Rory McCarthy is a fellow of Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where he works on social movements, contentious politics, and Islamism in the Middle East and North Africa. He is the author of Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated: Stories from the New Iraq (2006) and co-editor of Civil Resistance in the Arab Spring: Triumphs and Disasters (2016). He spent a decade as a foreign correspondent for the Guardian, with postings in Islamabad, Baghdad, Beirut, and Jerusalem. He has a B.A. in History from the University of Cambridge and an M.Phil. and D.Phil. in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford.