Event Description
The Red Sea is a vital artery of global trade in an increasingly volatile neighborhood. Metastasizing armed conflicts in the Horn of Africa, increasing great and middle power military interventions, and attacks on commercial shipping, are just a few elements of widening regional disorder. This talk examines the sources and trajectory of instability in and around the Red Sea, and US policy approaches to these challenges. The analysis builds on Prof. Woldemariam's recent work as an advisor to the US Institute of Peace and its Senior Study Group on the Red Sea.
Speaker Bio
Michael Woldemariam is an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park, and a Senior Fellow at the Center for International & Security Studies at Maryland. Woldemariam’s teaching and research interests are in African security studies, with a particular focus on armed conflict in the Horn of Africa. Woldemariam’s scholarly work has been published in a wide-range of peer-reviewed journals, most recently in Contemporary Security Policy and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism. His popular essays have appeared in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and Current History. His first book, Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and Its Discontents, was published with Cambridge University Press in 2018. In addition to his scholarly work, Woldemariam has consulted with a number of international organizations, primarily on issues related to politics, governance, and security in the Greater Horn of Africa region. He holds a BA from Beloit College, and MA and PhD degrees from Princeton University.
Prior to joining SPP, Woldemariam was a tenured faculty member at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies and the Director of its African Studies Center. He has also worked as a research specialist with Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies program and held fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Penn State’s African Research Center. In 2020-21, Woldemariam served on the Democratic staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee through a Council on Foreign Relations fellowship.