Omar Safadi is an academic, writer, and researcher and holds a Ph.D., MA, and BA from the University of Chicago’s Department of Political Science. His dissertation and first book project – “The Queer Enemy in the Sectarian Order: Homophobia, Religion, and Stalemate in Lebanon” – draws on more than two years of on-site ethnographic fieldwork that he conducted between 2019 and 2023, a time of social movement protest, fiscal collapse, state breakdown and regional war. It investigates how homophobia blocks democratization and reproduces sectarian rule in the wake of the 2019 Lebanon Revolution. Specializing in the modern Middle East, Omar’s research converges on the interdisciplinary study of sexuality, geopolitics, civil war, and political transition. He is currently a Social Sciences Teaching Fellow in the Department of Political Science and the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality at the University of Chicago.