Data sources and method
How This Directory Is Built
The directory is generated from MEF's own public pages and MEF's local archive of meforum.org. It is rebuilt from a data snapshot; this build ran October 6, 2026, 15:13 UTC.
Who Is Listed
Experts are drawn from 3 live MEF pages, read on October 4, 2026: the Staff page, the Writing Fellows page or the Speakers Bureau page. It covers MEF's research, editorial and program staff, its writing fellows and its Speakers Bureau, 46 people in all: 13 staff, 32 fellows and 1 Speakers Bureau member.
Titles are the ones MEF publishes on those pages. Where the Writing Fellows page gives no title, the directory uses "Writing Fellow".
Profiles
Each profile summarizes, in our own words and in under 90 words, the expert's public bio on meforum.org. Every profile links to the MEF bio it draws on. Portraits (46 of 46) are the images MEF publishes on its own author pages, downloaded from MEF's image server (cdn-mef.meforum.org); they are used here as MEF material on an MEF site.
Areas of Expertise
Themes and countries or regions come from a fixed taxonomy of 19 themes and 20 countries and regions. The site builders assigned them by reading each expert's MEF bio, the topics MEF lists for Speakers Bureau members, and the headlines of the expert's MEF pieces. They describe what the person writes and speaks about at MEF; they are not a rating.
Languages
A language other than English is shown only when the expert's MEF bio names it, and the profile quotes the sentence. All profiles and listed work are in English.
MEF Work
Work lists come from MEF's local archive of meforum.org (crawled from MEF's sitemaps; 16,317 MEF-written records dated September 1, 2004 to September 27, 2026), drawn from MEF-written sections: articles, MEF Online, MEF Observer, the Middle East Quarterly, Campus Watch, Islamist Watch and Focus on Western Islamism research, blogs, reports, press releases and podcasts. A piece is credited to an expert when the archive lists them as an author. 222 pairs of records with the same headline and date (the same piece at 2 addresses) were merged. A further 33 recent pieces dated up to October 4, 2026 come from the "Articles by this Author" list on each MEF profile page. In total the directory lists 5,596 bylined pieces.
The lists cover bylined pieces published on meforum.org, including op-eds MEF republished from other outlets. Section names are simplified (for example, "MEF Observer" and "Middle East Quarterly"), and dashes in headlines are set as commas to match the site's style.
Interview Requests
Every profile has one route: an email to info@meforum.org with the subject and request fields filled in. The site stores nothing and sets no cookies.
Update Cadence and Limits
- Rebuilt by hand from a fresh read of the MEF roster pages and the archive. Planned cadence: monthly, and whenever MEF's roster pages change.
- If someone joins or leaves between rebuilds, the MEF pages are authoritative.
- Author matching relies on the byline as MEF published it; pieces with variant spellings may be missing from a list.
Licences and Attribution
- Text summaries, taxonomy and code: Middle East Forum.
- Article headlines and links: meforum.org, Middle East Forum.
- Portraits: as published by the Middle East Forum on meforum.org.
- Typefaces: Newsreader and Inter, both under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, served from this site.
Snapshot
| File | Source | Rows | Pulled (UTC) |
|---|---|---|---|
| data/roster_pages.json | MEF Staff, Writing Fellows and Speakers Bureau pages | 72 | 2026-10-04T18:56:56+00:00 |
| data/profiles.json | MEF author profile pages (meforum.org/<name>) | 46 | 2026-10-04T19:00:09+00:00 to 2026-10-04T19:10:28+00:00 |
| data/headshots/ | Headshots from cdn-mef.meforum.org | 46 | 2026-10-04T19:11:56+00:00 |
| data/works.json | Local meforum.org corpus, MEF-written sections (2004-09-01 to 2026-09-27) | 5,531 | 2026-10-04T19:28:08+00:00 |
| data/curated.json | Builder-written bios, area tags, bio-stated languages | 46 | 2026-10-04T19:15:20+00:00 |