Dr Ilyas Saliba is a political scientist focusing on authoritarianism, shrinking civic space and human rights in Western Asia and North Africa and European foreign and development policy towards the region, as well as academic freedom. He received his PhD in political science from Humboldt University Berlin with a dissertation on authoritarian learning during the Arab Uprisings. During his research, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia. He was a research fellow at the Berlin Social Science Centre (WZB) research unit on democracy and democratisation, as well as a visiting researcher at the European University Institute, Nuffield College at Oxford University, the American University in Cairo and the École de Gouvernance et d’Économie in Rabat.
At the Hertie School, Ilyas teaches the impact of the Arab Uprisings on Human Rights and democracy in the region and on fieldwork methods. He is an associate at the Hertie Centre for Fundamental Rights, the Centre for Applied Research in Partnership with the Orient and a Non-Resident fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), where he co-developed the Academic Freedom Index (AFi). Ilyas publishes and presents regularly on matters of academic freedom, human rights, authoritarianism and democracy in English and German.
Ilyas is a member of the Committee on Academic Freedom at the British Middle Eastern Studies Association, and serves on the Advocacy advisory board for Scholars Risks' Europe. He is also an election observer for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
