CO-FOUNDER & RESEARCH DIRECTOR

Alex Simon

Alex leads Synaps’ research on environmental adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa, publishing regular analysis on his Substack. He also provides methodological support to colleagues studying topics across Synaps’ portfolio: from water and agriculture in Syria to human mobility in Lebanon and Jordan. A native of California, he holds a BA from Princeton University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

      More than a pinch

      Mapping MENA's desalination boom


      The art of editing

      Writing skills


      Sowing like there’s no tomorrow

      Northeast Syria’s agricultural recovery


      Daesh is not the point

      Counter-intuiting the Middle East


      Obama's Iraq policy

      That curious feeling of deja-vu


      The seventh plague of Syria

      A deluge of drugs


      The West’s war on itself

      The hard truths of soft counterterrorism


      The Syria aid regime that needed help

      Touching the ground


      Neither here nor there

      Syrians in Turkey, suspended in time


      The city that didn't know where to start

      Tripoli’s revolving stalemate


      Retreat, reconcile, resist

      A Syrian mosaic


      Syria trends

      Wikisyria


      Picking up the pieces

      How Syrian society has changed


      War by other means

      Syria's economic struggle