Jamal Barout is an Associate Researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies, where he also is the Head of the Research Department. Barout has contributed or authored exclusively a total of 30 published books. Barout’s research work is focused on questions of modern Arab thought and modernity; education and human development; development and demographics; foreign migration from Syria; and development forecasting studies. He has worked for a number of governmental and international agencies in Syria, including as an Advisor to a number of projects run by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Syria; the UN Population Fund; and the International Migration Organization. Barout was the main author of “Syria 2025”, published in 2007 and the main author of the National Reference Report on the State of the Syrian Population. In addition, Barout has held positions at the French Institute for the Near East (IFPO) in Aleppo, where he was a Visiting Scholar from 2007 to 2010, and was a guest lecturer at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University in 2008 and was also a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Advanced Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris.