Bassma Kodmani

Dr. Bassma Kodmani is a Franco-Syrian researcher on the Arab world. She joined Institut Montaigne as a Senior Fellow in 2021.

She is the founder in 2005 of the Arab Reform Initiative. She also served as visiting fellow at Collège de France (2005-2006), associate researcher at the CERI center of Sciences Po Paris (2006-2007) and adviser within the international department of the French Research Council CNRS (2007-2009). In 1999, she joined the Ford Foundation to head the program on Governance and  international cooperation in the Middle East. Prior to this, she established and led the Middle East program at IFRI until 1998.

Bassma is a co-founder of the Syrian National Council for a democratic Syrian opposition in 2011 which she left it one year later. She is currently a member of the opposition delegation for peace negotiations and a member of the Constitutional Committee for Syria. She also serves on the advisory councils of the European Council on Foreign Relations, of the Carnegie Endowment Middle East Center in Beirut and of the Atlantic Council Hariri Center.

Dr. Kodmani joined Institut Montaigne as a Senior Fellow in 2021.  She holds a PhD from Sciences Po Paris. She is the author or co-author of several books, reports and articles in French, Anglo-Saxon and Arab publications on regional security, the Syrian conflict, Israel-Palestine, the social and political evolution of the Arab world and power relations between politics and religion.