Bessma Momani, Background

Upon earning her Ph.D. in political science from the University of Western Ontario, Bessma Momani focused her post-doctorate research on organizational behaviour and seat allocation within the IMF. Her work in this area gained particular prominence following the global financial crisis in 2008, at which time she revisited the topic with new insight.

This work led Bessma to become CIGI’s lead coordinator for a project co-organized with New Rules for Global Finance, which involved a series of regional conferences exploring ideas for IMF reform. In this role, Bessma also organized a March 2008 conference of former finance ministers from the Middle East to discuss potential reforms for the IMF.

Since joining CIGI as a senior fellow in 2004, Bessma has dedicated much of her time to organizing CIGI conferences on the Middle East region, including book workshops on Canada-Middle East relations and the crisis in Iraq. She is also an active member of CIGI’s G20 Working Group.

More recently, Bessma has turned her attention to the emerging economies in the Middle East and Western foreign policy toward these states. During the Egyptian crisis in early 2011, Bessma commented widely for national and international media, drawing on her extensive research on the country’s political and financial structures from 2002 to 2006, including her book, IMF-Egyptian Debt Negotiations (American University of Cairo Press, 2006), and her articles, “A Middle East Free Trade Area: Economic Interdependence and Peace Considered” (The World Economy, 2007) and “Promoting Economic Liberalization in Egypt” (Middle East Review of International Affairs, 2003).

Two of Bessma’s edited books, Shifting GeoEconomic Power of the Gulf (co-edited with Matteo Legrenzi, Ashgate, March 2011) and Targeted Transnationals: Arab-Canadian Immigration and Integration (co-edited with Jenna Hennebry, forthcoming), illustrate the continued diversity of her research interests.

Bessma is also a nonresident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and an associate professor of political science at the University of Waterloo. She lives in Waterloo.