Dr. Courtney Freer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University and a senior nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum. Her academic work focuses on domestic politics and Islamism in the Gulf states; she is the author of Rentier Islamism: The Influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Gulf Monarchies (Oxford University Press, 2018), The Resilience of Parliamentary Politics in Kuwait: Rentierism, Ideology, and Mobilization (Oxford University Press, 2024) and co-author with Alanoud al-Sharekh of Tribalism and Political Power in the Gulf: State-Building and National Identity in Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE (IB Tauris, 2021). Courtney holds a BA in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from The George Washington University, and. DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford. She has held positions at the US-Saudi Arabian Business Council, Brookings Doha Center, and the London School of Economics and Political Science.
