CO-FOUNDER & ENVIRONMENT PROGRAM DIRECTOR

Alex Simon

Alex leads Synaps’ research on environmental adaptation in the Middle East and North Africa, publishing regular analysis on his Substack. He also provides methodological support to colleagues studying topics across Synaps’ portfolio: from water and agriculture in Syria to human mobility in Lebanon and Jordan. A native of California, he holds a BA from Princeton University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

      The seventh plague of Syria

      A deluge of drugs

      Exhausting the desert

      Cash, concrete, and cucumbers in Jordan

      Death on the Nile

      Egypt's famished breadbasket

      A flood of concrete

      Iraq’s construction boom threatens its food

      Sowing like there’s no tomorrow

      Northeast Syria’s agricultural recovery

      More than a pinch

      Mapping MENA's desalination boom

      Neither here nor there

      Syrians in Turkey, suspended in time

      Picking up the pieces

      How Syrian society has changed

      Syria trends

      Wikisyria

      Obama's Iraq policy

      That curious feeling of deja-vu

      Daesh is not the point

      Counter-intuiting the Middle East

      Retreat, reconcile, resist

      A Syrian mosaic

      War by other means

      Syria's economic struggle

      The West’s war on itself

      The hard truths of soft counterterrorism

      The city that didn't know where to start

      Tripoli’s revolving stalemate

      The Syria aid regime that needed help

      Touching the ground

      The art of editing

      Writing skills