Alessia Melcangi is Associate Research Fellow at the Middle East and North Africa Centre at ISPI, Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Contemporary History of North Africa and the Middle East at the Department of Social Sciences and Economics, Sapienza University of Rome and Non-Resident Senior Fellow for the North Africa and Middle East Program at the Atlantic Council. She is also faculty member of the Master in Migration and Development, La Sapienza University of Rome and coordinator of its Socio-Political module and faculty member of the Master in Middle Eastern Studies – MIMES, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan. She has been member of several working groups in Track-2 programs sponsored by the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs about the contemporary Libyan political, economic and security dynamics and the issue of religious freedom and human rights in the Middle East. Her research is mainly into conflict and governance in the Middle East and North Africa; geopolitics and international relations in the Euro-Mediterranean area; identity and polarization dynamics in the contemporary Middle East; political and social issues in contemporary Egypt and Libya. Among here publications I copti nell’Egitto di Nasser. Tra politica e religione (1952-1970) (Carocci, Rome 2017) and the co-edited North African Societies After the Arab Spring: Between Democracy and Islamic Awakening (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne 2016).