Stephane Lacroix is a postdoctoral scholar in the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and a lecturer in the department of political science at Stanford University. He is also a former researcher and lecturer at Sciences Po in Paris, where he supervised the Kuwait Program of Gulf Studies. Lacroix holds an MA in Middle East Studies and Arabic Language from the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) in Paris, as well as an MA and PhD in Political Science from Sciences Po. He has published articles on Saudi Arabia and Islamism in some of the major academic journals on the Middle East, including the Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Mediterranee, the Middle East Journal and the International Journal of Middle East Studies, as well as in several edited volumes. He is also a former consultant on Saudi Arabia for the International Crisis Group (ICG). His forthcoming book "Awakening Islam : a History of Islamism in Saudi Arabia", based on extensive fieldwork in the Saudi Kingdom, will be published by Harvard University Press in the winter 2010.