Ala’ is a PhD candidate in political science at Stanford University, a graduate fellow at the Immigration Policy Lab (IPL), and a PhD fellow at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. His primary research is in comparative politics and international relations with a focus on authoritarian media, political violence, and migration and refugees. To study these topics, his research combines fieldwork, machine learning, and experimental methods. Prior to arriving at Stanford University, he was a Junior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He grew up in Amman, Jordan and graduated from Dartmouth College with a degree in Government. His research has been covered in several outlets, including BBC Arabic, The Economist, The Times, The Daily Mail, Al Jazeera, Spiegel Online, Le Figaro, la Republica, and Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. Ala’ has also written about his research in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.