Robert Mogielnicki

Robert Mogielnicki is a non-resident fellow and former senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute. He is the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center research fellow for 2025-26 and a Middle East advisor with Teneo. Mogielnicki is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a member of the board of advisors of Henley & Partners. He is based in Paris where he founded and runs a Europe, Middle East, and Africa-focused investment and geoeconomic consulting firm, PoliSphere Advisory.

Mogielnicki is a leading expert on the Gulf states and their role in the global economy. A specialist in the political economy of the region, he is particularly interested in how these geostrategic states engage in processes of economic transformation through trade and investment policies, labor market interventions, economic diversification, and technological innovation. Mogielnicki created the China-Gulf Initiative and the technology-focused Next Gen Gulf research series. He regularly briefs corporate leaders, senior government leaders, new ambassadors, and members of the media.

Mogielnicki has taught a graduate-level seminar on China-Middle East and North Africa relations as an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service since 2021, and he also served as a professorial lecturer at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs. Mogielnicki is a research mentor for undergraduate students through the Georgetown University Research Opportunities Program and the Laidlaw Undergraduate Leadership and Research Scholarship Programme.

The Middle East Policy Council listed Mogielnicki in their inaugural 40 Under 40 awards for influential Middle East experts. He has lectured and delivered talks at the World Bank, NATO, the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, Chatham House, the International Monetary Fund, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the Council of the European Union, the European University Institute, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and other prominent institutions.

Mogielnicki has worked across the United States, Europe, and the Middle East helping research-driven organizations better understand the MENA region and the economic implications of foreign policy choices. He possesses deep experience advising senior corporate and government decision makers on international political economy issues, and he excels at producing research for impact. Mogielnicki has worked with Eurasia Group, Oxford Economics, Freedom House, global law firms, and in many other consulting and advisory capacities. He previously served as a human resource development consultant for an Oxford-based research consultancy that operated across the Gulf region. Prior to his consulting career, he worked in journalism, covering political and economic developments in post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia.

Mogielnicki’s latest book project is an edited volume on sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East and Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, May 2025). He is also the author of A Political Economy of Free Zones in Gulf Arab States (Palgrave Macmillan 2021). Mogielnicki has authored book chapters on Middle Eastern labor market policies in Nationalization of Gulf Labour Markets (Palgrave, May 2023) and the political economy of natural gas markets in The Palgrave Handbook of Natural Gas and Global Energy Transitions (May 2022). He also published a chapter on China’s technology-related commercial engagement in the Middle East for Routledge Handbook on China–Middle East Relations (December 2021) as well as a technology-oriented chapter in Artificial Intelligence in the Gulf: Challenges and Opportunities (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2021).

In addition to other academic and think tank publications, Mogielnicki’s work has appeared in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Foreign Policy, Axios, The Banker, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, and World Politics Review. Mogielnicki regularly provides commentary for an extensive and diverse list of international media outlets, such as: The Economist, CNN, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Forbes, Nikkei Asian Review, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters, BBC World News TV, ABC News, AFP, VOX, VOA, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, S&P Global, Nature, HuffPost, Deutsche Welle, The Telegraph, and Business Insider.

Mogielnicki holds a DPhil degree from the University of Oxford’s Magdalen College and a MPhil degree in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford’s St Antony’s College. He received his BA from Georgetown University with a double major in Arabic and Government, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Mogielnicki speaks Modern Standard Arabic and the Egyptian dialect, and he possesses a working knowledge of the Tunisian dialect. He is a former recipient of the Sultan Qaboos Arabic Language Scholarship (2007-11) and served as a Critical Language Scholar in Tunisia in 2011.