Rola El-Husseini  received her PhD  in 2003 from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. She went on to hold a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University (US) from January 2004 to June 2005. Subsequently she held positions at several American universities including Texas A&M University, CUNY-Graduate Center and George Washington University.

Rola’s first book Pax Syriana: Elite Politics in Postwar Lebanon was published by Syracuse U Press in 2012. The book which was based on extensive fieldwork, analyzed the Lebanese political system in the post-civil- war period (1989–2005), and examined the role of Syrian hegemony in underpinning the stability of the Lebanese state. She has also published extensively on Lebanese Shi‘ism, and is currently preparing an edited volume with Mara Leichtman on this topic.

Rola is now in the process of finishing her second book manuscript which addresses the political representation of Arab women in the period following the Arab uprisings. This manuscript is based on work commissioned by the Center for Women at the United Nations’ Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA), and uses interviews with civil society actors and Arab government officials to analyze the impact of grassroots and external pressure on women’s political rights and representation in the Arab world.