Assistant Professor
Office: Champlain College G15
Phone: (705) 748-1011 ext. 6002
basileuszeno@trentu.ca
Trent University, 1600 West Bank Drive
Peterborough, Ontario K9J 7B8, Canada
Profile
Dr. Basileus Zeno is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Trent University in Canada. His work combines research, advocacy, and policy work on forced migration and asylum, legal violence, nationalism, social movement, and interpretive, decolonizing methodologies. He received his Ph.D in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 2021. He also holds a B.A. (2006) and M.A. (2011) in classical and Islamic Archaeology from Damascus University (Syria), and M.A. (2015) in Political Science and International Relations from Ohio University (USA). Prior to joining Trent, he taught at several international institutions, such as Amherst College in the US and York University in Canada. He was awarded The Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Global Academy Fellowship from 2021-2023.
Additionally, Dr. Zeno received grants from major international institutions, including International Development Research Center, Carnegie Corporation of New York, and London School of Economics and Political Science, and the Open Society Foundation. He has been invited by academic and public institutions as a writer and speaker on issues related to refugees, asylum, and politics in the Middle East. He presented his work at academic institutions such as the University of Chicago, UCLA, Wesleyan University, Ohio University, Hampshire College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, Harvard University, Duke University, Wellesley College, and numerous other places.
Dr. Zeno is strongly committed to public engagement and serves as a co-editor of the Syria Page at Jadaliyya, an independent, critical ezine produced by the Arab Studies Institute; and a founding member of Security in Context, a project challenging dominant paradigms and practices that seeks to produce and disseminate new thinking about (in)security, geopolitics, and global political economy. He also worked as a consultant on policy projects with several international organizations, including The Carter Center's Conflict Resolution Program; the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA); Legitimacy and Citizenship in the Arab World Projet at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR) and KnowWar Project; and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maine and the Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project (ILAP)
Publications
He is the author of an academic book "The Empire's Mirror: The Coinage of Seleucid Kings of Syria" (in Arabic) and several articles and policy reports, including his article on the sectarianization of the Syrian Uprising, which received several awards from international conferences (APSA, MESA and ISA), and his collaborative policy report "Lives in Limbo: How the Boston Asylum Office Fails Asylum Seekers," which was awarded the 2022 Clinical Legal Education Association (CLEA) Award for Excellence in a Public Interest Case or Project.