Quinn Mecham is a Franklin Fellow on the Policy Planning Staff of the U.S. Department of State, where he leads policy planning for Saudi Arabia and the Arab Gulf states. He is also charged with helping to direct and coordinate policy related to political Islam across the globe. He comes to the Policy Planning Staff from Middlebury College, where he is an Assistant Professor of Political Science.

Dr. Mecham is a scholar of civil conflict and political Islam, focusing primarily on the Middle East and North Africa. He has written extensively on Islamist movements and political parties in Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, and Senegal. He has traveled throughout the Middle East and Africa, and has done ethnographic research in many countries of the region. He teaches political science and Middle Eastern studies at Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT, and is also a Research Associate at George Washington University. He was recently in residence at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies and has also worked as a management and organizational consultant with McKinsey & Company. He previously worked in the political Islam section at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and at the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration at the U.S. Department of State. He received MA and PhD degrees in Political Science from Stanford University.