Middle East political economy, comparative politics, state-society relations, Gulf security and international relations, energy politics, political economy of development. Particular country interests in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, UAE, Iraq, Jordan, and Libya.

Dr Jessie Moritz was appointed to CAIS as a Lecturer in July 2018. She joins CAIS following the completion of a postdoctoral research fellowship with the Transregional Institute, Princeton University, where she focused on post-2014 economic reform programs in the GCC and lectured on political and economic development of the Middle East. She received her PhD from the ANU in March 2017; her dissertation, “Slick Operators: Revising Rentier State Theory for the Modern Arab States of the Gulf,” received the 2017 Dissertation Award from the Association for Gulf and Peninsula Studies. She also holds a BA with first class honours in International Relations from the ANU.

Jessie has also held a number of visiting fellow positions in the Gulf and UK. In March 2018, Jessie was a Visiting Fellow at the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, in 2013 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter and from 2013-2014 she joined the Gulf Studies Program at Qatar University as a Graduate Fellow.

Her current research focuses on the political economy of oil in the Arabian Peninsula, with a particular focus on state-society relations and diversification strategies. At  the ANU, Jessie teaches in the areas of Middle East politics, political economy, and development