James Ryan is the Executive Director of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), a non-profit publication featuring in-depth reporting and analysis of Middle East Politics and Society. Prior to joining MERIP, he served as the Director of Research and Director of the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-profit foreign policy think tank based in Philadelphia. He is an historian of the modern Middle East with a focus on the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey, and his writing has covered political and cultural issues from the late 19th century to the present. He is currently at work on a book project investigating the history of dissent and opposition in Turkey during the interwar period in the 20th century, and has previously published scholarly work in the Journal of Urban History, the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, Prisms: Perspectives on Southeast European History, the Middle East Journal and Mobility in History, as well as essays and op-eds in War on the Rocks, Public Books, Al-Jazeera America and other venues. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania and an A.B. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. He has previously served as the Associate Director of the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies at NYU, and as a Program Assistant at Penn's Middle East Center. He is also currently serving on the board of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association as Executive Director.