Dr. Sinem Cengiz is a researcher at Gulf Studies Center of Qatar University, where she specializes on the foreign policies of GCC states, socio-political transformations across the Gulf, and Turkey-GCC relations. She holds a Ph.D. in Area Studies from Middle East Technical University. She is a non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Gulf International Forum (GIF) and member at European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)’s Women of the Middle East Network for Peacebuilding (WOMENP). She is the author of two books: “Turkish-Saudi Relations: Cooperation and Competition in the Middle East” published by Gerlach Press in 2020, and “The Making of Contemporary Kuwait: Identity, Politics, and Its Survival Strategy” published by Routledge in 2024. Her scholarly output spans dozens of book chapters (both English & Turkish) and journal articles covering topics on the GCC states. Dr. Cengiz is widely known through her weekly columns published in Saudi Arabia’s largest English language daily, Arab News, since 2016.