Valeria Talbot

Head of ISPI MENA Centre

Italian Institute of International Political Studies, Italy

Valeria Talbot is a senior research fellow and head of the Middle East and North Africa Centre at the Italian Institute of International Political Studies (ISPI). She also is a lecturer at the Master in Middle Eastern Studies at Alta Scuola di Economia e Relazioni Internazionali (ASERI) of the Catholic University of Milan. Previously adjunct professor of History and Institutions of the Middle East at IULM University in Milan, she also was the ISPI scientific coordinator for the EU-funded Arab Transformations Project (2012-2016). She is active as a scholar, contributing to research projects, papers, articles and edited books. She was the scientific coordinator of several editorial projects, such as the World Geopolitical Atlas published by the Italian Encyclopaedia Institute Treccani in 2020, the ISPI MED Reports (2016-2020), the ISPI journal Quaderni di Relazioni Internazionali (2007-2012). Her main research areas focus on Euro-Mediterranean relations, geopolitics of the Middle East,Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy, the Gulf monarchies. She also is a regular speaker and commentator on Turkey and Middle Eastern issues in Italian and international media.