Dario Cristiani is an Associate fellow within IAI’s Global Actors Programme. He has been the IAI/GMF Senior Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, working on Italian foreign policy, the Mediterranean and Global Politics in close connection with IAI. He is a Political Risk Consultant and a guest lecturer in several institutions in Europe and the Maghreb (Koninklijke Militaire School, Istituto Alti Studi Difesa, Sit Tunis). He has been an adjunct professor at Vesalius College (VUB) in Brussels from 2014 to 2018 and, from 2015, the director of its Executive Training in Global Risk Analysis and Crisis Management, (GRACM). He received his Ph.D. in Middle East & Mediterranean Studies from King’s College London.

Roberto Aliboni was IAI general director and vice-president. He taught International Economics at the Universities of Naples and Perugia from 1972 to 1979 and held research positions in different Institutes. In 1994, he conceived of and successfully established the Mediterranean Study Commission (MeSCo), the network of Mediterranean Institutes dealing with international and security affairs, transformed in EuroMeSCo in 1996.

Silvia Colombo is Associate Fellow in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Africa programme at IAI. She is also a Researcher and Faculty Advisor at the NATO Defense College in Rome. Her research work focuses on contemporary politics in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the EU and US foreign policy towards and their role in conflicts in the Middle East as well as the implications for NATO. Among her research interests there are also the relations between the EU and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. On these issues, she has published one monograph (Routledge), 6 peer-reviewed articles, 11 edited books, 10 book chapters and numerous research papers and commentaries. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Politics from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and a Master’s Degree in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Sha has taught at the Centre International de Formation Européenne (CIFE), Nice – Tunis – Istanbul, and has given lectures and seminars in the fields of comparative politics and international relations of the MENA in several academic institutions as well as has organized/participated in policy workshops and conferences both in Europe and in the MENA countries. She has pursued extensive fieldwork in the MENA region and speaks Arabic fluently.