Basileus Zeno is a Sessional Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at York University. He is also a MESA Global Academy Fellow (2021-2023). His work has combined research, advocacy, and policy work on political violence, refugees, and forced migration, security, human rights, religion, cultural heritage, and interpretive, decolonizing methodologies. He received his PhD in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2021. Following that, he was awarded a Karl Loewenstein Fellowship in Political Science at Amherst College. Zeno also holds a BA (2006) in Archaeology and Museum Studies and an MA (2011) in Classical and Islamic Archaeology from Damascus University, and an MA (2015) in Political Science and International Relations from Ohio University. Zeno’s writing has been published in academic as well as public-facing outlets, including Nations and Nationalism, Middle East Law and Governance, Digest of Middle East Studies, and the Washington Post. His article on the sectarianization of the Syrian uprising received the 2022 Syrian Studies Association Prize for its annual Most Outstanding Article Prize at the 2022 Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting. An earlier version of this article also won the 2019 Best Graduate Student Paper in Religion and International Relations Award from the International Studies Association.
