Mr. Fabrice Balanche has been a geography professor at Lyon University (France) and an Adjunct Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy since 2018. He was a fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University (2017-2018), after having been a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (2015-2017).

Prof. Balanche’s first stay in the Middle East began in 1990. Over the next decade, he split his time between Syria and Lebanon, two key focal points of his academic inquiries. Fellow (1990-1991), research grantee (1996-1998) at the French Institute of the Near East (IFPO), then director of the Urban Observatory of the Near East at the IFPO (2003 – 2007). Professor Balanche’s expertise in the region was further strengthened when he served as director of the Research and Studies Group on the Mediterranean and the Middle East. (GREMMO, UMR 5291) at the Maison de l’Orient in 2010 and 2015. He participated in various scientific research programs on urban development and regional planning in the Middle East as the World Bank program “Building for Peace in the Middle East and North Africa”. In 2021, he launched a research program on “The Reconstruction of the Levant” (Lebanon, Syria and Iraq) at Lyon University.

In addition to his academic work, Prof. Balanche carries out expertise in economics, geopolitics and development in the region for public institutions, development agencies and economic intelligence companies. He worked as a consultant for the German Cooperation (GIZ) and the French Agency for Development (AFD) in Syria. He directed a Syrian observatory (2018-2021) then a Levant observatory (2023) for the General Directorate of International Relations and Strategy (DGRIS) to the French Ministry of the Armed Forces.

Prof. Balanche is the author of 6 books, including The Lessons of the Syrian Crisis, (Odile Jacob, Paris, 2024), Syria Lebanon : sectarianism and power (Presses Universitaires de Rhin et Danube, Huningue, 2022), The sectarianism and the Syrian civil war, (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Washington, 2018), Atlas of the Near East: State Formation and the Arab-Israeli Conflict 1918-2010, (Brill, Amsterdam, 2017), Geopolitics of Middle East (La documentation Française, Paris 2014), The Alawit region and the Syrian Power (Paris, Karthala, 2006). On June 26, 2024, he had the honor of receiving the Geopolitical Book Prize for : The Lessons of the Syrian Crisis.

Graduated Doctor in Tours University (2000), Prof. Balanche has been research Director since 2013 from Lyon University.