Rita Stephan is a research fellow at The Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University and the Regional Coordinator for Religious and Ethnic Minorities at the United States Agency of International Development. Her career in the U.S. Department of State included serving as the Director of the Middle East Partnership Initiative, the Deputy Director of Data Analytics, and Senior Analyst on Syria and Lebanon. She was previously a survey statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau, a visiting researcher at Georgetown University and a lecturer of Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and St. Edward’s University. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin, a B.A. in International Affairs and Jewish Studies and an M.A. in International Peace and Conflict Resolution from American University. She is the co-editor of Women Rising: In and Beyond the Arab Spring and Beyond (New York University Press, 2020), In Line with the Divine: The Struggle for Gender Equality in Lebanon (Warwick, RI: Abelian Academic 2015) and numerous publications on the women’s movements in the Middle East and the Middle Eastern community in the census.
Discipline
Sociology
Sub Areas
Gender/Women's Studies
Democratization
Transnationalism
Ethnic American Studies
Geographic Areas of Interest
Arab States
Lebanon
North America
Specialties
Civil Society
Pol
Socio
Languages
Arabic (native)
French (fluent)
Hebrew (elementary)
Italian (elementary)
Spanish (elementary)
Education
PhD
| 2009
| Sociology
| University of Texas
MA
| 1998
| Intl Stds
| Amer U
BA
| 1996
| International Studies
| American University
