Dr. Maurizio Geri is a former analyst on the MED/MENA/African regions for the NATO Allied Command Transformation in the US, NATO Southern Hub in Italy and NATO HQ in Belgium. He is currently an Assistant at the NATO Center for Maritime Research and Experimentation in La Spezia, Italy. Dr. Geri has more than 20 years of experience in research and analysis on peace and security, stability operations, strategic foresight, democratization and human rights, particularly in the MENA region but also in the global arena. He has delivered research for various think tanks including The Carter Center, The Washington Institute for the Near East Policy, the Euro Gulf Information Center, the Italian Center for the High Studies of Defense (MOD), Three Stones International and others. He is the author of "Ethnic minorities in democratizing Muslim countries" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) and he holds a PhD in International Studies from Old Dominion University in Virginia/US.