Experts

Silvia Colombo

Silvia Colombo is senior fellow at IAI. She is an expert on Middle Eastern politics and in this capacity she is working on Euro-Mediterranean cooperation, transatlantic relations in the Mediterranean and domestic and regional politics in the Arab World. Among her research interests there are also the relations between the European Union and the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). She completed a traineeship at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International in London where she worked mainly on Syria and Iraq. She holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Politics from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa (Florence Branch) and a Master's Degree in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. She speaks Arabic fluently and has travelled extensively in the Middle Eastern region.

Mohamed El Harrak

Mohamed El Harrak is currently a program officer at OCP Policy Center. Before joining OCP Policy Center, El Harrak was a research analyst at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). During his tenure at the IMF, he worked in the African department in which he participated in the monitoring of several IMF programs in West Africa. He also worked for the Offices of the Managing Director, Office of Budget and Planning at the same institution in Washington, DC. El Harrak studied finance and international business at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane and completed his MBA at Cambridge University.

Nicolò Sartori

Nicolò Sartori is currently researcher in the Security and Defence Programme at the Istituto Affari Internazionali, and in the Energy Programme. He works on the evolution of technologies in the security domain, paying particular attention to the concept of energy security. In addition, his research focuses on the geopolitics of energy, with specific attention to the geographical areas of the Caspian and Central Asia, Russia, and the Mediterranean. Finally, his activity focuses on the external dimension of Italy's and EU's energy policies, on the emerging role of Turkey as a regional energy player, and on the implications of the development of the Southern Gas Corridor, and on the governance of the energy policies in the EU framework. He's Ph.D. student at the Department of Politics & International Relations at the University of Kent, with a doctoral thesis on the relation between the abundance of energy resources and military spending, and he's Professional Fellow at the World Energy Council (WEC) Italy. He's editor of the column "Centers of Gravity" in the international review Oil Magazine. He holds a BA in International and Diplomatic Studies from the School Roberto Ruffilli in Forlì and an MA in International Relations from the University of Bologna. He served as faculty advisor at the NATO Defense College in Rome, where he also conducted research on NATO's role in energy security.