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Laura James
Dr. Laura James

Deputy Director & Senior Analyst, Middle East

Dr Laura M. James joined Oxford Analytica in September 2016. She covers the Middle East, in particular Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians, as well as Sudan.

Previously, she was an affiliated lecturer teaching Middle East politics in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, and a special supervisor at Newnham College. As an independent consultant, she specialised in the interface between political and economic issues in the Middle East and Africa. Before that, she spent five years in Khartoum, working as an economic adviser for the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and the European Union. She was also an adviser to the African Union mediation team on the Sudan-South Sudan secession negotiations.

After completing her doctorate at the University of Oxford, Laura worked as a Middle East analyst with the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). She is the author of ‘Nasser at War: Arab Images of the Enemy’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and co-editor of ‘Making and Breaking Peace in Sudan and South Sudan’ (OUP, 2020).