Professor Uzi Rabi, Ph.D (Tel Aviv University, 2000) is the Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, a Professor of Middle Eastern History at the Department of Middle Eastern and African Studies, and a senior researcher at the Center for Iranian Studies, all at Tel Aviv University. Formerly, he was the Head of the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. From
2004-2005, he held a visiting professorship at the Lipinski Institute of San Diego State University. Professor Rabi is also the director of the TAU Workshop, an annual ten-day seminar for international scholars that focuses on the geopolitical situation of Israel and its neighbors.

He is the co-editor of Bustan: The Middle East Book Review. His research focuses on the modern history and evolution of states and societies in the Middle East, Iranian-Arab relations, oil and politics in the Middle East, and Sunni-Shi’i dynamics; within this framework he has supervised the dissertations of numerous doctoral candidates in this field over
the course of many years. 

The project he is currently working on is titled: Interface Relationships and Intercultural Exchange at Times of Geopolitical Upheaval.
 
Following the events of the “Arab Spring,” the Middle East got caught up in a continuous spiral. The massive protesting seen in the public squares, the ousting of dictators who had ruled with an iron fist and the consequent breaking out of bloody civil wars engendered dramatic changes in the Middle East. It is clear that the region underwent a process of historical significance, perhaps the most important since the formation of modern nation-states after the First World War. The turbulence experienced by the Arab world is still in progress – and it seems that it is far from dying down – and this will have long-term implications for the Middle East, including Israel, in the 21st century.