Leila Farsakh (Arabic: ليلى فرسخ‎) (born 1967) is a Palestinian Muslim who was born in Jordan and is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Boston.[1] Her area of expertise is Middle East Politics, Comparative Politics, and the Politics of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Farsakh holds a MPhil from the University of Cambridge, UK (1990) and a PhD from the University of London (2003).[1] Farsakh conducted post-doctoral research at Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and is also a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] She has worked with a number of organizations, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris (1993 - 1996) and the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute in Ramallah (1998 - 1999).[2] In 2001 she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[2] Farsakh is the Project Co-Director for Jerusalem 2050, a problem-solving project jointly sponsored by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Center for International Studies.[3] She has written extensively on issues related to the Palestinian economy and the Oslo peace process, international migration and regional integration.[3] Farsakh is also part of the staff at the non-governmental organization RESIST, founded in 1967 to provide grant money and support to grassroots movements advocating for social change. [4]