubator for marginalized young people and co-hosted the popular “Progressive Happy Hour”.

Battle is the creator of “Passion Framing”, a holistic civic engagement framework that connects the dots between the process and the issues of everyday people.

In her college years at Florida International University (FIU), Battle  served as student body president. She has held high-impact positions as regional director for the Campus Election Engagement Project, professor of leadership development at El Sena in Colombia, and the first statewide youth engagement coordinator for the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice.

Battle was awarded Preet Bharara’s inaugural Café 100 award in 2018 as an “extraordinary change-maker taking action to address some of the most pressing problems in America and around the world”. She was also selected as an inaugural Pond’s Vital Voices Fellow as “one of 50 women shaping the world”.

Battle earned her master’s degree in education policy and her bachelor’s degree in psychology with an emphasis on leadership development from FIU. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority and an alumna of Young People For, the United States Students Association, and the NAACP Youth and College Division.