The MENA Mix: Regional Recap is a monthly video podcast, produced by the Institute for Middle East Options (IMEO). Each episode features rotating experts who will unpack and analyze key news stories shaping the Middle East and North Africa.
Our April episode brings together Charlotta Sparre (Deputy Director, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute) and Zine Labidine Ghebouli (Fellow, MENA Program, European Council on Foreign Relations).
Charlotta Sparre
Ms. Sparre is the Deputy Director of SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute). She has over 30 years of experience from international diplomacy, with a special focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to joining SIPRI she was the director of the Swedish Dialogue Institute for the Middle East and North Africa, based in Amman, Jordan. Her previous posts include serving as Ambassador of Sweden to Egypt, and to Jordan, and covering EU-MENA relations at the Permanent Representation of Sweden to the EU. During the last decades, Sparre has been active in several track two dialogue and mediation processes on regional security, democracy, and gender equality. She is a board member of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University and of the Alva Myrdal Centre for Nuclear Disarmament (AMC), and a member of the Swedish Women’s Mediation Network. Sparre was the co-editor of the book Reconstructing the Middle East-Political and Economic Policy (published in 2017) that examines the changes that happened in the MENA region from 2010 and the long-term challenges and opportunities they present.
Zine Labidine Ghebouli
Mr. Ghebouli is a consultant and scholar on Euro-Mediterranean cooperation and North African affairs. He is a visiting fellow with the Middle East and North Africa programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations and focuses on EU-MENA relations, European foreign policy and North Africa developments. Previously, he worked for the Arab Reform Initiative, Middle East Institute and the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship. Ghebouli in an alumnus of the University of Glasgow, Aix-Marseille Université and the American University of Beirut where he pursued bachelor and master's degrees in political science and international studies.