The Security Futures Lab at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, has appointed Dr Lina Khatib as Director of Global Policy and Systemic Risks. She takes up the role on 9 November 2026.
Dr Khatib is the first of three directors who will lead the Lab alongside Founding Director Achim Steiner, shaping its research, international partnerships and engagement with policy and public debate. The other two appointments will be announced in the coming weeks.
In her new role, she will connect the Lab's research with the decisions facing governments and international institutions, developing policy responses to interconnected security challenges such as geopolitical realignment, regional conflict and instability, and the governance of emerging technologies. Her work will draw on long experience of the Middle East and its place in a changing international order.
Dr. Lina Khatib’s appointment brings a powerful combination of scholarship and policy experience to the Security Futures Lab.
Achim Steiner
Achim Steiner, Founding Director of the Security Futures Lab, said: "Dr. Lina Khatib’s appointment brings a powerful combination of scholarship and policy experience to the Security Futures Lab. She joins an international leadership team working with core partners across five continents. Bringing diverse expertise and perspectives into a shared inquiry is central to our ambition: to rethink security in ways that reflect the risks people face and the cooperation needed to address them."
Dr Khatib is a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs who has directed some of the world's most respected policy research programmes. Most recently she was Director of the SOAS Middle East Institute and Professor of Practice at SOAS University of London. Before that she led the Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House, where she is now an Associate Fellow, and directed the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. She co-founded and led the Program on Arab Reform and Democracy at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. She is also a visiting scholar with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center. She has published several books and writes and comments widely on international affairs.
About the Security Futures Lab
The Security Futures Lab at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, brings together a global consortium to rethink security in an era of interconnected and cascading risks. Its work examines how geopolitical realignment, climate disruption, technological transformation and social fragility interact, and develops approaches to help institutions and societies anticipate these risks, strengthen resilience and advance cooperation.