FRANCO GALDINI, f.galdini@gmail.com

Franco Galdini is a freelance analyst of Middle Eastern affairs and a researcher on the political economy of conflict. He holds an MA in International Politics from The University of Manchester in the United Kingdom. He has worked in several countries in the Middle East for about a decade and speaks Arabic fluently. In 2012-13, he managed a project for the organisation Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) in Central Asia, where he is currently based.

His current research investigates claims that revolutionary upheaval may engulf Central Asia in the wake of the events that shook the Arab world at the end of 2010, and that continue to this day. In the eyes of many an observer, the region seems to reproduce the same conditions that led to the ‘Arab Spring’: from authoritarian rule to widespread poverty and systematic human rights violations, to the resurgence of Islam as a powerful social force. Such claims will be analysed from the standpoint of the region's political economy.