TFAS Prague

Ibrahim Al-Marashi is an Associate Professor of Middle East History at California State University San Marcos (CSUSM). Formally, he taught courses on Conflict Resolution in the Middle East, and Conflict Resolution and the Media at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and at the UN University of Peace in San Jose, Costa Rica. He has worked with organizations such as UNDP, UNESCO, and other NGOs on developing media in post-conflict environments, particularly Iraq.

His research deals with the security issues in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, and is the co-author of Iraq’s Armed Forces: An Analytical History (Routledge, 2008) and The Modern History of Iraq (Westview, 2017), and the Modern History of the Middle East (Routledge 2018).

He obtained his D.Phil. at University of Oxford, completing a thesis on the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He is also a 2001 graduate of TFAS’ Institute for Political and Economic Studies (IIPES) convened in Chania, Greece. Ibrahim is an Iraqi-American who lived at various times in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, and Turkey, and has travelled extensively through the Middle East, Balkans, East Africa, and South Asia.

Adam Martin is Political Economy Research Fellow at the Free Market Institute and an associate professor of agricultural and applied economics in the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Texas Tech University. Dr. Martin earned his B.A. in economics and theology from the University of Dallas and his Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. Prior to joining Texas Tech University, he was a lecturer in political economy and leader of the Rationality, Choice and Uncertainty Research Group at King’s College London.

Dr. Martin has also served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Development Research Institute at New York University and has been a visitor at the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University and the Social Ontology Group at Cambridge University.

Dr. Martin’s research interests include Austrian economics, economic methodology, economic development, and public choice. After receiving his Ph.D. in Economics from George Mason University in 2009, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Development Research Institute at New York University. He has also been a visitor at the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke and the Social Ontology Group at Cambridge.

Dr. Martin is a co-founder of the Carl Menger Undergraduate Essay Contest run by the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics. More information about him and about the contest can be found at his personal website, www.adamgmartin.com.

Nikolai Wenzel is a Professor of Economics at the online start-up Universidad de las Hesperidades, where he directs the English-language MA program in economics. He is a Research Fellow of the Institut Economique Molinari (Paris France); from 2008 to 2019, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Paris Law School (Center for Law & Economics). Dr. Wenzel has held appointments as Associate Professor at Flagler College, Visiting Assistant Professor at Florida Gulf Coast University, and Wallace and Marion Reemelin Chair in Free-Market Economics (Assistant Professor) at Hillsdale College.

Dr. Wenzel has a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University (where he was an H.B. Earhart fellow) and a BSFS cum laude in international affairs from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is also a former Foreign Service Officer with the US State Department; for two years, he worked at the US Embassy in Mexico City where he was vice consul and special assistant to the US ambassador. He subsequently worked for various free-market think tanks while completing his doctoral coursework.

Dr. Wenzel is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, the Society for the Development of Austrian Economics, and the Association of Private Enterprise Education. He sat for four years on the Executive Committee of the Association of Private Enterprise Education and is currently on the Board of Scholars of the Foundation for Economic Education. From 2014 to 2019, he taught political economy for the Asia Institute of Political Economy, co-sponsored by George Mason University and the Fund for American Studies at Hong Kong University.

Dr. Wenzel has published more than fifty scholarly articles and book chapters and is the co-author of a book on the libertarian-conservative debate (Stanford University Press, 2016). He is on the editorial board of Cosmos and Taxis and the Journal des Libertés. Since January 2020, he has been the editor of the Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy.

When not writing on political economy, Dr. Wenzel dabbles in wine economics. He is a member of the Georgetown Chimes, Georgetown University’s male acapella singing group, and a novice bluegrass guitar picker and singer. He has traveled to 61 countries in the Americas, Asia, and Europe, and to 49 US states. He is fluent in English, French, and Spanish, with conversational German and Italian.